Abaconti stood at the window watching the rain blast the city below while his son tried to placate the client. He was good under the circumstances, Abaconti thought.

“Have you tried the salmon?” Tom Abaconti said casually.

“We didn’t come all the way across the Atlantic to eat darn fish sandwiches,” the Texan drawled in irritation as he glanced sideways at his associate for validation.

“We’ll start presently. I know it’s cutting it fine, but that’s often the way when dealing with up to the minute figures,” there was a dismissive smoothness to Tom’s voice.

The Texan had been about to speak when Tom’s Executive Assistant, Eve Stanmore, stood up and bent suggestive over the table to reach for the coffee pot. The Texan’s eyes descended down her wasp waist to her perfect round bottom encased as it was by her tight pencil skirt.

“More coffee, Mr Weinberger,” she offered, smiling pleasantly.

“We’ll I wouldn’t say no,” Weinberger stuttered, adding less angrily, “up to the minute figures you say?”

“Absolutely, there is no way we can allow you to sign the contract unless you have the full picture.”

Just then door opened and a rather flustered woman crashed clumsily through the door. Her pinned up hair was in disarray and she blew a stray strand from her face.

“Sorry I’m late but the computer had to be rebooted and then would you believe it, the photocopier ran out of toner, I just hate it when it does that…” then Hen’s voice tailed off as she saw that Tom was looking at her with his ‘you are so in trouble’ face.

“Are you messing with us?” The Texan was frowning again.

Even at the window the usually unruffled Abaconti winced.

Tom, Eve and Hen had all been contemporaries at Chadsworth College, although Hen and Eve had been a year younger than Tom. That had been 16 years before.

Eve had only joined the school shortly before turning 18 for her last two years and she remembered her first day as if it were yesterday.

“Eve darling, we just know that you are going to do better with the A levels here,” her mother had said. “Then you will have an absolutely perfect future, I know it.”

If she heard one more word about her perfect future then she would… even as the thought touched her, Eve was taken by the tall arrogant young man leaning against the door post to the entrance of the school watching her and her heart did a flip-flop.

From his brightly coloured waistcoat she knew him to be one of Chadsworth’s prefects. That much she had remembered from her earlier briefing.

“Are you listening to me?” Her mother was scolding.

“Perfect future, got it,” Eve said facetiously giving her mother a mocking thumbs up sign.

Her mother’s eyes narrowed at the gesture and she scowled.

“Come on,” she said finally leading her daughter into the gothic main entrance.

As they passed him, Eve couldn’t help casting the prefect a sideways glance.

You’ll do, Tom Abaconti thought as his well-trained eye followed the new girl through the door.

After her mother had left Eve in the care of her new housemaster, he offered to show her around.

“It seems hardly worth it does it,” she threw at him. “I am here for a year or so to please my parents and then I am out of here.”

“And what about your A levels?” The up-until-then jocular housemaster asked sternly.

“You know what,” she shrugged airily with an expansive toss of her curls, “screw them.”

The housemaster frowned. “That is a rather ungrateful and cavalier attitude to take,” he said.

“I’ll try and keep my head down but if you don’t like it,” she paused for affect and gave him a self-satisfied smile, then said, “throw me out.”

“Miss Stanmore, come with me will you,” her housemaster said paternally, “I think you really do need the tour.”

As they went through the school, the housemaster chatted enthusiastically about the school and its various opportunities and every once in a while he paused to point something out. Despite her determination to be obstructive, she found him engaging and his tour interesting.

Finally, they returned to his study.

“This is my little home from home,” he beamed. “I don’t often have students in here, unless it is to address matters concerning a breach of discipline.”

She noticed that an edge had crept into his voice now.

“Now, do you know what happens to young ladies who give me attitude or brag about slacking, or anything that wilfully challenges my sense of propriety?” he asked.

She almost said ‘No, sir and I don’t particular care,’ but some instinct made her hold her tongue.

