Lowewood Academy

“Here we go girls…” I said, opening the door to Room 2D. I’d spent some time cleaning and tidying it, and it looked great. A perfect den for us, away from the snooping eyes of the Dashwood prefects.

“Wow,” said Cassie, bouncing into the room. “This is great!”

“Yeah, it’s amazing!” enthused Sera.

“How on earth did you find it? And get keys? You’ve only been here five minutes!” said Cassie.

“Ask no questions….and I’ll tell you no lies….” I said, tapping my nose.

“We have to tell Violet!” said Sera.

“Take it easy girls,” I said. “I don’t want the whole of Lower Sixth knowing about it. And if you tell Violet, she’ll tell Charlie, who will tell Felix and then we all stand more chance of getting busted. I think we should keep it to ourselves.”

(more…)

“Next!” called Matron.

I sighed and stood up, only to meet Faye Dennington-Glass coming out of Matron’s office looking very red and flushed. God, I hoped she wasn’t coming down with flu. That was the last thing Dashwood needed!

Matron invited me to sit down in the ‘patients’ chair. “What is it, my dear?” she asked kindly. Matron was kind when she didn’t think you were malingering, or making an undue fuss at your annual medical.

I hesitated. “Er…..” I managed, slightly lost for words.

“Come along dear, there’s no need to be shy with me. Trouble down below?”

“No!” I said indignantly. “Actually, I was wondering if I could have some sleeping pills?”

Matron looked at me as if I’d just asked for an intravenous shot of heroin.

(more…)

Public humiliation: nobody does it better than Lowewood.

I supposed, I thought grimly, I should stick to just feeling grateful I was back at school at all.  Getting sent home early from Chamonix had led to all kinds of fears that Tim and I would be rusticated.  That had not, thank God, come to pass.  After a couple of days’ purgatory, confined mostly to my room at home, I was reunited with everyone back in Dashwood on cue for the second half of term.  Escaping from mum’s heavy sighs of disappointment and daddy’s horrified lectures was a huge relief!  I realised we’d be hearing plenty more about it though, and Tim and I hardly dared smile at one another under this kind of scrutiny.  It was pretty miserable…

But it was still kinda hard to feel all that grateful in our current predicament.  Mr Shaftebotham had chosen not to inflict the full wrath of a Headmaster’s Report on us: having been caned already last week, he’d simply docked the 200 housepoints each instead, to effectively complete the job.  That would be detention and another dozen on Saturday then…Juliet was gonna fry me. Meanwhile, though, we had more pressing concerns, in this special sixth form assembly he had called, for which Tim and I formed part of the set.  Mr S had decided that our behaviour indicated a need to address the overall moral welfare of his senior pupils in a special bonus edition of his Personal and Social Education lessons.  And here we were.

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