The Not Gate (Tom and Alice #1)
Read The Not Gate (Tom and Alice #1) Online
Authors: Tammy Bench
The Not Gate
The Not Gate
Tammy Bench
Copyright © 2013 Tammy Bench
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means, electronic or manual, including photocopying, recording, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: 1530343364
ISBN 13: 9781530343362
For the unshakeable S & L and their crazy long shot.
IT STARTS
Tuesday
12
th
September 1995
A
lice Rutherford sat on top of her desk in her class form room. She swung her legs intermittently back and forward, like the pendulum of a clock. Skimming her feet on the rough, green, hardwearing carpet and daydreaming.
The bell had sounded a few moments ago but no teacher had yet emerged harried, register in hand to tell her to move.
Two… three… now five minutes went by. She leaned backwards to look through the little window in the door but still couldn’t see anyone approaching. It was weird.
The boys in the room started that excited laughter the promise of not having a teacher present easily evoked.
‘If no one turns up that means we’re free to leave,’ one of the lads in her class informed the group with expectant glee.
‘Dickhead,’ another shouted back in jest.
Alice rolled her eyes towards her best friend Ellie who grinned back at her behind the heavy rigging of fixed braces. Over the next two minutes the room that had started with the quiet hum of unlicensed chatter, steadily built and built to a crescendo of teenage noise.
One boy had taken the football from his bag and started kicking it between three friends, dribbling it expertly around the small two-person desks. The girls that sat on the desk directly in front of Alice had started singing the latest Boyzone hit very poorly indeed and it seemed even in the era of brit pop the boyband still reigned supreme.
The class clown, Marcus stood behind the teacher’s desk at the front holding an imaginary register and shouting each of their names until they responded in turn with the customary ‘sir’ meaning they were present.
Someone launched a hubba-bubba
gum to somebody else and she thought she heard a can of fizzy drink being opened behind her.
Michelle Young, who was slightly odd and a bit goth, gracefully drew a blue biro tattoo that started at her little finger, looping and swirling up her arm and stopping at her elbow.
Alice smiled to herself and shook her head. Was she really the only sane person in this room? She opened her bag and started looking for the copy of
Kiss the Girls
that she had been reading, the very addictive Alex Cross adventures had her hooked.
No one noticed the door open quietly and the man step inside. The thrill and hysteria of the room had frankly gone beyond caring now.
‘Sit!’ the man boomed from the doorway, loud enough to make Alice jump. She let her bag slide from her grasp onto the floor with a thud. She turned to look at him sharply and the hairs on her arms prickled with a mild consternation.
His voice had caught everyone’s attention and the room was, for a second, very still. Abruptly followed by a slight scurrying of girls and the languorous stroll of the boys that tried to say ‘like we care’ as they moved back to their brown plastic topped desks.
Alice looked at him as he walked into the room fully, brown satchel in one hand and a pile of papers shoved under his left arm. He was new. Their new form tutor.
She watched him closely as he strode purposefully to his desk, putting the papers down and removing his dark grey overcoat. He didn’t make eye contact with anyone as he opened the class register.
‘On a chair, young lady,’ he looked up from his task straight at Alice.
She had been watching him so intently she hadn’t realised she was still perched on the edge of the desk while the rest of her class sat obediently around her, staring open mouthed at her uncharacteristic rebellion.
‘Sorry, sir,’ she whispered, offering a small smile and jumping into her seat.
‘Okay, I’m Mr Chambers, your new form tutor and Head of English. I’ll be replacing Mrs Atkins who I’m sure you’re all aware has left to have her baby,’ he pushed his left hand through his hair and continued, ‘I’m hoping that what I walked in on just then is not the normal type of behaviour I can expect from this class… if it is then it won’t be for long.’
He spoke in an authoritative manner, but with a hint of humour clinging to the end of his sentence. His accent had a soft lilt… Irish. It flowed over and soothed her instantly, rendering Alice oddly unable to look away from him.
He glanced at the room again. Full of his new charges. His eyes drifted over her and his strong handsome face took it all in.
Alice surveyed his eyes now. She couldn’t tell from where she sat but she thought his eyes looked ice blue, almost translucent.
Very beautiful.
Mr Chambers began rolling up the sleeves of his clean white shirt to just below the elbow, his hands working quickly revealing his tanned lower arms. They were strong and muscular and sprinkled with light brown hair.