“Let me explain, Miss Stanmore,” he said cheerfully as he walked to his desk. “This is a cane. At Chadsworth it is applied to the bare bottoms of girls such as you, applied by me, you understand. Furthermore, if you have been so foolish as to engage my attention, then it means that you have probably already been caned for one offence or another by a teacher or a prefect, who would have also have bared your bottom by the way.”

Eve gaped and felt a little light-headed. Caning girls had been almost unheard of at her last school and when it happened, only the headmistress caned. The idea of a bare-bottomed caning wasn’t even in it. Now she was being told that male teachers or even senior boys could do it.

“What happens typically is that you would be required to stand behind this chair and bend over the back so that your head and arms were resting on the seat. Usually you would have removed you blazer beforehand,” he said easily, pointing to an old chair of the kind that might be used in an old-people’s home, “then your skirt would be raised and your pants pulled down to the middle of your thighs.”

Eve stared in horror at the chair, almost seeing herself positioned over it.

“I would then administer six, eight or possibly nine or more strokes extremely hard to your bare bottom. Finally, with the minimum of fuss you would rise, repair your clothing and offer me your hand and say ‘thank you sir;’ quite a simple procedure actually.”

“Does… do… um,” she swallowed not really know what she was asking.

“It does happen and we certainly do,” he beamed.

Eve blanched, and as if she were drowning, her life surged before her eyes. What had her mother said?

“I really think Chadsworth is the place for you, good old-fashioned Anglican values. They have some quite antiquated, although effective, methods I hear. And unlike some public schools, when they became co-educational back in the early 1980s, the girls were brought up to the same standards and penalties as the boys rather than the other way about. Won’t that be an interesting challenge darling?”

At the time she hadn’t really taken it in and had responded “whatever,” but now it had become all too clear.

“Miss Stanmore, are you listening?”

Eve nodded dumbly.

“Please answer me as if you possessed at least a modicum of intelligence,” he snapped.

“Yes sir,” Eve said a little too quickly as an unfamiliar fluttering assailed her tummy.

“Good girl, I knew we would understand one another.”

*

Eve was wondering if this was some kind of elaborate joke, but somehow she knew it wasn’t.

“Are you supposed to be somewhere?” said a voice that startled her.

Eve turned and saw the prefect she had seen earlier. She was later to learn his name was Tom Abaconti, but just then all she knew was he had the look of a hungry wolf.

“I don’t know, I have to see matron, I think, to be allocated a room, or…”

“One, you’re not supposed to be here,” Tom snapped, “two, if you are supposed to be somewhere then go there directly and don’t dawdle out in the corridor. Students found in the corridor during lesson times are for the high jump.”

“I am sorry, I have just arrived, where is the matron’s office please?” Eve said pathetically, still a little cowed by her experience with the housemaster.

“Do I look like an information bureau? You had better learn quickly that we don’t accept excuses for being out of bounds or any other breach of the rules.”

“You don’t have to be mean about it,” Eve said miserably.

“The gods are going to eat you for breakfast, tea and supper,” Tom chortled.

“The gods?”

“The senior prefects, my lot,” he shook his head. “You are never going to sit down again after they get hold of you.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ll show you, time for an education. Come with me,” he barked.

“But I have to…”

“I am senior prefect get it, last order first, you come with me, get it?”

She shrugged and followed him down the hall to some kind of small study that contained a couple of desks and a pair of tatty arm chairs

“Bend over and drop them,” he said casually taking a long thin stick from a cupboard.

“Drop what?”

“Your knickers, what else?”

“Get stuffed, who do you think I am?”

“You’re an honorary sprog who is up for a prefect’s six, now bend over.”

“This is insane, I’m not…”

“Look I’m doing you a favour, really I am. This is just between you and me now. Do you want to spend your first night here sans culets standing in the corner of the god’s sitting room waiting for a double six?”

“If you think…”

“Okay, maybe I am missing something,” he said with exaggerated patience. “You saw the boss, the housemaster I mean? Yes?”

She nodded and blushed recalling what he said with a growing sense of dread that she usually associated with a driving test or the dentist.

“He told you about the prefect’s authority?”

“Yes,” she said in a small voice.

