“OK, class. Against my better judgement, you win. ’A Big Surprise’ it is.”

The teacher had got what he deserved - he’d invited the class to give him the title for their story. Now he was lumbered with it. But they were a bright lot. He’d steer them away from those television drama clichés with their tedious red-herrings.

“Remember, if you want to write something that’ll engage your reader, start with a setting and main character your reader can easily imagine. Go for something familiar - both the where and the who. Any questions?”

“So who’s gonna be our reader, then, sir?”

“Good question, Sharon. Who’s our audience, class? Who are we writing for?”

“What about writing for us, sir?” This from Sanjib.

“You lot? Who’d bother writing anything for you? You’ve probably never opened a proper book in your lives, just these graffiti-covered kids’ ones in the English classroom!”

Howls of mock protest erupted. 

“OK.  OK then. Let’s say it’s for a bunch of young’uns, like yourselves. So no bad language, violence or explicit sexual content.”

More laughter.

“ But our audience is you really, sir. I mean you, or someone like you, will be marking the exams.”

“Yes, Oliver. You’re right. Absolutely.”

The teacher looked over his class and felt a surge of, well, pride. They were on their way now, after a bit of a struggle. Well, in truth, quite a struggle. They were enjoying his lessons, at last. And this should be a good one - narrative writing. He’d done all the other stuff: the expositional, the argumentative, the persuasive, the discursive  … bla … bla … now for the fun bit. 

“Let’s skip the teacher modelling part and just have a ten minute share-write to check we’re all clear about the task, before I set you off on your own.”

“Can’t we just get on with it, sir?” 

“ No we can’t, Simon. The Ofsted people don’t like us doing that any more.” 

“Right then, sir. May I suggest the setting is a classroom, like this one. Everyone knows what that’s like.”

“OK, Simon …start us off.”

Theatrically, Simon closed his eyes and held up his hands, fingers delicately waving in the air. With mock artistic intensity, he began: “It is an ordinary day at St Barnabas’ Comprehensive and the English teacher …”

His teacher typed the words as Simon spoke. They appeared crisp and correctly spelt on the interactive whiteboard. “You might give the poor teacher a couple of adjectives. What about ‘ … the devastatingly handsome and incredibly intelligent young English teacher …?’ ”  

Another communal snort of laughter.

“No, sir. That’d be too hard for us to imagine.” This from Jane, flashing those dark brown, teasing eyes from under her auburn-red fringe. How about “… the rapidly-ageing, over-worked English teacher drones on about something or other … ?”

“I don’t like ‘something or other’ but ‘drones on’ is good. Carry on … Yes Oliver?”

Now it was Oliver who continued: “… drones on about how to write a surprise story. Though tired from those long nights and weekends of marking, the thirty-year-old teacher looks indulgently, perhaps patronisingly, at his class of sixteen-year-olds. They gaze back - some with slight smiles on their faces, enjoying that shared magic, that shared joy of learning; some with brows furrowed and eyes pulled narrow as if to better absorb the lesson; some with minds away, afloat, imagining that special boy or that special girl who they hope holds, for them, that same desire, that desire that makes them sweaty and sleepless in their lonely beds each night …”

The class has become silent, thoughtful.

 “Yes! Wow! You/ve brought in romantic interest. Just right for your young readers, Olly. Well done!” The teacher was particularly pleased with Oliver. The progress that lad had made recently. So assured. So mature. He’d become the dark-haired, handsome heart-throb of the class. 

Oliver continued.   “… But the teacher’s mind is now made to remember how he left his beautiful young wife this morning in their bedroom. She told him not to wait up for her tonight. When he’d said “Not another girls’ night out?” she’d replied , “Oh stop being so …. clingy. You’ll only be marking again. But what he hadn’t seen, after he’d closed the bedroom door, was how she clutched at her pillow, embracing it, gasping in the searing agony of longing, writhing naked on their John Lewis floral bedspread, imagining her dark youthful lover in her bed again. Oh! how she longed for tonight and to be with him!"

The teacher stared, open-mouthed, at Oliver. “How did you know about our John Lew…”

Oliver smirked back at his teacher and winked. “I s’pose this will have come as a bit of a surprise for you then, sir.”