He pulled out his chair and sat down. Opened the register and started reading the names aloud. He looked up each time to commit the new face to memory.
Teachers seem very good at remembering names
…
Alice found herself becoming hypnotised by the way he let each word form on his tongue. Her classmate’s names suddenly sounding frighteningly erotic and his accent surprising her each time he spoke.
‘Alice Rutherford?’ he glanced up, his eyes sweeping.
‘Yes, sir,’ she replied nervously.
Wow.
‘Yes… Alice,’ he confirmed to himself, looked down again and made a mark on the page.
She had no idea when she arrived for school that morning today would be any different from all the others gone before? She’d put on her uniform, brushed her hair and teeth, packed her bag and waited for the bus. She had thought about many things, had she completed her Maths homework correctly? What her mum was cooking for dinner and how much did she really want or need that new top she had bought on Saturday? Would she ever really wear it?
Not for a moment did she think she would end up mooning like an idiot over her new teacher. I mean what a cliché, fancying your teacher? This was definitely not her. She wasn’t the type of girl to sit around fantasising over boys. Dissecting their every move. Drinking them in, as she seemed to be doing instinctively right now.
She looked at Ellie for a second opinion and mouthed, ‘nice?’
‘Really nice,’ she whispered back and winked.
He was talking again, something about football aimed at the boys. He stood and rested his palms on his desk and leaned forward, his shoulders became more defined. His shirt tucked into his trousers at his slender waist. A brown leather belt with a bronze buckle encircling it. Alice found herself leaning back in her chair as he leaned forward, even though he was more than four metres away.
Suddenly the bell rang loudly, interrupting him. He looked at it and frowned.
‘Okay, we’ll see each other again after lunch… hopefully without the circus. Get to lessons. I might have some of you for English later,’ he added.
English, she took English.
She felt herself flush without any way to stop the reaction. She touched her face… how strange? She wanted to laugh at her own body. Okay, she wasn’t saying she’d never felt attraction before, she fancied guys from time to time. Her younger sister would often bring posters home of older half-naked idols to adorn her bedroom walls. They would cut pictures out of magazines and make hodgepodge collages of her latest crush and while Alice could appreciate the aesthetic beauty she always thought herself too mature to lose her mind over them.
‘Lighten up a bit,’ Stephanie would say, ‘you take life way too seriously. You should get laid!’ Alice cringed at her baby sister who was eighteen months her junior saying those words and hoped that she wasn’t as experienced as she liked to talk up, because that really would make Alice a sad old prude. Someone who only looked at school as a place to get good grades and make good friends. Not a hotspot for picking up sweaty, overly enthusiastic teenage boys. Any attention she had received from the opposite sex over her school career she had laughed off awkwardly, hoping that their fascination would be short-lived.
But now… she pushed her chair under the desk, picked up her sports bag and stole another look at Mr Chambers. He was youngish, but could be thirty maybe? His thick brown hair was haphazard, but probably styled like that. The harshly chiselled angles of his face gave him a slightly arrogant look, while his kind blue eyes added charm. He was immensely stunning.
Her classmates filed out in front of his desk, chatting and pushing to get out of the door first. He quietly packed the papers into his weathered satchel and as she passed him by she felt a sudden urge to speak to him again.
‘Sorry about the chair thing, sir,’ she managed clumsily.
“Chair thing…” dumb!
He looked up and straight into her eyes.
Whoa.
His eyes darted away from hers instantly. Maybe too quickly they focused on a middle distance between them, but he smiled a wide grin and two dimples appeared as if like a prize on his face to anyone that was lucky enough to win them. His cheeks reddened.
‘That’s alright, Alice, all is forgiven,’ his voice was sing-song but gravelly.
Alice smiled back and walked on. Out of the room. Dazed. How childish she felt in that moment. So much like every other silly girl she knew, smitten and suddenly awake to her hormones. Her belly clenched and she became so bodily aware it felt unreal.
Walking slowly to her French lesson she felt lost and found but at the same time. All the things she was comfortable with in her life; her own mind, wit and responses felt suddenly altered or maybe even gone, and in their place… Mr Chambers’ smile.
