“Emily! is it true that you are leaving?”

“Hi, Jon. Yes, at the end of this term.”

Ah, Mr Gorgeous. I’ll miss the feeling of your voice on my skin. Hang on, weren’t you thinking of leaving too?

“Good for you! I’ll probably stay for another term or so and then I’ll be off to Rome.”

“Oh!”

“Look, why don’t we swap stories over a bottle of wine sometime?”

“Yes, I’d like that.”

“Great. See you later, Emily.”

Wine with you would be a dream, but why must you go to Rome? Damn.

Right, let’s go and see what the GCSE English papers were like today.

‘Describe someone who is important to you and explain why. You may want to use images to express what this person means to you.’

Blimey, that’s hard. I wonder who ended up in the answer booklets as Year 11 sat in this draughty gym, and what images came to them as they gazed at its blank walls and grey ropes.

How would I describe Mr Gorgeous? My dark chocolate Italian teacher.

I’ll miss the sexy shock of his presence in the room. But he’s more than that to me, because he’s not just gorgeous, he’s also kind. A warm hand on the shoulder on a cold day.

I don’t really know much about him, though, what he’s really like behind the strong doses of yumminess. Gorgeous moments, but what do they add up to?

I have done this before. I’ve projected my fantasies on to a nice smooth man-wall, when I knew sod all about the rest of the building. School life fuels this kind of fantasising. It provides such fleeting glimpses of the real man that you paint in the rest.

Look at that slumped shape in the corner. The primary school bouncy castle from last summer, sabotaged by Year 9s, green and beyond repair.

I had a relationship like that once. Jake was a bouncy castle: fantastic fun for six months, then I wasted six more months of hot air trying to reinflate the whole affair when it had gone completely flat.

Some relationships are like one of those grey ropes in the gym. You cling desperately to avoid falling into the jaws of loneliness. Then the grip slips, the hands burn and the chomp comes. After a while, though, it feels much better than hanging on the rope.

Mr Gorgeous may turn out to be a wall of projected desires. Or a bouncy castle of short-lived fun. But he’s too gorgeous to be a rope of last resort, isn’t he? No, I guess not. Anyone can turn into a rope if you hang on to them when you shouldn’t.

Is it possible that he might bring what all relationships promise at first - an entrance to a new world? I don’t know, but it’s about time I found out, now we are both heading for the door.

More from Emily in a fortnight.