Lowewood Academy

“Just chill!” Brian repeated, looking on anxiously as I scored big thick lines through my pile of Etiquette notes.

“How am I supposed to chill?  I’ve just sat through three hours each of Geography and Latin exams, preceded by an hour of sprint training.  At lunchtime I had an emergency conflict resolution meeting about the Leavers Ball with Alicia and Felix.  To top it all off, in a week full of serious exams, not to mention the Inter-house athletics match, I’m now supposed to go to some stupid joint Domestic Science and Etiquette farce of an exam.”  I groaned, barely resisting the urge to drop kick my copy of Debretts across the room in frustration.

“Calm down, you must have practiced your menu in class and done all the prep by now and you’ve got Mr Tough, Mr Woodstock, Mrs Maker and Miss Delaney – it could be worse?”  Brian reasoned as I frantically attempted to make some place cards out of some crumpled lined paper.

“Could be worse?  Could be worse?  How exactly?”  I ranted, tearing up the crooked cards and starting again. “My practice menu consisted of deep fried camembert that I accidentally set on fire, lamb roast so tough we couldn’t get a knife into it accompanied by undercooked potatoes and limp mange tout and chocolate mousse that didn’t set.  I have no place cards, no wine charms, and no flower arrangement and am currently drenched in sweat from hockey practice.  The assessment starts in 25 minutes – I’m fucked.” 

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“And what on earth is this meant to be, Abbotts?” Mrs Maker bellowed and I suppressed a groan. My attempts to hide my work behind everyone else’s had been a failure.

“A Victoria sponge cake, Miss.”

“I wasn’t aware they came in black; what have you done to it?” Everyone sniggered and I could feel my ears starting to burn.

“Erm, I think something happened in the oven, Mrs Maker.” I decided to go for vagueness, after all something had indeed happened in the oven. The cake had burned, that much was blatantly obvious. Mrs Maker sighed and gave me one of her patented half angry, half pitying looks.

“That much I gathered, young lady, however it is most unfortunate that ‘something’ only happened to your cake, Gwendolyn’s is beautiful”. It was too, a confection of light brown, dome-shaped, icing-sugared top and jam-filled goodness. My effort was more like a black frisbee.

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“Are you sure Fawcett?”

“Yes Mrs Antrobus.”

“You would rather I took Dennington-Glass to the Schools Biology Symposium to discuss ‘unusual school pets and their care’ rather than take you to discuss ‘the structure of chlorophyll’?

“To be honest Mrs Antrobus, if I was in the audience, I think a lecture on Dai would be much more interesting than one on chlorophyll.”

“Are you sure you think Dennington-Glass can represent the school at such an important event? You did very well at it last year. And whilst Dennington –Glass has the makings of an excellent biologist….”

“Mrs Antrobus, I think people are rather unfair on Faye sometimes. She has a good brain and I’m sure she’d take representing the school at something so important very seriously.”

“Very well Fawcett. I shall inform Miss Dennington-Glass. But if she lets us down, I shall hold you personally responsible.”

Oh God. Please let Faye do this right! “I’m sure Faye won’t let Dashwood down”

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