“So fair play then, you either turn around and drop them or you report to him right now,” he shrugged, “your choice. First day though, you will be on the shit list forever and the gods will smell blood.”

As much as he wanted to get his hands on this cutie’s gorgeous behind and anything else that was going, he was suddenly afraid that she was going to suicide herself by being a slow learner.

“Fine. I am sure when I explain he will put you straight,” she said sullenly.

Shit, he thought. He hadn’t intended to cane her, just scare her a little, so that she would get a healthy respect for the gods without actually learning it from one of his clinically insane colleagues. Now at the very least the boss would order him to thrash her and any chance of a rapport would be blown.

She stood back as she marched towards the door and down the corridor to the housemaster’s office. He followed at a leisurely pace. Her confidence was unmatched all the way to the door, then it fled and she hesitated. The prefect had followed her with an expression like that of a man watching a car crash. This coupled with the housemaster’s earlier words unsettled her big time.

Her fist hung over the middle panel of the door and then she swallowed.

“Please it’s my first day,” she said close to tears, “this is insane, you can’t really have the power to see my bottom, you’re just teasing.”

He made a heart crossing gesture and then a little pleading one with his hands.

“Okay I get it, you can cane me, but not… bare.”

“We practically never do it any other way, why the hell would we?”

“I didn’t do anything,” she said the desperation drenching her voice.

“You got caught,” he shrugged.

She sniffed and a tear rolled down her cheek.

“Hey it’s not so bad. I have caned tons of girls; they take in good heart usually. I’m pussy cat, I really am.”

“Fine,” she said angrily, “let’s get it over with.”

She marched ahead of him back to the room. Once there she bent over defiantly, seething with anger. He followed slowly admiring her retreating feminine tail. Then entering after her, he closed the door and again took up the cane, polishing it casually with his sleeve as he did so. Then her courage failed a little and she hesitated.

“Best if you lower them yourself. And keep your legs together or you’ll get a rep.”

“A rep?” She spat.

“Showcasing the Garden of Eden may be interpreted as a come-on for leniency.”

“The Garden of what…” Then getting it, she blushed to a melt and willed the floor to open.

She took a deep breath and reached under her skirt and tugged her stylish white knickers down to mid-thigh.

“Skirt,” he said curtly.

She took another breath and obeyed.

As her bare bottom was unveiled he regarded her sternly until she couldn’t help but glance back at him with resentful but confused eyes. He held her gaze for a moment longer and then he smiled and gave an appreciative whistle.

“Alright, point made, pull them up,” he said.

She turned quickly and glowered at him.

“I swear to God, I am the only one who would have cut you some slack,” he said with a sad smile. “Welcome to Chadsworth.”

She looked at him with dagger eyes and grumpily pulled her knickers up. Then her face cracked and she giggled.

“This place is a nut house,” she laughed.

“Now, you’re learning,” he said and then laughed too.

*

It soon became clear to Eve that Tom had not exaggerated the caning regime at Chadsworth. The school sport of sprogging was some kind of free-for-all for the seniors to torment, bully and generally enslave the juniors. However, for the most part and despite Tom’s crack about her being an honorary sprog, she was largely left alone.

On her second night there she heard a commotion in the next room to hers and on investigation she found her neighbour, Eugenia Bothington, known to all as B, spanking a girl over her knee with a plimsoll. To Eve’s astonishment the girl’s bare bottom was quite, quite red.

“I meant to bring them to you, really I did B,” the spanked girl wailed through gritted teeth.

“Meant to, was going to, but you didn’t,” B said given the girl another swat.

Having no idea what the bone of contention was, Eve left them to it.

The only real thing Eve had to worry about were the gods, as Tom had predicted. The masters, being generally obeyed, were usually no problem, but the senior prefects were just waiting to catch her out.

A month into her Chadsworth career Eve saw a deputy prefect walk moist-eyed from the gods’ room surreptitiously rubbing her bottom. The girl she knew was also 18 and given the rule against loitering she hastened away.

“Hey Eve,” it was Tom emerging from the room behind the girl.

Eve’s stomach did a flip.

