When the drama department had announced that they were to put on a show, Tom realised that it was undoubtedly a bad idea. The last school play had resulted in all kinds of calamities, most notably, he felt, leading up to the revelation that the headteacher at the time was, in fact, a former prostitute. Frankly, he felt that he couldn't take that kind of information about Michael.

That was the day he had announced that he would be having no part in the proceedings. Nicki had called him a spoilsport, although she admitted that the prospect of Grantly wearing a pair of tights and being cast in the production of Romeo and Juliet troubled her greatly. But when the only drama teacher foolish enough to work at Waterloo Road resigned about two months into rehearsals, Tom somehow found himself chucked in at the deep end and setting about heading up the entire production, co-directing with Nicki.

This was how he came to find himself sat in his classroom, buried in a pile of sheets relating to productions of Romeo and Juliet, while his ever-helpful co-director was sat on the floor devouring a packet of Love Hearts and flicking through a copy of Heat she'd confiscated from a pupil earlier.

"Nicki, could you by any chance make some attempt at helping?" he asked despairingly as she read the message on a sweet and popped it into her mouth, turning over another page of the magazine as so many of his students infuriated him by doing on a day to day basis.

"I tried to help earlier and you said I was as much use as a chocolate teapot," she pointed out, not taking her eyes off the page, "So I sat over here instead. Love heart?"

"No, thank you." He responded more sharply than he'd intended, and she took one from the packet herself and muttered something under her breath at him, which he imagined would not be repeatable in respectable company. Most of her colleagues probably thought Nicki was always polite, but Tom knew a very different side to her – a side he'd discovered after he'd accidentally hit her over the head with a staple gun last year, only to get chased round the entire school by Nicki brandishing a metre long ruler and apparently trying to decapitate him with it whilst a stream of insults flew from her mouth. He'd definitely realised that she wasn't sweet and innocent after that.

After an awkward silence broken only by Tom cursing when he papercut his hand on a sheet entitled "Shakespearean Snogging", he decided that he did, in fact, rather fancy a Love Heart. Which was annoying, as Nicki was probably too stubborn to give him one now.

As he looked back down at his desk, he felt something hit him in the temple then fall to his desk. Upon closer inspection, the mysterious object turned out to be a Love Heart with the message "Stay Cool" on it, which had been fired as a makeshift missile by Nicki, who was still sat cross-legged on the scratchy dark blue carpet next to Tom's desk flicking through Heat.

After a couple of seconds, she turned round and smiled innocently at him, before flinging a "LOL" sweet at his face.

"Fine, I'm sorry." He sighed reluctantly, rolling his eyes, if only because he didn't fancy being taken to A&E having been knocked out by a stray Love Heart. While it would be an interesting story, he didn't fancy having to fill out Health and Safety forms detailing exactly how the incident had occurred. She stood up and wandered over to his desk, inspecting the small rainforest's worth of paper he had accumulated on the surface of it so as the plywood was no longer visible through the mass of paper he had 'organised'.

Having pretended to be interested for what she felt was a reasonable amount of time (around half a second), she turned round to face him, leaning against the desk with a smile and brushing his leg with hers as she looked him in the eyes and smiled dreamily, telling herself for the thousandth time that she was not attracted to Tom Clarkson in any way, shape or form.

"Let's go home." She murmured to him, picking up her handbag and walking over to the doorway as he tried to find his phone and car keys amongst the mountains of paper in front of him, and finally succeeded. He took his battered leather bag from by his desk and followed her out into the corridor, both of them silently pretending not to be looking at the other.

As they reached the deserted car park, they turned to each other, stood in an odd, deafening silence as the wind whipped her dark hair into her face. She smiled awkwardly, looking at the stony ground as if it were the most interesting thing in the world. He watched her silently as she did so, pretending to be looking at the rusty iron bench just behind her.

