The One With The Teacher.

THE endless rumble of wheat trucks shook the small cottage just outside the town limits as they made their way into the big brick silos in the centre of town ready to unload.

It was the continuous cycle of summer in a small Western NSW town as the wheat ears, golden and ripe, were cut down by the huge Combine Harvesters, poured like golden rain into the waiting trucks and then driven into the small town to be stored in the silos while the trucks returned back to the farms for more.

But for once I didn't care.

I didn't care about anything.

My golden fields of wheat were just stubble now for my sheep to work through, my kids had taken the school bus home and were at their grandparents for an early dinner and two weeks driving in endless circles in an air-conditioned cabin were over for me for another year (or at least until I had to start planting our Autumn feed and then summer crops).

Just for a few hours there were no lunches or dinners to make, animals to feed, fences to mend or eggs to collect. No homework, no finances to work out or crops to manage and no meetings to attend.

Yes for once I didn't have to be anywhere.

And so I was nowhere.

Nowhere in this small corrugated iron shack on the edge of town, decadently for 5pm in the afternoon, I was in a big old bed, with just a sheet covering me, watching the ceiling fan lazily swish air around the room.

The wheat trucks were rumbling past, rocking my world but not as much as the man next to me, wearing nothing but a lazy contented smile, had just done.

Not my husband, but my daughters' English teacher, he had left me feeling relaxed, happy and well catered for with no guilt and no remorse.

I still can't quite work out how I got here next to this beautiful, blonde man with his rich brown eyes and intelligent mind but as I come down off a high that was the best sex I'd had in two years – hell the only sex I'd had in that time, I didn't care.

I didn't even care that Barb across the road might have seen Ken and I walk into his house. We were here to go over the last minute details of the school presentation evening and performance tomorrow in the town's hall. Ken's last hurrah before he returned home, he was determined to go out on a high well as high as you could with a student body of 150 from Kindergarten to Year 12 performing in the hall that air conditioning forgot in 30 degree heat.

But then Liandra only had a population 180 in town with a further 400 tucked away out on farms. We were tiny, beyond tiny now – the town had just a pub, small supermarket, a cafe run by the local community, a stock, real estate and farm goods depot, a garage, the little CWA (Country Women's Association) handicraft store, a pool, a bowls club, a post office/shop and Mrs Johnson still did haircuts, perms and styles in a small room out the back of her Main Street house every afternoon Wednesday to Friday. The town's banks had closed in the 90s and it looked like Liandra would die with them but somehow, god knows how, we were holding on.

We were pretty, the town I mean, I suppose and we attracted enough tourists to survive with our Federation architecture and the big line of Peppercorn trees running down the main street (where there were more people living than operating shops). Liandra had once been a bustling little town but not anymore.

The only time the town looked close to busy these days was our huge annual B&S Ball, Anzac day, Sunday afternoons in footy season when the team was playing at home or when the school or the dramatics society did anything in the hall.

Oh and maybe the CWA flower show – though numbers were dwindling there thanks to three years of drought.

Into this tiny farming community 10 months ago on exchange from the UK came Ken – Kenneth Charles Brannagh – well educated and insanely intelligent. A drama teacher and former English master at one of the exclusive schools in the UK. When our English teacher, Matt who had come straight out of teachers college 30 years ago to teach here said he was going to the UK through an exchange program we expected a bored Brit from Inner City London out to escape cramped city living with little to offer our kids.

What we got was Ken.

Ken and his love of theatre, movies and Shakespeare; Ken who could recite the greats of poetry both Great Britain and Australian like a professional actor, the same Ken who was taking my heart with him when he flew home next week – I knew that now as I lay here smiling at him tracing lazy circles on his body.

Escaping and broken from a messy divorce, looking for somewhere quiet to lick his wounds, work on his novel and work with kids who were smart, interested and wanted to learn, he'd enquired about exchanges and had been all set to swap one exclusive boys school in the UK for another here until he saw Matt's ad and changed his mind.

And here he was.

In bed with me.

In Matt and Alison's house.

In our school – teaching our kids – kids who want to learn – well most of them.

Well mine do. Ferdi is 13 and the top of his class in everything but particularly English now in his first year at high school after struggling in primary (which for us means moving from one set of buildings across the school to another set). Miranda is 16 and until Ken came to town she wasn't sure what she should be. I knew, I'd always known, but her accountant father, my cheating ex Darryl, and her farm-bound misogynistic paternal grandfather had always said acting wasn't a real profession; now she's headed to Sydney over the holidays to complete a few acting programs and it was all thanks to Ken.

