I had to re-submit this – the formatting was to cock. Please ignore the other one.

What follows happened – about three hours ago. I have changed the lady’s name, but should anyone who knows either of us read this, the game – as they say – is probably up.I teach EFL at a number of companies here (‘here’ will be obvious if you’ve read “Oh, Canada!”) – have been doing so for thirteen years – and have had several hundred students in that time. Until today I have never had anything more than fantasies about a few of them………



At the turn of the year I started a one-to-one course with Sara, a thirty-something lady with reasonable English skills who just wanted brush-up English. Turns out I have spent more time consoling her – in a very professional, hands-off manner – over work and domestic problems than I have teaching her English. The hands-off behaviour is because a) she is married and b) I need the work. She has a nice without being knock-out body and is reasonably attractive without being beautiful, but there’s always been “something” about her, and more than once she has been the object of my fantasies after our lessons. She has on several occasions said how nice I am, how well I treat her, and how she loves my “proper” English accent, but I have done nothing whatsoever to encourage her.

This morning she passed the meeting room I use as my classroom while I was in between lessons, poked her head in and said “hi”. I knew it was a mistake, but I asked how things were, and she took that as an invitation to come in and regale me with a(nother) tale of woe – she was due to get a written warning this afternoon at 2. She’s a bit of a troublemaker at work – can’t keep her nose out of other people’s issues – so it wasn’t really a surprise that it was coming to this, but she did look upset so I made sympathetic, “how awful”, “I’m sorry”, noises and said I would be thinking of her. My next student came in at that point and Sara left.

2:30 rolled round, the last group departed, and two minutes later, as I was shutting down the PC and dismantling the projector, I realised someone was in the room.