“I was just on my way to…” she said hastily.

“No bother,” he smiled, “walk with me.”

She relaxed and nodded. She had already worked out that not even the other prefects messed with Tom and whatever his reasons he was definitely a useful ally.

“Did you cane that girl?”

“I caught her smoking, no biggie, she was glad to have me handle it. Mind you, she is trouble. She had a small tattoo on her bottom. If the boss canes her and sees it he’ll ask why I didn’t report it.”

“You caned her bare,” Eve gasped.

“I thought we had already made that clear,” he said, his earlier fears about her survival instincts returning. Then he added with a shrug, “one of the perks.”

She snorted, but admired his honesty, then asked, “Why the concern about me?”

“Why not? You look like you need a friend.”

She nodded and made a small smile. She actually felt the oft mocked warm fuzzy feeling.

“I can get you out of a lot of scrapes, if you’ll let me,” he offered.

“What’s the catch?”

“No real catch, but if you earn a swishing, then I might as well be the one to do it.”

“So you’d go easy on me, is that it?”

“Not a chance, but…” he shrugged.

“I bet you’d love that,” she said sharply, but not without amusement.

“Every single minute of it,” he agreed.

She laughed.

“Deal?” he said holding out his hand.

There was something exciting about this, like she was offering him her bottom already. Then she thought of the paternal calamity or boisterous humiliation that could easily be the alternative.

“Deal,” she said ruefully and shook his hand.

He left her at the corner and she glanced after him with the same warm feeling she had since his offer of friendship.

“Oh by the way, if you get jankers, that’s an easy fix, come and see me.” He winked and was gone.

*

Eve first met Hen properly on the stairs up to her room. They quite literally bumped into each other.

“Sorry,” the girl gasped, completely flustered. Then she stood nervously as if caught by a prison searchlight.

“What’s the rush,” Eve said in irritation as she rubbed her elbow.

“I have to run an errand for B,” the girl said rolling her eyes.

“You look a little old for sprogging,” Eve snorted.

The girl rolled her eyes off to the side in embarrassment. “Try telling B that, oh but, no please don’t.”

“You’re the girl I saw…” Eve realised it was the spanked girl from the other day.

The girl blushed and looked down. “She’s always doing that,” she said with a very cute pout.

“What’s your name?”

“I’m Henrietta Holcroft, but everyone calls me Hen.” Hen was instantly and bouncily happy.

“You must get a rough time here?”

“You kidding? I love it,” Hen gushed.

“But the spankings and… well have you been caned yet?”

“Caned, who hasn’t? As for the spankings, I get worse at home,” Hen shrugged.

“Does eh… everyone get caned? I mean can you manage not be?” It was the 60 million pound question for Eve and she hated sharing her fear with a younger girl.

“I suppose,” Hen said thinking, “probably, if you manage not to get caught, it’s hard to tell, talking about it is not really done. There really are worse things here, believe me.”

“Oh sorry,” Eve could have kicked herself, the informal house rules were worse than the official ones.

“Oh, I don’t mean you, talking I mean. Talking to me doesn’t count.”

Eve hugged herself and laughed.

“You are funny. What’s it like? Being caned I mean, since I can ask?”

Hen pulled a face like a sour lemon. “I’ll show you next time if you like.”

“Show me what?”

“What a caned bottom looks like. Oh lore, talking of caned bottoms, I have to go.” Then she was gone.

*

When she next saw Tom, Eve asked, “Do you know Hen?”

“Oh yes,” he drawled.

“Have you… you know, punished her.”

“Pretty much five times a term since I was a pre,” Tom smiled affectionately. “A good sport.”

“On the…?” Eve made an up and down gesture with her arm by the side of her skirt.

“I told you, if I can I will and as I said Hen’s a good sport with guaranteed no come back.”

“You mean some people complain?”

Tom looked askance, letting half his face smile and crinkled his eyes up in the cutest way.

