Tamper

Chapter 1

The night before his first day teaching at McEllan Academy, Liam tossed and turned beside his wife, Sophia, as he thought about the upcoming day and the teaching job she had more likely than not procured for him. She had taken her pills – the temazepam, her doctor, a close family friend, prescribed – before sinking into a graceful sleep. It was a combination of the temazepam plus the sedative Liam had crushed into her wine, which had rendered her immobile and unconscious beside him.

They had met five years ago at a high end French restaurant where Liam had been waiting part-time while completing his Bachelor's degree in Education and for some absurd reason, she had decided she wanted him. Being the only daughter of Stephen Smith meant she often got what she wanted.

He had resisted and had been honest with her - he wasn't looking for a serious relationship, but Sophia persisted. She made sure the restaurant owner, a mate of her father's, gave Liam better shifts and a promotion to restaurant manager when the old manager failed to show up to work one day. And because saying 'no' to Sophia was unpleasant, Liam succumbed and took her out for a date.

She was exquisite. Her skin was pale, she had expressive green-eyes, long, luxurious dark hair, and her lips were always painted crimson to match her long nails. She spoke three languages, had travelled a great deal, and had been raised in an estate ten times larger than the council house he had grew up in. She was sophisticated, confident in the way wealthy people were, fun in the way that they normally weren't. At the end of that first date, Liam drove her to her flat and she insisted he come up with her.

"Have a night cap with me, Liam," she had said, tongue skimming her plump lips. Knowing it was futile to say no to Sophia Smith, Liam let himself be led to through the flat's entrance and through the hotel style lobby. In the lift, she shoved him against the wall and kissed him hard, claiming him with her mouth. The lift reached her floor and they walked out hand-in-hand. A thought had come over him as they stood at the precipice; this wasn't going to end well. Sophia was everything he should want, but he didn't. Things would work so much better if he wiped her red lipstick from his lips and returned to his rundown car and to his even more rundown flat. Seeming to be in slow motion, Sophia opened the door casting a flirtatious glance over one bare shoulder while she sauntered inside, kicking off her stilettos and throwing them aside.

Liam stood at the door, watching her. She reached for the zipper on the side of her dress and pulled it down, the black dress falling off, leaving her in her lacy bra and panties. She kicked the dress aside, threw him a smouldering look, and said, "Find me in the bedroom."

Liam walked in, pulling at his tie with one hand as he slammed the door behind him with the heel of his foot. And, with that simple step, he was hers.

***

Liam hadn't completed his Post-Graduate Certificate in Education – he had dropped out a few credit short to marry Sophia. He'd barely passed the college entrance exam and the exam results he obtained during his undergraduate years were consistently below average. This made him an unlikely candidate to be recruited to teach at one of the most prestigious public schools in the country. He knew he never would had made the candidate long list if it weren't for Sophia's connections.

In fact, wasn't a good candidate to be teaching at all. That was one of the many things that Sophia didn't know about him. He'd given her scraps about his childhood over the years. His family life in the housing estate, the friends he had had, and the schools he had attended. Just enough for her to have a vague idea of his early life, to draw an outline of a sketch. If she ever thought hard enough she'd realise that the features were blurry, maybe even unrecognisable as his. She never did.