Ken who'd been jaded when he'd first arrived but somehow had come alive in our cultural desert our middle of nowhere NSW, Ken who'd helped me breath life back into the local dramatic society – I finally got my wish to do the Tempest this year. Who helped me start a book club. Ken who had realised my kids weren't named for supermodels or footballers but for Shakespearian characters, Ken who we'd met up with regularly at the pictures in the bigger Mora (population 4,000 last census) or the theatre in Wagga Wagga – the big smoke in our part of the world population 62,000 and still growing. In the end he'd just started coming with me and the kids to events. Yeah the gossips talked but let them – nothing was happening – we both needed a friend, a kindred spirit and we'd found one. Nothing could happen, there would be no great romance – he was always going home in December and I was always staying here. But it was nice to have someone to talk literature and theatre with again, to talk to about our novels together, to bounce ideas with.

I'd given up a lot to come home here, here where I'd never intended to raise my children. My brother's suicide changed all that – brought Darryl and I home to help dad with the farm and with my brother's wife and kids (though Darryl was as useful as tits on a bull despite growing up on the farm down the road). I was working at the State Library, had stints overseas and was preparing my first novel for print when it happened. My dad was devastated – finding your only son lost to his own hand will do that to you. We had clung to one another, desperately needing to reconnect, to make sense but you can't make sense you can only get on with life, with living. And slowly but surely we did – we have – but not without casualties Darryl – desperate to come home before – found it boring, found me boring, found Sarah his secretary in Mora far more interesting (yeah I know it's cliché but Darryl is, was and will ever be a walking cliché and I'm better off without him particularly at this moment glowing with a sheen of sweat in Ken's bed).

So here I was, building a life in Liandra, a single mother, a farmer, a writer, building a life for me and my kids.

Until Ken.

But that doesn't explain our little afternoon delight, our tumble in the hay our fumble in the sheets does it?

We hadn't even kissed before today. We were friends, we are friends, multiple orgasms withstanding.

Sure there had been smiles and flirting, he'd pushed my wild ginger hair off my face more than once. But nothing like this. Maybe it's because he's going, my lifeline to the outside world, the world outside Liandra population 200 on a good day was going home and leaving me. Maybe it's because I watched the new science teacher, the school secretary and at least two of the other mothers flirt with him today.

Maybe it's the heat, loneliness, lust or maybe this is just what we both needed.

Well he had said he wanted to go out with a bang.

Though I thought he meant the small scene we were putting together from Midsummer Night's Dream tomorrow night.

The scene had to be small – sandwiched, as it was between the Principals address and the last of the awards. It would be a big night – a long night, a hot night and not in the way I'd just had a hot afternoon. We still had some of the finer details to work out before tomorrow night – Miranda was starring in the piece and I had somehow with a little help from my sister-in-law, managed to finish off the costumes. We'd had a late meeting after school – the whole group but we had further to discuss and I wanted to show him the costumes, there's no restaurant in Liandra – the bowls club does food on Saturday night, the pub on Thursday and Friday – tonight was Wednesday. My house is 20 minutes out of town and the wind was picking up – there was a dust storm on its way, so we came to Ken's. It's not like we hadn't done that before, I'd been here a lot. Though usually with the kids or other friends. Once or twice on my own but this had never happened.

We'd had the odd wine and flirted sure – both here and at my place – he'd even slept in the spare room out on the farm (less prying eyes to speculate out there) but today it had bubbled over. We'd been standing in the farm kitchen with its odd eclectic mix of 1930s woodstove and expensive modern gas cooker, looking at the costumes when the storm hit and the world outside turned red and eerie. We were safe, wet towels at doorways and windows closed, nothing to do but ride it out. Our hands had touched and then our eyes met – green to brown – and then in the heat of the barely air-conditioned kitchen with the wind rocking the house and whipping up the Martian landscape outside, our lips touched.

And if anyone tells you that you can't have that fiery, I want you now passion once you reach 40 or 50 – I'm here to tell you they're lying. Clothes were dropped and words were said our words not something that we need to share – not even with my sister-in-law Jo who's been encouraging me to do this- especially not Jo! By the time we got through the lounge room to the bedroom door we were naked and I was weirdly comfortable with that, with having my stretch marks and wrinkles on display, actually if I'm honest neither of us had time to have those insecurities that come with age. He scooped me up; he's pretty fit for a man in his 50s with a desk job, and a few steps in to the room he'd thrown me on the bed. And with a predatory smile from him and a come hither from me, we'd made ourselves very sweaty and very happy.

And here we were now.

"No regrets?" he asks his fingers tracing lightly around my areola until my nipple hardened again. I sighed and stretched my arms out luxuriously above my head.

"None - you?"

"Only that we didn't do this sooner," he smiled.

"We weren't ready, " I sighed.

"Probably not," he said propping himself up on one elbow, pressing his body along my side.

"It was worth the wait though," he said seductively. "Mmmm," I said into his lips as he kissed me again.

"Definitely worth the wait."

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