We know the boys were caned with six strokes each because they told us so; by now the girls were regarded as classmates with similar status to the boys. We didn’t actually get to see the marks but they told us it was a standard ‘trousers and pants down’ caning applied with them bending over the headmaster’s desk.

What we all wanted to know was; what happened to Helen? She was certainly gone for quite some time. The headmaster managed to cane the three boys in little more than fifteen minutes but Helen still had not returned to our common room after nearly an hour. We even checked the toilets to see if she was in there crying her eyes out or something, but she wasn’t. After another twenty minutes, during which we began to speculate she might even have been expelled, Helen finally reappeared just as most of us had to leave for our lessons. By the end of the day, no-one had been able to discover exactly what Helen’s fate had been. She was extremely quiet and hardly spoke to anyone, but there was no sign of obvious discomfort either in the area of her bottom or, as someone suggested, her hands.

Naturally, this set the rumour mongers into their best and most inventive action. The following day, everyone was talking about Helen and asking what had happened to her. I even had boys from the lower forms cheekily coming up to me and asking me for any details that I’d been able to discover. Several lower sixth boys asked Helen directly but she just shunned them. All this gossip must have got to her though because at the end of the day, when we were all together in our common room, Helen asked for everyone to be quiet. She announced that she, like the boys involved, had been summoned to the headmaster and dealt with for her offensive behaviour towards Mr Perkins. For those of us interested, she said with attitude, she had received corporal punishment from the headmaster and the matter was now concluded.