9 years ago
Sunday, October 14, 2012
The teacher and the schoolgirl runaway: She was 16 and he was 28. Now, 30 years and four children later, they are STILL together
Robert Grant was driving his lorry, listening idly to a Radio 2 talk show when the debate took what for him was a chilling turn. Just days earlier news had broken of a British teacher who had run off with one of his pupils. Now Robert heard caller after caller directing their ire towards the teacher.
‘It sounded as if everyone wanted to string him up,’ says Robert. ‘I realised they could just as well have been talking about me.’
Robert was 28 when he found himself in a very similar position as a teacher of English in Spain. He fell in love with a 16-year-old schoolgirl, Beatriz, the daughter of a wealthy Spaniard. After they formed a relationship on a school trip, the pair went on the run across Europe and were pursued by detectives.
Eventually Robert was confronted by Beatriz’s father pointing his vintage chrome-and-ivory handle pistol at him and threatening to shoot him dead.
Yet 30 years later, Robert and Beatriz are still together. They have four children and are, they say, as madly in love today as they were when their romance first scandalised her ultra-conservative Catholic family all those years ago.
Robert says: ‘When I heard the story on the Jeremy Vine show, I thought, “You poor fellow. They’re going to lock you away for falling in love.” It was so much like the way Bea and I started out that I want people to know it doesn’t have to end badly.’
Sitting in the kitchen of their modest three-bedroom semi-detached house in Poole, Dorset, the couple talk openly and easily about an attraction they say was so intense that they were willing to flout convention.
Today their recollections are matched by tender glances between each other. A slim, attractive woman, Beatriz gave up a life of luxury to be with Robert, but says she has no regrets.
‘Our lives have not always been easy,’ she says smiling. ‘We’ve not been flush financially and there have been some tough times. But my heart is full of love every time I look at Robert.
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