Chapter Six

My mind was made up: I wanted to be punished. I wanted to be marched up in front of the whole university and caned like a schoolgirl. Even the thought of it sent shivers down my spine--shivers that were half fear and half excitement. I felt as though I had something glowing inside of me, an ember that smouldered away at all hours of the day and night. I could think of nothing else.

However, my mission to get myself in trouble turned out to be harder than I at first thought. I'd always been a good girl and rule-breaking didn't come easily to me. I started small: running in the corridor, throwing little balls of paper during lectures, yawning loudly when the tutor was speaking. But the most I managed was to get sent out of class one rainy day after a week of minor mischief.

The trouble was, I was just too nervous. As much as part of me wanted to feel the sting of the cane, part of me desperately didn't. And I was just so used to being good and obeying all the rules that there was little contest between them.

If I was going to succeed, I decided, I would have to do something big. And I'd have to plan it out beforehand. And it would have to be something easy, something that I could definitely follow through with. It didn't take much thought to come up with the idea. I would do exactly the thing that Cherry and Elisia had been punished for. I would leave the grounds without permission, get drunk at a pub in the nearby village and then return to St Martinas and make sure I was caught as I snuck back in.

The next weekend I woke with my heart in my mouth. The plan that had seemed so simple and so easy a few days ago now loomed large in my mind. Was I really going to do this? Was I actually going to willingly subject myself to the punishment that had made Cherry and Elisia scream and cry and beg for mercy? But then as I thought back to the day when I watched that punishment, I felt the familiar ember of excitement flare to life in my stomach, and I knew it was what I wanted.

I had breakfast as normal, and then slipped away from my friends at the first opportunity. I fetched my handbag from my room and ran down to reception. Normally, whenever we leave school grounds we must sign out in the big book outside the front office, but today I simply walked straight past and out the door. I felt a little tingling in the soles of my feet: quite against my usual nature, I was breaking the rules, and it was strangely thrilling.