Free Six Very Naughty Girls by Louise O Weston Page B

holding the cane.   She didn’t want to meet the eyes of any of her school friends.   What must they all be thinking of her?   Mrs Kent had made it sound so awful!
     
    The truth was much more inconsequential.   The day before Mary and her boyfriend, a sixth form prefect at a nearby boys’ school, had gone to The Beehive during dinner hour for drink or two.   It was a daring thing for a girl like Mary , who had never been in serious trouble at school to do, but she knew that other girls had done the same and got away with it.   She knew that, if caught, she could get the cane but she really hadn’t thought it was likely that Mrs Kent would cane a fifth year girl like her for a first offence.   The risk had made the meeting all the more exciting.
     
    Unfortunately for Mary , the reputation of The Beehive as a pub where underage drinkers, even if wearing school uniform, would be served had become wider knowledge.   A team of undercover television journalists had staked out the pub.   When Mary and Alan came into the pub, the TV people must have thanked their lucky stars and, without revealing their presence, they filmed everything the teenagers did – the purchase of alcohol, drinking it, smoking cigarettes, their fumbled kisses. Even the swear words used by the pair of them were surreptitiously recorded!
     
    Neither of them had realised that anything was amiss when they parted to go back to their respective school and Mary had remained in happy ignorance until just before going home time.   Then she received a message to go to see the headmistress.
     
    Mrs Kent had been very angry.   The journalists had identified the schools concerned from the uniforms and someone had been to interview her.   She was shocked at the irrefutable evidence that a girl from her school had been drinking at a pub and was almost panic-stricken when she realised that footage of a Longton Hill girl out of school bounds at lunchtime and smoking, drinking and swearing was going to be broadcast on national television.   By the time the oblivious Mary arrived, Mrs Kent was very angry indeed.
     
    Now all eyes were on Mary as she stood up in her place.   Everyone was wondering just what she could have done, especially the other girls in 5A who had always thought of Mary as one of the better behaved girls in their class.
     
    “It is disgraceful to you that this is necessary, Mary ”, said the headmistress, “but it is necessary.   Up here!   Now!!”
     
    Poor Mary had to walk almost the entire length of the hall.   She tried her best to look as dignified as she could in the circumstances without seeming defiant in a way that might make the headmistress even angrier.   But it was awful having everyone looking at her; her friends, her teachers, girls who hadn’t known her name before all wondering what on earth she could have done and knowing that this tall sixteen year old girl would soon be bending over in front of the whole school with her bottom exposed to the headmistress’s cane.
     
    Mary could not remember exactly what the headmistress had said to her at their meeting but she knew that her slightly rebellious trip to the pub at lunchtime had become something altogether more serious and   that she was to receive a public caning.
     
    When she had got home she had told her mother, and later her father, everything that had happened.   She knew that she had no choice.   Public canings were so rare that they always created a massive scandal; and even if her parents had not heard anything from someone at the school, film of Alan and her drinking and smoking at the pub was going to be broadcast to the nation!
     
    Mr and Mrs Bowyer were shocked, but were sympathetic to their daughter’s situation.   Mary had been caught smoking and drinking during the school day and she had known that she had risked the cane by doing so.   But they felt that she was very unlucky to be getting a public caning and the additional punishment