Chapter 1
-Eve-
For a long time now, Eve had been living predominately through the eyes of her students. They were further from age than anyone else she knew, but they were friends all the same. At universities like this one, it was quite natural for teachers to form friendships with their pupils. At least, she told herself that. All of them were extremely talented, intelligent, easy going, friendly. Everything Eve had been; emphasis on the past tense. Now, she didnt know quite what or who she was. She was, like many people, still trying to find her purpose and her place in life. Yet, pushing 50, it felt to her like her time for that had been running out.
In simple terms, she was an art professor. A good one, with knowledge in all areas, an advanced mind, and a strong yet fastly fading talent for painting. She hadn't painted for a long while now; not since a year after her separation from her ex husband, in which she had expressed every emotion she could on the canvas with a severity, unlike any abstract, white male bullshit they called art these days. She found it practically laughable that throughout history all men had to do was have a wet dream and a steady hand to create masterpieces. Maybe that was the reason she had grown so discontent with her life, and her artwork. Even today, it was hard to be an American English woman of South Korean descent in the art world. Selling a few canvases here and there was hardly a career. It was why, eventually, the brushes stopped stroking.
A divorced middle aged woman, pansexual, though it wasn't like anyone knew or cared. In fact, she didn't try to hide it, nor exactly express it; even most of her students didn't know, and she knew that at least a good three quarters of them identified as fluent in their sexuality or gender. Oh, how times had changed for the better from her day.
Cigarettes. She was a serial smoker. In fact, she held one in between her fingers and thumb now, rolling it in contemplation before putting it to her lips. She remembered the first time she ever had one, the addiction of it, the bitterness. It represented the feelings of a heartbreak a long time ago now, and unfortunately the habit had left her going through 20 a day at least. Wasting away. That was how her students put it. She supposed she learned from them just as much as they did from her, though like them, she didn't exactly heed the advice given.
Alcoholic. Those words were a disgust to say on her tongue. She knew she enjoyed a drink, she didn't think she was worthy of that particular title with which her students and her ex-husband had granted her. Oh, how he liked to call her that; Eve had been as normal as anyone in her drinking habits, yet Niko took it as a complete deterioration of mental stability. Well, he was a maths teacher, so he probably knew the odds of her dying from it. Yet, she could still hear his words, often calling her psychopathic, obssessed, macabre. Eve liked to remind herself that she ever rarely got so drunk that she couldn't teach a class. Yet, she'd be lying to herself if she hadn't noticed her students picking up on the fact her coffee mug often had a rich bourbon in it instead of an americano.
Vegan. Ah, that was the last word she used to describe herself, or how others would perceive her at least. This word she was proud of, the only redeemable quality she had amongst all of the greyness. Again, she switched lifestyle early on in her life, even before her divorce. It was one of the few things that hadn't changed from the whole messed up ordeal.
She gazed lazily at the papers in front of her, her eyes moving quickly from one sentence to the other, her cigarette quivering between her lips. They were interesting. Everything her students wrote was so modern and profound nowadays. What she'd have given to have written like that back in her college days. Yet, with most things, she had a lack of patience that sometimes greatly affected her ability to work, think, even sleep. Something caught her, however, at the corner of her eye. A sheet of paper at the bottom of the pile, poking out beneath the essays. Eve slipped it out, her eyebrows creasing in confusion. She didn't think she'd seen it before, so it was likely the dean had left it on her desk whilst she had been away from her office.
She held it up to her eyes, studying the information. It was a schedule, naming her three periods of free time on Mondays, Tuesdays and Fridays after her students had left (the time in which she spent marking work before she got home) now suddenly filled up with a name she did not recognise. Lesley A. Open University.
Upon reading the words, she let out a sigh, an exhilaratingly stressed 'for fuck's sake', and leaned back in her chair in frustration. The timing for this sort of thing, to privately tutor someone in the arts, was way off. 'Lesley A.' had come 10 years too late.
