I hover by the door frame, unsure of how to proceed. He looks up at me, takes off his sexy reading glasses and beckons me over. The gesture raises the hairs on the back of my neck; it is intimate – the kind of thing a lover might do – and yet sinister at the same time.
“Now let’s address the matter of your woefully ill-researched essay, shall we?” he purrs, as if he relishes his disciplinary task, which I’m sure he does. Once again, a newsflash of Mags ‘Nosy’ Parker’s radiant expression if she could see this interrupts the usual nonsense broadcast of my head. Simultaneously I become aware of the uncomfortable bulge of my camera-phone in my jeans pocket. And suddenly the two concepts intermarry and I know how I could make £350. Just…like…that.
I stand in front of him in a slightly defiant pose, hand on hip, shoulders slouched, thinking ‘Could I really do that? No, I’m not that type of person! I’m not a blackmailer! But what type of person am I? The type who sleeps on the street? He’s not blameless in this; he’s a grown man of 40-odd in a position of responsibility and I’m a vulnerable girly…he deserves it…no, he doesn’t; he’s trying to help me…in a weird, weird way…Argh!’.
The babbling is inconclusive. I am almost sure I couldn’t possibly go through with anything so nasty. But will I feel the same when my belongings are piled up outside Cliveden Hall in three black binliners tomorrow? My fingers fidget compulsively with the slim silver phone while Sinclair delivers a lengthy diatribe about letting myself down and taking opportunities from people that would truly appreciate them etc. etc. When he tells me I’m the worst kind of social parasite, I crack and decide I’m going to do it. I’m going to get a photo of him in action and I’m going to demand the three fifty. I push my shoulders back and smile at him.
“Everything is going to change from now on,” I promise him, my eyes glinting villainously. Wow. I feel like a Bond baddie; it is strangely empowering.
I feel less empowered, though, when he tells me to lower my jeans.
“Do you mean…?” I squeak.
“I’m not spanking you over those; I don’t want to cripple my hand,” he says tersely. Damn. My phone is in the pocket; how can I get it? I slip it out and into the waistband of my thong at the front, fumbling in my attempt to do it without being noticed. “Today, Miss Newland, if you don’t mind.” I shimmy the jeans down to my ankles, staring furiously at the floor as I do so. I can’t believe he is doing this to me. Still, all the better for my purposes, I think, looking on the bright side.
I hear the inviting slap of his hand on his thigh and shuffle over, flame-faced, draping myself over him and trying to organise my position so that I can whip the phone out with ease when the going gets too tough.
He smooths his palm over my comedy knickers, exclaiming when he realises I am wearing two pairs.
“You certainly came prepared tonight, Miss Newland. Two layers of underwear. Perhaps I should be twice as hard on you.”
“One pair is only a thong!” I object. “It doesn’t count!”
“I’m not sure I’m in agreement,” he says, laying on the first stroke, which is sharper and louder than my fuzzy eroticised memories have been telling me and makes me yelp straightaway.
No quarter is given this time, and my bottom is sufferingly hot within a minute or two. I jerk around on his lap, looking for escape routes, but they are blocked by his hand in the small of my back. He is oblivious to my moans and plaints, slapping on and on like a machine created for the purpose of my pain, asking me periodically why I am being punished and expecting me to reply.
“Lazy…undisciplined…disrespectful…” I gasp, repeating the mantra he has given me on so many occasions. I wriggle a little more desperately than I need to, to cover the sneaky manoeuvre I am making towards my mobile. My fingers close around the hard metal and I try to press the necessary buttons with one shaky hand, the other being occupied grabbing Sinclair’s trousers and bunching them in my fist to try to cope with the vicious sting of my bum.
I think I’ve got the phone on the right setting, and I try to raise it to a good vantage point to snap Sinclair in flagrante delicto, but before I can even get close, he has snatched it from me and his blistering assault ceases. Which is good on the one hand…but on the other…
“What do you think you’re doing?” He scrutinises the screen and I flop, defeated and throbbing, unable to answer or try to look at him. An almighty smack lands on my undefended cheeks. “I want an answer.”
I can’t give him one.
“Now, Miss Newland.” Ouchie ouch, on my naked thigh. That was below the belt, so to speak.
I can’t tell him, but I can’t not tell him. I take a middle path. I start to cry.
“Crocodile tears won’t impress me,” he snaps, but once the tears have started I find that I am unable to stem them. They just keep on coming until I am bawling my head off, all self-control evaporating with my dignity. Sorry, did I say dignity? Hanging off Sinclair’s knee with my jeans around my ankles and a very red derriere, perhaps that’s not the right word.
He hauls me up and deposits my wailing, shaking form on to the sofa, prowling over to a drawer and producing a box of tissues, which he puts down beside me. He then sits down and watches me, silently and clinically, until I am merely sobbing rather than howling, my fists pressed up against my mouth and my hair flopping protectively over my swollen face.
“Tell me,” he says again, but his tone is rather gentler, though still meaning business.
“I’m going to get thrown out of Hall,” I confess. “I owe them too much money. I can’t afford to pay them. The deadline is tomorrow. I just..don’t know..” I cover my face with my hands, not wanting to watch Sinclair’s face as he draws the inevitable conclusion.
“I see,” he says. “You’re an even worse blackmailer than you are a student.”
He doesn’t sound remotely angry, so I risk a look up. He looks aloofly amused.
“I’m so sorry,” I whisper. “I…probably wouldn’t have gone through with it anyway.” Wow, Beth Newland, Defence Lawyer. “Are you going to…have me…kicked out?”
He regards my pathetic figure with
detached interest for a minute or so. “I should,” he says ruminatively. “But I won’t.”
“Oh,” I gasp, “Thank you.” He holds up a hand before much more incontinent gratitude can gush forth. “You are my project now, Beth Newland. I have made a commitment of time and attention. I need to see if I can follow this experiment through to its conclusion.”