"I'll see you tomorrow, then." He began, putting a hand on her delicate shoulder and smiling. If it was any other woman, he'd probably have kissed her on the cheek and been on his way, but Nicki was... different, for want of a better word. And, more to the point, it probably wouldn't just be a kiss on the cheek, if it was Nicki – he knew that it would take all of his willpower not to kiss her properly and take her home, and even if he did manage to stop himself, he'd not sleep for a week just thinking about her.

She looked back up at him, her wide blue eyes boring into his for perhaps a second longer than they should have, before looking away and smiling, apparently to herself. She mimicked his movement, but her warm hand touched his arm just below where his sleeves were turned up, feeling as if he'd just been burnt by a hot poker where her hand met his skin.

"Night."

They smiled silently, before walking to their cars, each probably thinking the same thing.

Tom got into his car, throwing his briefcase onto the passenger seat on top of the small rainforest worth of paper already tossed carelessly on it. He switched the car on, to a blast of freezing cold air from the so-called heater he had left on when he got to work at seven am, which he hurriedly turned off, shivering. He really needed a new jacket.

There was a sharp knock on his window, and he must have jumped about a foot before realising that the face at the window was not that of a psychopathic serial killer brandishing a machete. Bloody horror movies. He needed to stop watching those, too. No, the face at the window was Nicki, who was now laughing at his skittishness, as he opened the window, attempting to retain a shred of dignity.

"Yes?" he asked, head held proudly as she tried to contain her amusement, mostly unsuccessfully.

"My car won't start."

For one brief moment, he considered offering to help her fix it. He then realised that last time he'd offered to fix a woman's car, he had broken his foot kicking the car in fury after an hour spent hitting various parts of the engine with a large hammer. With the benefit of hindsight, he now realised that it would probably not be the most effective way of impressing a woman, and thus decided to offer Nicki a lift. As anyone else would do.

"Do you want a lift?"

She raised her eyebrows at him, rolling her blue orbs back and half smiling.

"Thank you, knight in shining bloody armour," she grinned, walking in front of his car and opening the passenger door, just as he realised exactly how much paper there was on the seat and went to tell her so. The millisecond he did so, the mountain of paper cascaded out of the door and onto her feet, collecting in several clusters which easily covered her ankles. It was then he realised for the first time that, if looks could kill, he would be a dead man.

Having carefully filed/thrown mountains of sheets back into the car, Nicki sat down and slammed the door, narrowly avoiding trapping her grey scarf as she did so. She looked at him for a brief moment as if she intended to say something, while he pretended to adjust the settings of the car heater, when in actual fact, he felt rather warm enough just being able to smell the scent of her perfume, which was awkward.

They set off out of the school gates into the dimly lit street, turning left and down towards what passed as a beach. As they were travelling in silence, Nicki with her head resting on the window and her breath steaming up the glass, Tom wondering to himself whether or not he had chicken nuggets in the freezer, it suddenly occurred to him that he hadn't got a clue where Nicki's house was.

"Where do you actually live?" he asked, stopping at the T-junction at the bottom of the hill, once again pretending to adjust the heater as if he had a clue what he was doing. God, he'd had that car for three years and he still didn't have any idea how to work anything which didn't control the direction of the car.

"It's up by the pub, the second left after that," she told him, not looking away from the window she seemed so transfixed by, as she looked out into the clear, cold night sky through the small, cloud-like patch of condensation on the glass. It was as if she was detached – he'd seen her like this once before, the night he left Manchester. They'd both been fighting back tears, but each was utterly convinced that they had remained poker-faced as they said goodbye... and that look was in her eyes when he'd finally driven off. It almost scared him to see her like that, just because she was usually so bright, with her bright eyes wide and alert, as they had been earlier.

"Do you want a drink?" he offered, and she then caught his eye momentarily, "My flat's on the Esplanade." She was silent for a moment, and so he then panicked, as he never had before when he'd asked women back to his home. But then again, those women weren't Nicki.

"I mean, you don't have to, it was just a suggestion, I..."

"Yeah, okay." She agreed, cutting him off mid-flustered-sentence, turning to face him properly and giving him that dazzling, 1000-watt smile which, clichéd as it sounded, lit up a room.