Seimon hesitated, but recalling the gossip about Shân he suddenly felt emboldened. ‘I was just imagining being kissed and cuddled by –’ But then he panicked. He couldn’t say boyfriend, not even to her. ‘My lover,’ he mumbled. The word was so alien to him.

‘Well, Seimon Gwyn, who’s a dark horse?’ Shân exclaimed. ‘Tell Auntie Shân some more.’

‘Nothing to tell,’ Sei said, feeling his confidence drain.

‘Oh… come on, Sei. Who is he?’

She said he so matter-of-factly… so naturally, that he felt encouraged to tell her.

‘It’s Dylan,’ he said, savouring the sense of importance it gave him, despite the fact that even in his imaginings his teacher was always Mr Roberts.

‘Dylan Williams… in Year Eleven?’ Shân said with confused curiosity. ‘He’s not gay; he’s going out with Anwen who plays the harp in assembly sometimes.’

‘No… Dylan Roberts, Welsh, French and German,’ Sei said, more boldly than he’d intended.

‘You’re kidding, Sei,’ she said, remembering the workshop they’d had about sexual abuse on the School Councillor training day – and remembering her own fantasy fling with her teacher after her Aldi management trainee had dumped her. ‘Tell me you’re just having me on.’

Feeling too important now to back-track, Seimon embellished his love affair.

On Thursday afternoons, Year Nine had History with Mrs Puw, who was also the School Council link teacher. Shân had begun to like history. Ann Puw offered her classes opportunities to do project work and Shân, with two of her friends, was investigating women’s fashion through the twentieth century – and specifically how women’s clothes reflected women’s roles in society. The three girls had reached the nineteen-seventies and though their research into women’s lib had been fascinating, Shân couldn’t concentrate. She kept looking across the classroom to where Seimon was sitting, and found herself torn between feeling jealous that Sei had got-off with Mr Roberts and her responsibility as a School Councillor to report the sexual abuse to Mrs Puw. She kept remembering that the man who’d come to the School Council from the Children’s Commissioner’s office had emphasised that all children and young people had rights, but with rights there were responsibilities. At the end of the lesson she told Mrs Puw about Seimon and Mr Roberts and felt proud that she’d lived up to her responsibility.

Eleri Clwyd, the head teacher, spoke with a clarity and calmness that belied the nauseating clench of her stomach. Dylan was suddenly choking on the room’s stuffiness and the abhorrence of the allegation against him. His union representative, a woman in her fifties with too much make-up and dark-rooted platinum hair that made her look tarty, reached across to touch his shoulder. She offered a faint smile of reassurance.

‘You’ll be suspended without prejudice pending further investigations,’ Eleri Clwyd said.