“Let’s put it this way, the caning procedure is time honoured, more tradition than an actual written down rule. I’m allowed to cane girls in any way that is consistent with tradition or in any way I think I can get away with; and the boss will back me, so will the head, come to that. But it wouldn’t look good if I pressed it with the one girl in a hundred who kicks off to mater and pater. So it’s as well to read it right.”

“You mean if I refused…” Eve left the idea hanging and smiled.

“You would be run ragged if you did and anyway you wouldn’t,” he tossed his shoulder in certain dismissal. “You are really not the type; you are a Chadsworth girl through and through. Or will be.”

“What if I don’t want to be a Chadsworth girl? What if I don’t to play the ‘jolly old game’?”

It was a challenge. They both knew it and her words hung between like an epiphany waiting to be born.

Tom took in a sharp breath through his nose, his eyes darting in his head as if he were running logarithms through his mind.

“Very well,” he said. “Come with me.”

She blinked rapidly in time to her heart and supressed the urge to run. He didn’t wait and strode off like a lord of the manor, knowing he would be obeyed.

Eve shrugged, as if convinced she would win the game and followed him to whatever might await her.

“Come in Miss Stanmore,” Tom said very formally as he reached the door of his room.

Eve nearly giggled at his sudden pomposity, but the smile soon vanished when he picked up a cane.

“I gather you think you are above the rules,” he continued unsmiling.

“I only meant…”

“That was rhetorical Ms Stanmore,” Tom said coldly. “Tell me what does rhetorical mean?”

“Come on,” Eve wailed, confused by his sudden head prefect act.

“Bend over,” he snapped.

She started at the command but was still relaxed enough with him to obey. After all it was only Tom.

As soon as she was bent over he flipped up her skirt, causing her to protest incoherently in an annoyed tone.

“Bottom out a bit more.”

“Come on, this is embarrassing,” she moaned.

“Get your arse out,” he barked.

She did as she was told, remembering to keep her legs together as she wondered what point he was making this time.

“Shall I do the honours, Miss Stanmore?” he said hooking his fingers into the waistband of her white pants and dragged them down to the middle of her thighs.

She gasped at the sudden chill and his gaze. There was something about this that did not bode well, she thought.

The cane robbed her of her next thought and she shot up to stand straight.

“Bloody hell, that hurt,” she said angrily, dancing a little as she clamped her hands to her bottom.

“Bend over.” It was a bellow and shocked her into compliance.

“That stroke won’t count, Miss Stanmore.”

She stayed bent over completely cowed, breathing like a woman in labour as the cane stroke continued to offer its gift of pain.

“Ok I get it, I’m sorry,” she said when she could draw a breath.

“You’re going to get it alright. Now shut up.”

The next stroke was a bitch. She managed to stay bent over, but she was blinking so hard she thought that the papers on the nearby desk would be blown away in the breeze it caused.

The stroke that followed rattled her teeth and she wished she could be across the housemaster chair or something to steady her.

“That’s three. You have three more plus the extra one that you will allow as a courtesy for your minor rebellion,” he said, the earlier coldness abating a little. “I trust that is acceptable?”

Eve nodded dumbly and wondered if she could really refuse. She fixed her eyes on a point on the wall in front of her like she did whenever she had to have an injection and waited.

The next strokes came slowly and hard. Each one a little hell of its own etched on her bottom. I won’t cry, I won’t, she begged herself.

“Alright Miss Stanmore, stand up.”

Eve eased herself upright so that her skirt fell over her flaming bottom. She clutched clumsily at her pants to pull them up but he told her to stop.

“Rhetorical,” he said as if the caning had not happened. “What does it mean?”

“It means that it does not require an answer,” Eve said sullenly.

“Good, that wasn’t so bad was it? Now bend over.”

Her jaw dropped in horror and she took a step back.

“You have six to come. It’s why I brought you here. You seem to have acquired more, that’s up to you. But it doesn’t get you off. Now bend over or I will give you another extra six.”

She scrambled to obey, suddenly unconcerned that he could see her bare bottom. That indignity was nothing to the attention of his skinny friend.

“You mark well, Miss Stanmore. I shall enjoy these.”

The next six were placed low and she was not silent for any of them.

