After the summer

The beach in Normandy, warm sand beneath her feet, children’s laughter drifting through the still air.

The top floor of her favourite bookshop. Volumes piled chaotically, charitable donations waiting to inform, educate.

With Josh, walking alongside the river, not quite brave enough to thread arms and touch and kiss.

Sheltering from a summer shower, as she waited for the bus, her fellow travellers doubtless wondering why the quiet, smart girl at the front of the queue suddenly looked so panicked.

Awakening, at two in the morning. Tossing, turning, unable to drive the thoughts from her mind.

At every damned moment when she allowed her mind to wander, the thought crept up on her insidiously: ‘When I go back to school, I am going to be caned’.

She tried, of course, to banish the fears. He’d punished the others; she hadn’t even been there; they’d taken the blame. A whole summer had passed. He’d have written to her, surely? He’d have forgotten. That even if he remembered, she’d be able to talk her way out. That if… that if the worst came to pass, it couldn’t really be that bad. Other girls were caned; if they could take it, so could she.

But the very possibility… She’d lain in bed so often in the past, hearing the distant strokes from the Housemaster’s study, wondering: who, why? She’d seen sweet Helen in the Third Year, slipping back afterwards as unobtrusively as possible into the next bed in the dorm; she’d listened to her friend’s faint sobs, muffled into her pillow, and she’d seen her in the showers the following morning, striped and shamed.

And she’d read and re-read and re-read again the hand-written letter that Tess had posted to her – the pale blue paper now creased from its oh-so-regular handling. ‘Dearest Amy, Something awful happened. Maberley caught us drinking on the last night of term, and took us all downstairs and caned us. Oh Amy, it was awful. Thank goodness you weren’t there too.’

She’d filled in the details over the summer – a slow drip-feed, snippets gleaned from phone calls and e-mails and notes in pretty envelopes. The basic details were clear: the night after she’d left (exchange trip with French family: confusion over dates: permission reluctantly granted by irritated Housemaster), her friends had polished off the remnants of their secret stash of rum.

That bottle of Bacardi that she, Amy had purchased. That she’d hidden behind her wardrobe since the start of term. Her rum. Her fault. She was the one who’d committed the cardinal sin – smuggled in the evil alcohol, secreted it away.

There hadn’t even been that much left, after it had seen the four roommates through a long and trying term. But there’d been enough – enough to make her friends giggle; enough to bring their Housemaster back along the corridor and into their room. Enough to smell their breath; to order them, pyjama- and dressing-gown- clad, to his study.

And after that, her friends went quiet. Quite awful, Tess assured her. Oh god it hurt, Sarah winced. And I don’t want to talk about it, Amanda protested.

Four strokes each, that much she knew. But the others, now enrolled in the not-so-elite society of Caned Girls, kept its secrets close to their hearts. Funny, she thought, how the girls who’ve never been caned are the ones who talk about it incessantly, speculating on what it must be like: those who’ve been beaten maintain a masonic silence about the ritual.

Her mum had been puzzled as she drove back to Wroxdale that morning: not like Amy to worry about school. Friends floated past, smiling, welcoming, exchanging glances and giggles, the confidences of a hot summer just waiting to be shared. Amy’s faked smile hinted at miserable lonely weeks: not true, but preferable to admitting the secret. A secret that might not even be true.

And now, she closed her bedroom door behind her – a Lower Sixth girl now, with the privacy of her own room. She knelt and prayed as she did every night. For mum, for dad, wherever he might be. For herself, for once, not that she should. Hoping that her fears might be unfounded. That Maberley would have forgotten. That he might not have realised that he had anything to forget.