The best view at St Mary’s Catholic School is from the top floor of the main building, right under the famous golden statue of the Virgin Mary. From there, you can see the whole campus, which is laid out like a cross, with Academic Quad to the north, the well-swept green Girls’ Quad of six stone dorms to the east, the identical Boys’ Quad to the west, and straight ahead an avenue of pine trees leading down to the shining lake.

Unfortunately, the view inside isn’t quite so hot – because it’s the principal’s office.

It’s a place I know all too well. I know the squeaky green leather chairs that stick to the back of your thighs. I know the framed mosaics of saints being martyred in gruesome and bloody ways. I know the smell of old bibles and disapproval. And I definitely know that look on Father Hughes’s face; that grim, set-jaw look that makes the old guy from Up look like a flirty fireman in a shirtless calendar.

‘Well, Ms Heck,’ he began, ‘here we are, only your second day back on campus, and already I find you in my office.’

‘Good to be back!’ I said cheerfully. ‘I see you put up a new mosaic – St Agatha on a Bed of Hot Coals. It really livens the place up.’

Clearing his throat, Father Hughes reached for a square sheet of yellow paper that was also very familiar to me: a St Mary’s Incident Report.

‘Last night,’ the principal pronounced, in his imminent-plague-of-locusts voice, ‘you, Alexandra Heck, were found face down in the shrubbery behind St Ambrose Hall. You were uninjured apart from mild scratches and bruises …’

Pretty accurate, I thought – and it was nice of Father Hughes not to mention the fact that I’d been found with my miniskirt around my waist, my ‘Bow Down Bitches’ boyshorts in full view and Charlie the Labradoodle’s tongue in my ear.

‘… and were obviously not in your own dorm at the time of curfew.’

Father Hughes picked up a mahogany stamp from an inkpad. The all-powerful seal of St Mary’s. Time to get serious. He held it poised over the incident report and asked, ‘Do you dispute the accuracy of this interpretation?’

‘No, I do not,’ I said primly. I could get serious, too. ‘I missed curfew. I don’t dispute that.’

Father Hughes lowered the stamp towards the yellow sheet. But, just as the ink was about to make contact with the paper, I continued, ‘But I do wonder why Colin Nowakowski isn’t also here right now.’ I gestured to the empty green leather chair next to mine.

‘Mr Nowakowski was in his dorm at curfew.’

‘With a girl!’ I protested. ‘Guys and girls are never allowed in each other’s rooms! Isn’t that in, like, the “hair shirt and chastity belt” section of the school rulebook?’