“A fine baker’s dozen,” he said when he was done.

By now she was sagging at the knees and breathing like a buzz-saw.

“You may stand up now and pull up your nicks,” he said easily.

As she did as she was told, the tears came unbidden and then the dam broken, she sobbed. He waited.

“Alright now?” This was the old Tom her friend, as if the nasty old pre had been banished from the room.

She nodded. Then she remembered the handshake. It felt weird offering Tom her hand but he took it enthusiastically.

“See? I told you, a Chadsworth girl after all. Through and through,” he smiled happily.

“You bastard,” she said without force and managed a smile through the tears.

He might have corrected her for the slip, but instead he laughed as she stamped her feet and gripped her now covered bottom with both hands.

“Friends?” Tom asked.

She nodded and wiped her tears.

*

Later in her room she turned this way and that in front of the mirror as she examined her bare bottom. The stripes were vivid and still stood up in relief. She ran her finger along them gingerly and then up and down to feel the corrugations.

The knock at the door startled her and she let her nightie fall.

“Come in.”

Hen bounced in with a grin.

“What you up to?” Eve managed.

“Oh I just caught it from Tom Abaconti,” Hen said meekly, going cross-eyes in mock horror. Then in a baby voice she said, “came to do what I promised.” Only she said p-womized.

She turned around and lifting her skirt she pulled her knickers down.

“Ta-da,” she said with mock jollity.

“Snap,” Eve said as she pulled a face and pulled up her nighty.

“Oooh, a baker’s, what did you do?”

“I think I got a sandwich course education,” Eve chuckled. “It looks like Tom has had a busy day.”

“Did you cry?” Eve was curious.

“I always cry,” Hen punched her on the arm.

“So did I.”

Eve threw herself face down on the bed, not bothering to cover up and Hen crashed beside her so that there were 19 fresh cane strokes directed at the ceiling.

“I hope B doesn’t spank me again,” Hen said archly as she looked back over her shoulder.

“What is the deal with B and you anyway?”

*

If she had heard the story a few days before Eve would have been livid, so livid that she might have gone to the housemaster. Now, thanks to Tom, she knew she had to see things in the Chadsworth way and seek a Chadsworth solution.

B’s plan was rather a good one, Eve realised as she lay on the bed with Hen musing it over.

Hen had told her that B’s boyfriend was a prefect, so it was a simple matter to get her bottom bashed for every small slip until she agreed to do whatever B said.

Simple really, Hen couldn’t dobb on her, so she had to be compliant.

“You know Hen, I think I can fix this.”

The next day Eve sought out Tom.

“I know Chocs,” Tom said, “I can handle him any day of the month. So old Chocs and B are an item, are they? They have kept that quiet.”

“What will you do?” Eve asked.

“Never you mind my little cherry-bottomed Chadsworth girl, leave it with me,” Tom winked.

Eve blushed at the reference to her sore bottom and what had happened between them, but was strangely please at his use of ‘my.’

*

“Miss Bothington,” Tom said with an evil drawl. “A word, if I may.”

B swallowed and froze like a bird about to take flight. She knew that look, everyone did and her buttocks clenched.

Earlier Tom had spoken with Chocs and marked his card, as it turned out his fellow prefect was getting fed up with B’s incessant demands and wasn’t hard to be convinced to lay off of Hen.

“Is this about the tuck ration because…” B began.

“Oh I would be fascinated to hear about the tuck ration,” Tom grinned, “any other confessions?”

Without looking at his prospective victim he drew a cane down his sleeve as if polishing it and then slowly down the other.

“Come on Tom can’t we just talk about this? I could…”

Tom crooked his finger and then turned for his study without listening to anymore of B’s babble.

*

When Eve encountered B on the stairs to their rooms she was a mess. It had taken her a full five minutes just taking pigeon steps one stair at a time from the ground. Her make-up was smeared all over her face as if she had been hacking in the rain.

The two girls exchanged very long hard looks.

