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We had sex in the staff room and snatched kisses when we could...

as a teenage girl I thought my affair with my geography teacher was an intoxicating adventure. It's only now as a mother I see I was groomed By Shona Sibary Published: 02:06, 19 June 2024 | Updated: 02:06, 19 June 2024 e-mail View comments It began during the final geography lesson of the day: we were revising how glaciers are formed, somewhere in the bit about compression forcing snow to recrystallise into ice. I remember the classroom’s high ceilings and vast, Victorian sash windows and the way the January light was fast fading outside.



We didn’t sit at desks. The tables were arranged in a large square and our small, first year A-level group, sat around the edges, poring over our textbooks, already thinking ahead to the evening — buses home, dinner, friends. Then I felt a foot touch mine.

It wasn’t a brush but a definite nudge. It continued to nudge, circling my own foot in a very decided way, unseen, under the table. I looked up, confused.

I didn’t have a boyfriend or, as far as I knew, any admirer who would want to play surreptitious footsie with me during a geography class. All the boys were looking down at their books. But then our teacher — whom we called by his first name, James (not his real name, obviously) — lifted his head and smiled at me in such a knowing way there was no mistaking the foot belonged to him.

Thirty-seven years later, I still think back to that moment, the flush that c.

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