No one had told her about this. She perused the paper, finding a start date. Tomorrow. She took a last long drag on her cigarette, stubbing it on her desk and then flicking it away, unobserving where it landed. Tomorrow she had to spend the only free time she had teaching some 20 something how to fucking paint. It was unbelievable, not least because she had had no notice of it and hadn't even been able to oppose the post.
Bounding up from her chair, she held the letter almost balled up in her fist and strode out the door. Speed walking angrily to the dean's office, she suddenly spotted her walking down the main entrance stairs, about to leave. Eve quickly jogged after her, appearing alongside her as she walked down the steps.
'Eve. I'm just going home. Can this wait until tomorrow?'
'No, it bloody can't actually, because this Lesley person who I'm supposed to be tutoring arrives tomorrow. I wasn't aware of this, I had no notice of it.'
The dean sighed unapologetically, 'it was a late admission. All the tutors had already been taken with Open University students and her schedule fit perfectly, entirely around your own.'
'I don't want to do it. I'm not doing it. I can't.'
'You're her assigned tutor. You can't get out of it now, it's too late.'
'Yes, of course it's too late! I didn't even know I'd be doing it until five minutes ago!'
The dean stopped on the bottom steps, turning to face her seriously.
'Stop being unprofessional, act like an adult for once, Eve. The whole universe doesn't revolve solely around you.'
With that, she left, striding towards the door.
'I haven't even got the time anymore!'
'You've been saying that for the last five years.' She called, refusing to look back at Eve as she walked outside and disappeared.
Eve threw her hands up to her hair, turning round in a circle in frustration. She struck two fingers up offensively in the dean's wake, then eyed the receptionist staring at her. Walking back up the stairs in a huff, she rushed back to her office, immediately going to the wall with a small Gluck painting over it. Pulling it aside from it's hook, she reached inside the cubby hole for the hidden bottle of Jim Beam, only a quarter full. She sighed in despair at the little she had left, nevertheless pouring out a generous double into her 'coffee' mug. She slumped back down in her chair, this time completely neglecting the unmarked pile, instead staring gloomily into the corner of the room, sipping her drink with all the antipathy of a defeated poet, depressed by a lack of invention for a final line.
Suddenly, a knock was heard on the door, and after hastily burning her throat with drinking the rest, croaked a feeble 'come in!'
One of her friendliest students, a long-haired boy of 21, strolled in with all the comfort of walking into his own living room.
'Hey, Professor.' He sat down opposite her desk with a flourish, a preppy smile on his face.
'Hi, Kamil.' She answered, injecting her tone with as much liveliness as she could, 'are you alright?'
'I'm good, thanks. I just wanted to run past you some additions to my essay. And my current artwork.'
She smiled, taking her glasses off. This is what she would be missing each week if she had to teach this woman.
This was what she liked most; helping, interacting with her students when they needed it.
Her students, excepting her cat, were all she had.
-Villanelle-
Today was the day.
When she had initially applied for the course, she had done so with all the last minute panic as purchasing a costly impulse buy. It was done quickly, secretly, emails and letters come through the post all hidden, all for herself. Villanelle sometimes wondered if her husband would react well to her wanting to go back to school, but she wanted this to be all for herself; since they had gotten married, five long years ago, everything had been shared. It was like baring your soul to another person every day of your life, even when you wished not to. And anyway, what did she have to lose?
She was 27, and what did she have? A husband who had quickly bored her within the first few years of their marriage, a few GCSE's that she had now long forgotten the content of, and spare time. Oh, how she had spare time.
Villanelle was surprised enough that they had given her as many as three private lessons a week for a total of thirty minutes each day, though she was naturally envious that normally enrolled students spent their whole week there. And although she had heaps of spare time, there was her job for the first few hours of the morning to attend to.