“You only had to say you wanted me to lay off Hen,” B sniffed, haplessly wiping her nose with her sleeve. The raised arm movement caused her to grimace and reach back to rub her bottom. Then she added sulkily, “that bastard keeps a list of every infraction in reserve. He says we’re only half done”

“Which bastard?” Eve said pointedly.

B’s eyes went wide and she opened her mouth forlornly before shutting it again.

“That’s a good girl, mouth shut,” Eve said steely.

“Are you finished with me now?” B looked down beaten and waited apprehensively.

“I am, I don’t know about Tom,” Eve shrugged.

“I have to report to him every week after evening chapel until the end of term,” she said woodenly.

“He’s a softy isn’t he,” Eve said innocently, “I suggested that you be given to the gods for a term’s worth of sprogging.”

B looked up pleadingly and Eve let the threat hang in the air between them before she gently said, “I wouldn’t.”

B slouched in relief and resumed her painful climb.

“Oh B,” Eve said from the bottom of the stairs, “if Hen wants to slipper you, it’s bare-bottom drill, there’s a good girl.”

B gaped and once Eve had gone, she started to cry.

*

Eve’s bottom was to be a regular feature of Tom’s study, in fact after their first escapade rather than ‘cut her some slack’ he was almost as strict with her as he was with the hapless B.

Then the dark day came when being too comfortable in her new surroundings she ran afoul of her housemaster.

“Miss Stanmore, come in,” he said. “I suppose you know why you are here?”

“No sir,” she said casually with small shake of her head.

The master held her with a stare for a moment, appraising her seemingly cavalier attitude.

“Mr Park had a problem with you in your religious education class I believe.”

“No I…” then she remembered and added uneasily, “you mean the debate we had?”

“Debate, ah I see,” he sat back and threw his head up. “You were there for instruction and to learn, but I gather you ‘debated’ with Mr Park by forwarding the opinion that, and I quote…”

He consulted some notes mumbling to get to the right place.

“Ah, here were are,” he said slowly and deliberately, “Sure there are some good things in the bible but a lot of it has been mistranslated and screwed with by a load of sexist, uptight men and anyone who can’t see that is a bit of a prat.”

Eve winced, she hadn’t meant to sound quite so strident and she had forgotten Mr Park’s almost legendary memory which stemmed from learning endless passages of religious text.

“Well, perhaps that came out wrong, but you must admit sir that a lot of trouble in the world stems from idiots believing over simplified guff about…”

“Yes, yes, I see. Miss Stanmore I am not here to discuss your fascinating views, but to persuade you to think and listen a little more and expound a little less.”

“I don’t see…”

“Miss Stanmore,” the housemaster snapped. Then more calmly, “thank you, if you will. Do you remember our conversation on your first day when we discussed your attitude?”

Eve blanched a little and began to shift in her seat. She did indeed.

“I am glad to say that you have made very great strides since then and that generally you are a credit to the school with excellent grades.”

Eve relaxed a little.

“However,” he continued. “I did explain to you what would happen if I felt you were challenging authority.”

“Yes sir,” she swallowed.

“Very well then, you know the position,” he said standing up and walking towards the cabinet.

“Pardon?”

“I am going to cane you Miss Stanmore,” the housemaster announced, “so if you please…” he nodded towards the chair.

Tom had trained her for this, she told herself, but she glanced at the door for salvation nonetheless. None came so she walked forward a condemned woman.

The chair was exactly the right height for her, the shallow padding of the squared off back pressing gently into her lower belly.

“Over please,” the boss said, as if explaining art history hovering around an easel.

Eve flopped forward and surrendered to the seat cushion, her arms tumbling carelessly in her hair. Then she felt his hands at her skirt’s hem and the material being flipped over her back. Perhaps he paused because it seemed to take an age for his fingers to gently tug at her knicker-elastic.

She let out a sigh, her belly fluttering, as she felt her underwear slide down her legs and the hush of the room tickle against her naked thighs and bottom.

“I see the spore of the lesser spotted prefect,” he quipped when he saw the feint lines of Tom’s last caning.

She didn’t answer, knowing that anything would be the wrong thing to say. It wasn’t required. The master relaxed with the knowledge that he wasn’t breaking her in. ‘Virgins’ could be so trying sometimes.

