Dirty Old Man (A True Story) by Moll French Page B

hung over the door.
         “You look ravishing tonight,” he said, “In fact, I could ravish you myself.”
    I didn’t quite understand what he meant, but I took it as a compliment anyway.
    I was a little merry that evening and remember almost falling into the bonfire. For the first time in a while, I had begun to enjoy my life.
     
         On Valentine’s Day the following year, I was surprised to receive a card through the post. The handwriting looked exactly like my dad’s, though Bernie had similar handwriting too. They both put that strange line and the end of their ‘s’.
    I was too young to understand the meaning of the card but as an adult; it chills me.
    I t read; ‘Dear Valentine, when I think of you, my heart starts to throb (not to mention certain other parts.)’ My parents thought it was funny and not at all inappropriate.
     
         My dad began to use training as a form of punishment for me. Time after time, I’d be blamed for crimes I hadn’t committed, if I didn’t own up to them; I’d be banned for that week. He said he knew how to ‘get me where it hurts’.
    Then my brother, Alex started training sometime afterwards and he brought his friends along with him. There wasn’t enough room in Bernie’s car for us all so he stopped picking me up and we caught the bus down instead.
    I was concerned Bernie would lose interest in me from then on, so I began to train harder than ever.
    Alex really looked up to Bernie, but it wouldn’t be long before he came of the age where he wanted to go out with his friends and he stopped training. That was when Bernie picked me up and dropped me off again.
     
         On the drive home from class one evening. I told Bernie how I had started to play the keyboard and had been bought one for Christmas.  It was a music lesson that inspired me. We have to compose a piece of music to reflect a poem we had been reading. My music teacher was so impressed with what me and my friend Lindsey had created, that he had us perform it in front of the whole school.
     
         John started to hang around me a lot more at school, and I told him about the classes. It wasn’t long before he brought along his younger brother, and they became regulars too.
    Bernie seemed to snub me for a while afterwards, and I could only assume it was because I’d brought a boy to join up. He’d make the classes difficult for John, and when he’d drop me off after class, he’d tell me that John was holding me back and how I’d never reach my full potential with people like him around me.
    John’s mum took some Tai-Chi classes from Bernie’s friend, Brian. He always mocked Brian and said he was a useless instructor and a hypochondriac. I’d met Brian a few times and though he was a lovely man.
     
         Bernie would ask for my assistance to demonstrate moves in the class and on many occasions he’d apologise because his hands ended up in inappropriate places. He’d also ask me to help him put the equipment away after class in the cupboard in the small room upstairs of the building. I’d often find myself in there alone with him, and he’d play with my hair as I stacked the mats into a pile, or he’d rub his hand up and down my back.
         “You know I’ve been thinking,” he said to me one day as he drove me home, “I play the guitar, I don’t know an awful lot about music but I’m sure with my knowledge I could help you to learn the keyboard better. I used to be in a band during the eighties, and we supported a well known band at the time.”
         “That would be brilliant,” I said, thinking he was warming to me again, “thank you so much.”
         “You’re welcome; you need to ask your parents first though if it’s okay. I wouldn’t tell them that I offered to teach you though; they already think they put on me enough. I wouldn’t want them to think I was trying to replace them as parents.” He joked.
     
         Monday nights had