She looked at herself in the mirror, adjusting the fit of her white blouse, pulling it down, then up, then hiding her cleavage, then letting it open again. She tugged at her ponytail, cleaning up her appearance as much as she could. Villanelle put her hands on her hips, just staring at the vision she saw before her. Thinner than she wanted, thinner than her husband wanted. He wanted her stomach swollen, filled with life. She couldn't do it, she had told him that much. Besides, she wanted to indulge in her creative side, learn a little before she had children. If she ever did, anyway. Sometimes the very thought repulsed her. Very often, her husband told her how ridiculous that sounded.
So, along with applying for art lessons, she had also thought about how she would exact a little distance upon her husband. Maybe even a lot of it. Maybe, just maybe, Villanelle would take up the courage to leave him. Desperate to seek a thrill, some excitement for once. Yearning for the touch of another, one that was foreign to his own wandering hands.
Somehow, she never had any suspicions of people, she took them all so infuriatingly at their word. It was how she had ended up so many times in the wrong beds, the wrong houses, the wrong streets. Even the wrong countries. Her husband was Russian, and many times had she been there to see his family; she had even learned the language. That gave her hope, that did; the knowledge that she could learn something new again. But her gullibleness was sometimes her greatest weakness of character; it was how she had married him in the first place, promised a life with him that she no longer wanted, nor could fulfil. She hoped that this could be the start of a new one, for her. Her idea had been completely that, you learn, you educate, you better yourself; then you start living. She was confident she would do this better the second time round.
Collecting her bag, Villanelle was soon walking away from her house and down the streets. Fortunately, it was only a 15 minute walk. If she'd have had to have used transport she could never have gotten away with this; her husband would have seen the transactions.
As she walked, she daydreamed again, as was common for her to do. Many times her friends had said she could zone out and daydream for all of England. In these thoughts alone, however, she was happiest; and in them all her private desires could jump alive. There, she spent the walk thinking about her new education, the benefits it could grant her. Because secretly, Villanelle had an ulterior motive when it came to her new venture; she hoped to learn, to mix with a higher echelon of society, and perhaps fall in love. And not with a man.
She could swear that women treated women differently than men; better. In her dreams as in her waking life, she felt the irresistible need to be understood, sympathised, cared for by a woman. Even if they were to simply listen to her words, her story. A repressed, more secretly hidden part of her longed to experience a woman fully. What they would say to her whilst she was laying languidly over them, what they would taste like. How would they feel against her own feminine form? She thought about a woman's touch at least twice a day. No, maybe it was four.
And suddenly, just like that, she had stumbled upon the gates of the university, the tall interconnected buildings, round rotunda's no doubt filled with students and books and irreplaceable knowledge. She gulped anxiously, her hands now grappling nervously with the gates as she made her way up the neat paths, flanked by long patches of green.
Villanelle had gotten to the reception, stammering out her name, and was immediately directed up the stairs and down a long corridor, flicking her eyes back down to her schedule for the room number, and at the plaques on the doors.
Finally, at the end of the hall she found the correct number, affirming it with the words 'Prof. Polastri' on the door.
She pushed through the door a little harder than she expected. She flew through the gap, catching herself just before she could embarrass herself further. She smoothed herself down. From across the room, a head looked up from her book directly at her.
'Sorry-sorry about that.' She started, looking from the door, to adjusting her clothes, to the woman again.
'What's your name?' She asked, coming from around her desk to lean on the front of it, arms crossed.
'Villanelle.' She answered confidently.
The woman smirked as if she disbelieved her.
'Then you've come to the wrong place. I'm teaching a Lesley.'
'Oh, it's-it's my real name. I call myself Villanelle.'
'Ironic.'
'Hmm? How so?'
'You have come to a place to discover yourself and yet you use a completely different name.'
Villanelle already felt out of her depth. She huffed, 'Well, what's yours? I assume you're Professor Polastri.'
'Yes, Eve Polastri. Why do you look so surprised?'
'Oh, I just...' she looked around nervously, licking her lips as she answered, 'assumed you were a man.'
'And I assumed you were Lesley.' She said, completely outwitting her with a raise of an eyebrow.
Her first impression of her was 'intimidating.'