The caning was short sharp and efficient, nothing at all like the drawn out pleasures of Tom.

The housemaster was a busy man and she was just one more troublesome girl.

This caning hurt. Oh to be sure, so did Tom’s efforts, but this man was an expert. At the first stroke she would have traded each line of pain for a full caning at Tom’s hands.

Tom dealt in sixes, adding only one or two here and there for breaches of etiquette. The housemaster didn’t count but relied on instinct alone. She was a rebel and deserved only one fate.

By the time it was over Eve had an angry face to match her purple lined bottom and tears pricked at her eyes. It had been too quick for open sobbing.

As he put the cane away she pulled up her pants. Then he offered her his hand. With a deep breath she took it and they shook on the deal.

“Thank you sir,” she remembered to say.

“Off you go,” he said breezily, a smile crinkling at his eyes.

The walk to girl’s loo was slowest and most painful one ever and she prayed that no one would come by. Then finally in the haven of the porcelain room, she broke into sobbing.

Afterwards she felt better and as she reapplied her make-up she caught sight of the strange girl in the mirror.

“We have come a long way Eve old girl,” she said and managed a smile. Then she shook herself and resolved to go and see Tom.

“Do you have a minute?” Eve asked.

Tom looked up and saw at once that she had been caned.

“The housemaster,” she said in a small voice and shrugged, knowing that nothing like that would ever escape Tom.

“Not as bad as you feared ay?”

“Worse I think,” she said, “but I’ll live.”

“What’s up then?”

“I didn’t want to come here. Now I don’t want to leave.” She looked as if she might cry again. “I don’t want my mother’s perfect future. I don’t want some dull life.”

“Then have an imperfect one with me.”

“Don’t you think we’re a bit young to get married?” This was so unexpected’ although she knew now that she loved Tom.

“Not married you turkey, not for a thousand years or so anyway. But I’m leaving soon, I’m doing my degree part-time and going to work for my father. When you get out of jug you can come and work for me.”

“I suppose there will be a lot more of that,” she said tossing her head in the direction of his cane.

“You haven’t met my father, have you,” he chuckled, “you can bet your bottom on it.”

“Looks like I have.”

*

It was still raining in London 16 years later and Abaconti was considering stepping in to save the deal.

“I absolutely know how you feel,” Tom said, “and if you were to walk away now I honestly couldn’t blame you. But let me assure you that here at Abaconti’s we know how to get the best from our people. Let me demonstrate. Hen…”

Hen blanched, she could guess what was coming.

“Oh Tom you can’t,” Eve whispered. “It was just as much my fault as hers.”

“I’ll deal with you later, unless you want to take a turn with Hen here and now.”

Eve went red, she knew that tone; he wouldn’t have hesitated.

“It wouldn’t save Hen though, would it?” She bravely prayed for a negative.

“No,” he laughed.

Eve shut up and stepped back out of the way.

Like an old sensei finally guiding his pupil, Abaconti turned and distracted the Texan with the spiel as Hen, turning a red as a beet slipped out of her skirt and bent over bracing herself against the wall.

The Texan was not listening of course, as Tom had intended.

“Will you slip your under-things down to your ankles please, Ms Holcroft.”

Hen did as she was told without a murmur, taking one for the team in public was one of her talents. She was good at it.

“I… I think maybe I should…” the Texan mumbled.

Tom drew a sharp red line across Hen’s bottom with his cane and she gasped.

“A dozen I think, don’t you sir,” Tom said addressing the Texan.

“Well… um… sure… maybe,” he stuttered.

“Quite right, she nearly made a complete mess of things, let’s make it two dozen before we sign.”

“Sign, or sure, yeah…” the Texan drawled.

“Now, Ms Holcroft, you can count I think, you know the drill.”

“Yes sir.”

The cane landed with a satisfying crack.

“Two thank you sir, may I please have another.”

Abaconti handed the Texan a pen. A chip off the old block, he thought as Hen squealed for the third stroke.

Ends