TOM
Tuesday
12
th
September
T
he first bell went five minutes ago, stupid man…
Tom Chambers thought to himself as he stood in front of his new headmaster as he kindly spewed the same old nonsense about first day nerves, sixth form pranks and staffroom banter. Who to watch out for and so on. Talking to Tom as if he was just out of university and had no idea how tough this job can be or how challenging the kids could get?
He wanted to say, ‘How is it going to look if I get to my form late for registration?’ He would appear bumbling and tardy, but he couldn’t get a word in.
Tom graciously let his ramblings come to a belly laughing climax, what the man was laughing at, Tom had no idea.
He smiled and shrugged his shoulders, picked up his bag and motioned to the doorway.
‘Better show my face then,’ he chirped aiming at jovial camaraderie.
‘Yes, Tom. You don’t want to be late, not with year twelve,’ the head held out his hand and Tom took it and tried not to laugh himself.
Tom Chambers half-ran, half-walked across the empty green patch of grass that separated the offices from the main teaching blocks, breathing in the fresh air. He sprinted up the stairs taking two steps at a time and jogged to the room he was told his new class awaited him in. He paused outside the door for breath and fiddled with the front of his hair, he felt foolish suddenly and stopped. Then hearing the ruckus coming from beyond the thin paint-chipped door, he smiled.
New school, same shit…
He probably shouted louder than was necessary as he entered the room but he wanted first blood. To swing the balance of power in his favour and it worked. The lanky boys on the verge of manhood didn’t take kindly to being told what to do by a fellow male, but they couldn’t deny the pack leader status that maturity dictated.
Tom walked to the front of the class digging his heels into the carpet as he did so. He was aware that time was short due to his lengthy lecture. He looked up and one girl was still sitting on her desk looking in his direction. He asked her to sit and she apologised with an airy response.
Tom started calling the names of his new class. As he did so he got the odd smile and wave as he looked up. They didn’t seem all that bad really, just trying it on as all kids did from time to time.
‘Alice Rutherford?’ he enquired.
‘Sir,’ she answered in that airy, breathy tone again. The girl on the desk. He made a mental note. Something else was there in her voice, maybe shyness? She looked away from him as she spoke and a curtain of blond waves fell over the right side of her face. She seemed sweet and nervous, not at all the type of person that would ignore his instruction on purpose. She didn’t need to worry he wouldn’t hold it against her. He’d been teaching long enough to spot the trouble makers and he’d bet she definitely wasn’t one of them.
The bell sounded just as he was explaining about coaching the football team and he wished again he’d made it there on time. Tom had so much more to say to them but didn’t want to keep them back and make them late for lessons.
He dismissed them and began packing his bag with all the bits of paper the headmaster had handed him. New school timetables, staff contact numbers and door codes.
‘Sir, I’m sorry about the chair thing,’ she said.
He was busy concentrating on stuffing more shit into his already, bursting at the seams bag.
Tom looked up and straight into her eyes.
In that instant he felt like he had been sucker punched, taken aback, thrown off kilter… how many other ways to describe it?
She stood looking down at him, her fingers lightly brushing the edge of his desk and her eyes, like massive emeralds held his gaze.
He was for a moment, mesmerised.
Tom shifted awkwardly and readjusted his gaze. From dumb-stuck adolescent male back to his interested, but detached teacher mode.
Tom smiled, ‘Hey don’t worry, Alice, all is forgiven.’
Shit.
Alice smiled back at him. A wide radiant open grin. God, how had he not noticed her properly when he came in? He watched as she moved away towards the door. Her body drifting now, as if in slow motion, fluid and untouchable. She was small, but not so you wouldn’t recognise or acknowledge her, quite the opposite in fact. He didn’t want to take his eyes off her.
What the fuck?
After all the pupils had left Tom let out a long breath and slumped back in the uncomfortable chair.
Don’t panic. You’ve thought students pretty before, there’s nothing to get worked up about here…
Was there?
You have a nice woman you’re dating, everything’s cool. Forget it. Just a stupid, testosterone fuelled reaction.
Forget the amazing eyes? That enchanted impish face? The puzzled little sexy look as she walked away from him?
Shut up…
Tom rubbed his hands together, they were slightly damp with perspiration.
‘Idiot,’ he muttered.
He packed up the rest of his things, grabbed his coat from the back of his chair and went to teach his first lesson at Claude Bennett School, hoping the day would improve some.