by Kathryn Montague
Charlotte sighed when she saw the email in her inbox asking all staff to complete a survey for well-being week. She would have clicked delete but she noticed the message said anyone completing the survey would be entered into a prize draw to win £20. She supposed there were about two hundred people working there so the odds weren't too bad. And if the survey were quick, it might be worth it. She ticked the box for 'not applicable' to most of the questions without bothering to read them, then she got to the final box: any suggestions for how the company can improve staff well-being. Charlotte wrote, 'Higher pay, more time off, no more well-being weeks.' Then she clicked submit and returned to her work, forgetting all about the survey.
About a month later, Charlotte received another email about well-being week. This one said that following the results of the staff survey, the company was buying some gym equipment and turning one room into a small gym, which staff could access before and after work and on lunch break. Charlotte scoffed - catch her spending any time in that building that she wasn't paid for - not likely. The email also said that the company was going to employ a lifestyle coach and that everyone would be offered a one-off session to discuss changes they could make for a healthier life. Charlotte scoffed so hard that she accidentally spat coffee over her keyboard and had to hastily try and mop it up with a wad of tissues.
Charlotte had no intention of making an appointment with the lifestyle coach but the company decided not to leave it to chance and, a week later, she got an email from the professional development team, informing her that she was booked in for an hour with the lifestyle coach on the following Friday at 3pm. Charlotte did not want a healthier life and did not want to discuss this with anyone but an hour away from her computer didn't seem too bad an offer, so she made a note of the time and, on the following Friday, at five minutes to three, she logged out of her computer and traipsed upstairs to find the newly appointed gym.
The door stood slightly ajar and Charlotte, politely, tapped on it, and stuck her head round the door. "Hi," she said, nervously. "I'm your 3 o'clock. Charlotte."
The lifestyle coach was seated on one of the two orange plastic chairs that had been put in the room. She was wearing dark grey Lycra leggings, a zip up black fleece, and black trainers. Her dark hair with a few grey strands was cut in a short bob style and tucked behind her ears. She looked up as Charlotte came in and smiled a welcome, her brown eyes warm and friendly. Charlotte gasped and clutched the door handle for support.
"Are you all right?" asked the lifestyle coach, slightly concerned.
Charlotte steadied her feet and her voice. "Miss Kelly?" She gasped in disbelief.
The lifestyle coach looked confused. "I'm Jo Kelly, that's right," she agreed. "But just Jo is fine. You really don't need to say Miss Kelly."
Charlotte tried to speak, failed, took a breath and tried again. "But you were Miss Kelly," she insisted. "You were a student teacher at St Mildred's when I was in the fifth form there. I remember. I remember you."
Jo laughed. "Guilty as charged. I did train as a teacher, and I did do a placement at St Mildred's. Sorry, I'm afraid I don't remember you. I taught for a number of years but then decided I'd rather work with adults. They're a bit more cooperative generally than teenagers. Come and sit down, you're looking a bit shell shocked."
Jo took hold of Charlotte's elbow and led her to the orange plastic chairs and gently pushed her into one of them. "Now," she said, briskly, "we only have an hour so perhaps we should get on with why we're here."
Charlotte gulped and tried to focus on the present. She was at work, in the little room now turned into a gym. She was an adult: she was almost forty! Yet her heart was pounding, and she could picture the large school sports hall, with climbing bars and ropes, and an object called the horse, though it looked nothing like a horse, that she was unable to jump over. Why could she smell teenaged sweat, cheap perfume and rubber soled plimsolls mingled with the faint aroma of stew and mashed potatoes cooking nearby?
She remembered that day. It was a hot June day, nearly at the end of the school year, she was in the fifth form, awkward in her navy blue gym knickers and pale blue aertex shirt, worried that too much movement would make her breasts, which had seemed huge at that time but weren't really, jiggle about under the pale blue shirt. There was the student teacher in charge that day. She was tall, dark haired, young and rather pretty. The girls admired her though she was said to be strict. Still, it was the unwritten rule that you always messed around when there was a student teacher. You bragged that you put them off completing their course. Charlotte had been chatting to her friends and Miss Kelly told her to stop. Bravado in front of her friends meant she'd flicked her ponytail and rolled her eyes, contemptuously. Miss Kelly told her to watch her step.
Recklessly, Charlotte had said, "Watch my step, Miss? What, like this?" And had performed a few mincing dance steps, wiggling her hips provocatively.
Miss Kelly had frowned. "That's quite enough from you, young lady," she'd said. "I'm not taking any cheek from a silly little schoolgirl. Take off your plimsoll and give it to me."
