I say.
When he eventually looks up there is something in his gaze, as though he’s weighing his words carefully. I wait, breath held for some reason. ‘Where was your favourite part?’
I narrow my eyes. His ability to clam up on me is utterly infuriating. ‘I couldn’t say.’
‘Try.’
‘I loved Sydney,’ I say finally.
He nods and sips his wine.
‘You didn’t come to my office yesterday.’
I am jerked from our conversation into another river, the current moving in a wholly new direction and at an altered speed. ‘Was I meant to?’
‘Yes.’ His nod is slow, thoughtful. ‘To discuss the group assignment.’
It dawns on me then that he mentioned something about this on Thursday afternoon. ‘I presumed that was just a pretext to get up close and personal so you could slip me the hotel key?’
He shakes his head. ‘I really did want to talk to you.’
‘Oh. What about?’
His eyes meet mine and there is renewed speculation in them. ‘How many students were in your group?’
‘Five. You have the list, right?’
‘Yet you, and you alone, wrote the assignment.’
I blink at him, confused by his insight. He’s right, but he has no way of knowing that. ‘It’s a group assignment,’ I demur. ‘We all played our part.’
He expels a sigh. ‘You can’t let people take advantage of you like this. You’re starting your career. You’re very smart. If you’re not careful, you’ll crumble under the pressure of what becomes the norm for people to expect of you.’
‘No one took advantage of me.’
‘But you wrote the whole thing. Fifteen thousand words.’
I don’t answer at first. I reach for another cannelloni then realise I’ve stuffed them all. I lay the piping bag down without meeting his eyes. ‘It was a team effort.’
‘You have a certain style to your phrasing. A logic that is uniquely your own. This paper might as well have been a fifteen-thousand-word autograph, Miss Amorelli.’
I am flattered.
I should be more defensive, more outraged, more protective of my groupmates. But his intuitive familiarity with my writing sparks something in my chest. Pride, relief, gladness. They all tumble through me, making me smile.
‘It’s not funny. I’m annoyed at you.’
I laugh. ‘Why?’
‘Because you can’t let people walk all over you.’
‘I assure you, I didn’t.’ I bat my eyelids at him. ‘What did you grade the assignment?’
‘I’m giving you a high mark,’ he says. ‘But I’m severing you from your group. They’ll fail unless they can show me detailed research notes proving their involvement.’
All amusement drops from my face. ‘You’re kidding?’
‘No, Olivia. This is your final year. They can’t skate by on your hard work. I can’t let them.’
‘No one’s... Oh, God, Connor, please don’t do that.’ I move around to his side of the bench with urgency. ‘It was my idea for me to do the damned thing. Our schedules were so chaotic and we could barely get together. It was a topic I was comfortable with—so similar to a research piece I did last year. You can’t fail them. Please.’
I hover in front of him, my arms lifting around his neck of their own volition.
‘Are you actually standing between my legs, asking me to change grades for you?’
‘Not my grade,’ I mutter, knowing that I’ve moved into ethically questionable territory. ‘Theirs.’ My cheeks drain of colour. ‘Or fail me, too. Don’t sever me. Say you suspect it wasn’t a proper group effort and fail us all—let us resubmit in a month. Please.’
‘Jesus, Olivia, it doesn’t work like that. How many group assignments have you done at the LLS?’
‘I don’t know. Ten, maybe eleven.’
‘Enough to know that the approach is in the name. Nothing’s easy about group assignments. Everyone knows that. It’s preparation for the real world. Do you think I liked having to rely on other people? People who didn’t have my understanding of the law or motivation to work my arse off? It’s the worst. You suck it up. That’s as important as the content of the assignment.’
His lecture is striking every chord in my body and, absurdly, tears fill my eyes. Tears which catch us both off guard. ‘Let’s talk about it at school on Monday,’ he says gently.
‘No.’ My heart is twisting painfully. ‘I can’t... I can’t... This is not good.’ I move away from him, back into the kitchen. I sip my wine and then turn away from him, staring out of the window at the view I have of a brick wall, sprayed liberally with bright graffiti. It is a fascinating contrast—jagged and sharp, somehow beautiful, too.
There is loveliness in the defacement. Hope in the ruins.
* * *
Olivia’s shoulders shift gently. Her back is to me but I know she’s fighting tears and my organs squeeze up, tightening in my body, hard.
There is a reason these relationships are prohibited. There’s the inherent power mismatch that comes from sleeping with someone over whom you hold a position of strength. There’s a loss of perspective that makes it impossible to carry out your normal functioning.
And this is a perfect example of that.
Would I have even noticed that the group assignment was all Olivia’s handiwork if her words hadn’t drifted into my brain and filled it with her voice? If I hadn’t learned, intimately, how she views life and crime, and how she expresses those views?
And if I hadn’t learned how her beautiful brain works, I wouldn’t have picked this up. And even if I had somehow miraculously guessed that this assignment reflected only Olivia’s work, would I have cared if we weren’t sleeping together?
Would I have bothered to bring it up?
Or would I have laughed at the predicament she found herself in—so much brighter and more motivated than the classmates she’d been grouped with?
Relationships like this, teachers and students, are banned on so many levels. They are problematic in myriad ways. Could someone in my role offer better grades in exchange for sex? Teachers have done it in the past. There was a famous case at another prestigious law school about ten years ago where a professor did just that. She slept with around a dozen students—that went public—male and female. She upped their grades in the initial infatuation period and then burned them once they broke up.
There is an imbalance of power between us. I’m ten years older than she is and in terms of life experience it may as well be twenty. I have accumulated a fat fortune, garnered professional success, and I’m her teacher. And now I’m bringing grades into the equation.
Her shoulders move and I know now she is actually crying. I’m frozen to the spot, my gut twisting painfully.
Why do I even care about the damned group assignment? I’m only lecturing for the summer term. I’m not invested in the school; I’m not really a part of the faculty. Surely I can let this slide? Olivia deserves a distinction. Any other teacher would have awarded the group the mark without questioning it.
So aren’t I the one in the wrong? Because I’m applying knowledge I’ve gained only by virtue of the fact that we have a completely prohibited sexual relationship?
‘Don’t