The doors must have been open because I could hear brief muffled voices, mostly that of Mrs Gillingham, with a ‘sorry’ or two from Andrew. Then, after a moment or two silence, I heard what I had been dreading – the unmistakeable sounds of a spanking.

Prep-school training kicked in and I counted the smacks – we were a quite heartless bunch of hooligans and took great delight in noting ‘how many’ our classmates got on these occasions. I counted 15.

My spirits rose a little. Fifteen smacks with her hand over my shorts wouldn’t be so bad – they couldn’t be. I had collected the occasional smack over shorts at school and they were nothing much to worry about, nothing like as bad as the cane over pyjamas.

I heard a door shut upstairs and Mrs Gillingham coming downstairs. When she came back into the living room, she just walked over to a straight chair (which she had to pick up from where we had knocked it over) and sat down.

To my dismay, I saw she was holding a rather large and ominous-looking bedroom slipper. Well, I knew from school that attempting to delay punishment was asking for further trouble so as soon as she sat down, I didn’t wait to be called over but went across and stood by her knee.