Dear Bex,

It’s Valentine’s Day and Gavin Baxendale is sitting forlornly on a bench in reception, fiddling with his watch.

“I mean, the card was a lovely gesture Gavin.”

“Thanks, Miss.”

“It’s just I’m not too sure about the message.” I clear my throat, then read aloud from a sheet of hastily-folded paper sprinkled with glitter. “Dear Miss, I love you so much I could kill you then top myself.”

“It’s supposed to be romantic, Miss.”

“I know Gavin, but sometimes your brand of romanticism can come across as a little, er, over-intense.” I rack my brains. “I mean, remember that time you asked out Lauren Barnes from 9A?”

“She said yes.”

“But only because you were sitting on her chest threatening her with a bicycle chain.”

“I wanted her to know how keen I was on the idea, Miss.”

“Well you certainly achieved that. I imagine spending the evening at the local multiplex having her ears fondled was a breeze by comparison. And then there was last term, when you serenaded me in assembly.”

”‘I’ll be watching you’ is one of my favourite songs, Miss.”

“Yes. But it was lent a certain bitter irony by the fact you’d recently been arrested in the bush outside my house with a walkie talkie and a pair of binoculars.”

“I believe in singing from the heart, Miss.”

“I’m sure you do, Gavin. I just wonder if you couldn’t pour some of this creative fervour into your work rather than, er, on to other people.”

“I do, Miss.”

“Gavin, making clay sculptures of Mrs Denning’s upper chest area doesn’t count.”

“Speaking of sculptures, I’ve made one of you, Miss.”

He brings out a cracked and speckled abomination, with a crooked smile and boiled eggs for eyes.

“Gavin, that looks more like Bruce Forsyth. Perhaps you’d better go back to stalking people after all.”

Love Kate x.