"I don't see what else I could have done."
"How can you say that?"
"After half an hour of what he'd been doing to me, how else was I suppose to react?"
"You let him play with your ... private parts?"
"He'd been playing with the rest of me."
"But you let him!"
"I didn't let him. I didn't want him to. But he did. He's a doctor. I was having an examination. I expected him to touch me."
"But he wasn't wearing gloves!"
"I explained. The nurse had gone to get some."
"Coming back tomorrow!"
"What was I meant to do? Tell him I'd come back tomorrow?"
"You should have."
"Miss Granger. I am just eighteen. He is a doctor. I respect him. If he tells me it's okay, then it's okay."
"It was hardly okay."
Cherri Siew closed her eyes. She shook her long black hair.
"Okay, okay," said the teacher, slowing down, putting a hand on the shoulder of the girl. "Where else had he been ... 'playing' with you?"
"I had my clothes off. Everywhere."
'Did he touch your breasts?"
"Yes."
"For long."
"For quite long. Yes."
"The nipples."
Cherri Siew's eyes dropped to the floor. "Yes," she said, sounding tight, a little annoyed. "I told you. He was arousing me. He stroked my breasts, caressed them, played lightly with my nipples."
"Only lightly?"
The girl closed her eyes. Talked slowly, distinctly, as if to a child. "At first he did it lightly. But once the nipples had enlarged, become hard, then he scratched and squeezed them as well."
"In between doing it lightly?" the young teacher's voice had softened.
"Yes," said the girl, eyes still closed, head still bowed.
"Was he exciting you?" the teacher asked softly.
The girl looked up, a tiny frown beginning to grow on her face. "I'm only eighteen, but I am very sensitive in a lot of places. All girls my age are. We are growing up. When a man touches us, it excites us."
"Don't tell me it's happened before!" the teacher exclaimed.
Cherri's eyes were back on the floor, her head was shaking again, she sounded frustrated and angry, "No. It has never happened before!"
"But you've thought about it?" Miss Granger challenged the girl.
The pretty student shook her head. The equally pretty teacher then shook hers. She brought her hands together on her lap. She was leaning against the girl's desk. The girl was standing before her. They were the only two in the classroom. Outside it was already dark. The teacher reached a hand forward, the expression on her face softened further, and she said gently, as her hand went to the girl's face, "So ... tell me what happened next?"
"I've told you," said the girl, sounding exasperated, head down, her teacher's fingers in her hair.
"You lay on the examination couch. He hadn't any gloves and asked you if it was all right to examine you without them. You said it was. The nurse had already said they were out of gloves. She had left early. Just the doctor and you were left in the room. So ...?"
The girl angled her head very slightly to the left. Her teacher's fingers were at her ear, under the cover of silky hair. Her teacher was stroking the lobe. Calming the girl.
"So ..." the girl took it on, "he examined me, and as he did he told me take of more of my clothes, then some more, until eventually I was lying naked on the examination couch."
"Had he touched you while this was going on?"