What a compelling story this is! Sheba, who teaches pottery at a trashfire of a school, has an affair with a 15 year old student. It doesn't end well, as you would expect, and the whole thing is chronicled from the perspective of an older teacher, Barbara, who is horribly, cuttingly observant, and who has a nastily clear-eyed view about everything except what her own loneliness has driven her to. Barbara's a fantastic, awful, cynical character, insinuating herself into the scandal for her own satisfaction. She's the modern-day version of Mrs. Danvers, fascinated and jealous and almost sexually obsessed with Sheba, and how she contrives to manipulate their relationship is terrifying reading, filled with black humour and fixation.