Free The Following Girls by Louise Levene Page A

copy typing but how bad could it be? Probably quite nice.
    She never really minded detention – better than lessons anyway. She had once spent a very pleasant lunchtime punishment removing graffiti from a batch of upper fourth French books. Someone had written ‘ pointless ’ in enraged capitals down both margins of a spread on the proper use of the past historic but the verb rubbish was all still perfectly legible. Why did it need to be removed? Pour encourager les autres ? Or because no one must ever know that the past historic had been invented by Rampton and White because there simply wasn’t enough French grammar to fill a textbook otherwise. Baker hadn’t been the first to set about those pages with the ink eradicator: there were bleachy blobs in the margin where other uncomfortable truths had been blotted out. French got off pretty lightly. A few of the other textbooks had been past saving, like the History primer where all the line drawings of historical figures had had their heads filled in with turquoise felt tip: Smurf Thomas Cranmer; Smurf Ignatius Loyola; Smurf Bloody Mary.
    By the time the bell went for break Baker had edited twenty-three atlases. The Snog Monster seemed almost pleased.
    ‘We’ll worry about Ceylon another time,’ she conceded, indulgently. ‘And I hope that will teach you to wear the right shoes in future. Off you go now. I need to memo Miss Drumlin and I have to get your pink slip done for Dr O’Brien.’ An almost nasty smile as she saw Baker’s flinch of surprise: ‘You didn’t think you were going to get off that easily did you?’

Chapter 5
    It had actually been a Miss Drumlin detention that brought the four Mandies together in the first place. Some row about name tapes had prompted her to keep the four first years behind, sorting lost property in the hockey hut one afternoon, and when they’d finally finished they had all scurried guiltily down the road to the out-of-bounds Victory Café. Bunty, who’d already eaten most of Baker’s Cornish pasty at lunchtime, had scoffed an entire toasted sandwich and was on her second glass of Tizer when her face suddenly fell as she spotted the multi-chinned profile of Mrs Mostyn gliding past the station at the wheel of her little snot green Morris Minor and drawing to a halt just beyond the bus stop. She walked back to the café and stood on the other side of the glass and stared at them. It had reminded Baker of the zoo but she wasn’t sure which of them was the animal.
    Mrs Mostyn beckoned to them with a fur-lined hook of kid glove which then uncrooked and pointed to the car. Waving aside their buts and can’ts about violin lessons and trains to catch, she had driven them back to the now empty school. A trio of girls from a rival grammar who were draped against the record shop window had watched, laughing as she bundled them into the back and stuck up two fingers as the Morris pouted off up the hill.
    Eating toasties in local cafés had never featured on the Fawcett not-to-do list but a staff meeting was hastily convened (Mrs Mostyn, Dr O’Brien and a passing Biology mistress who had stayed late to refresh the formaldehyde round the yellowing pickled baby). The three had decided that punishment of some kind was definitely in order and the offence was roughly translated into ‘Unschool behaviour’. All four sets of parents had been telephoned to come and fetch their errant daughters. Mrs Stott and Mrs Bunter-Byng pitched up first and led their daughters to the school gate with wait-till-I-get-you-home faces, although new girl Bunty had seemed oddly relaxed for someone in so much trouble.
    ‘Thought you’d be out getting Dominic.’
    ‘Dress rehearsal.’ Then a smile (a very small smile, like a coin left in the powder room) for Mrs Mostyn.
    ‘ Hamlet ,’ she explained.
    Bunty had opened her mouth to add ‘Gertrude’ but a warning glance made her think twice.
    Baker’s dad had been out at a site inspection so Spam had come