Charlotte realised she'd gone too far but had no idea why she was being asked to take off her plimsoll. She supposed Miss Kelly was going to make her hop round the room as some sort of punishment. She considered asking left or right but the expression on Miss Kelly's face meant she decided it was best to stay silent and just choose. She chose her right plimsoll. She bent down and pulled the elastic topped shoe off and handed it over.
Miss Kelly took the shoe and tapped it against the palm of her hand. "Right, I want you to bend over and touch the floor," she said.
Charlotte was really confused. Why did she have to bend over, with just one shoe on? A stretching exercise before hopping? Although rather embarrassed to bend and have her navy blue knickered bottom on display she was, on the whole, an obedient girl and didn't see how she could refuse, so she bent.
She was completely taken by surprise by what happened next. What happened next was that Miss Kelly smacked Charlotte's plimsoll across the width of Charlotte's proffered bottom. Three times. The rest of the class watching gasped in shock. They knew about corporal punishment. Most of them had had the occasional smacked bottom at home when they were much younger. A few had received or at least seen a ruler to the hands in primary school. They giggled about such things happening at the very posh private boys' school on the other side of town. But no one got smacked on the bottom with a plimsoll at St Mildred's. Definitely not sixteen-year-olds. Not in the enlightened days of 1985.
The gasps of shock from the onlookers hid the shocked "Ow!" from Charlotte when the plimsoll struck her bottom. It hurt. Not screaming agony but the sort of impact you get from slipping and landing hard on the floor and that you expect will leave a bruise. Miss Kelly was a sportswoman with a strong right arm, and she swung the shoe with some force. She told Charlotte to straighten up and put her shoe back on. Charlotte stood up and accepted her plimsoll back with downcast eyes. She bent again to push her foot back into her shoe, trying to avoid the staring faces of her classmates. She didn't want them to see the blush in her usually pale cheeks, nor the tears in her eyes. And she didn't want to meet the gaze of Miss Kelly. Her bottom was tingling and aching under her navy blue gym knickers and she wanted to give it a rub but didn't see how she could in front of everyone. Miss Kelly blew her whistle and started to bark orders, the girls ran round the sports hall, performing star jumps and squats as Miss Kelly shouted out her commands. Charlotte trailed along at the back of the line, copying the girl in front of her, the ringing sound in her head too loud to hear Miss Kelly's voice. No one dared to speak during the rest of the PE lesson but as soon as it was over, and the girls were in the changing room, they clamoured around Charlotte with questions, sympathy, and curiosity.
"Does your bum hurt, Charlotte? Is there a mark? Can you believe Miss Kelly did that? Are you going to tell your mum?"
"Shut up," Charlotte snapped at them all. "I don't want to talk about it."
Charlotte had gone home that afternoon, rushed up to her room and tried to look at her bottom in the mirror. She was disappointed to see that it didn't have any bruise nor even seem to be any pinker than usual. She rubbed a hand across the soft pale skin. Yes, she could still feel the impact of her plimsoll. She'd lain on her bed thinking about what had happened. She felt like she couldn't face Miss Kelly again but at the same time, sort of longed to see her again. She felt embarrassed but she didn't feel angry with Miss Kelly. It wasn't that she felt contrite and thought the slippering was deserved exactly. It was rather hard for her to untangle what it was that she felt. She felt excited but couldn't understand why. She felt like she'd had a tiny taste of something very wonderful and she wanted more.
As she lay on her bed, her hand in her knickers, she thought about cheeking Miss Kelly again, and Miss Kelly this time asking her to wait behind at the end of the lesson and then, with everyone else gone, with just the two of them there, Miss Kelly making her pull her knickers down and smacking her again but on her bare bottom, harder and for longer. Charlotte squeezed her hand between her thighs at the thought. How horribly humiliating for someone else to see her bottom! But somehow it would be thrilling. She went to sleep thinking about Miss Kelly's dark hair cut in its fashionable Princess Diana style. Her warm brown eyes. Her bosom firm in its sports bra under her own aertex shirt.
The next day at school Charlotte felt people were talking about her in the corridors and staring at her bottom. "That's the girl that got slippered. By the student teacher. You know Miss Kelly. Look, does her bum look bigger?" She trembled at the thought of Miss Kelly taking her class for PE again, but she didn't. There were only two weeks left of term and Charlotte had her usual middle-aged, moustachioed PE teacher in that time, and then the end of term came, and Miss Kelly left. Charlotte presumed she'd passed her training and got a job in a school somewhere, but she didn't know where.
Over the years she had often thought about Miss Kelly and wondered what she was doing. Perhaps she'd got a job in a private school and slippered other girls. Charlotte hadn't expected ever to see her again, and yet here she was.
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