The word whore triggered a full-minute fit of coughing and wheezing in the vice-principal, like someone had just sprayed Justin Bieber’s cologne in his face. I was staring him down, my arms crossed challengingly across my chest. Mary Kate was gnawing at her cuticles, her little knees knocking together under her plaid skort.

When Father Vincent began to speak again, his voice was strained and high-pitched.

‘As you know,’ he began, ‘St Mary’s embraces the Catholic Church’s teaching that a genuine and complete expression of – ehem – love through … physical – ehem – means – cough, cough – requires a commitment to a total living and sharing together of two persons in marriage. This is the reason students who engage in – ehem – sexual union – cough, cough, cough, ehem – are subject to expulsion. And, of course, we as a school would never want to – ehem – support a production that would celebrate or encourage “activities” – ehem, ehem, ehem – such as – ehem, ehem, hack, hack, cough, cough, cough …’

Then he broke down completely into a hurricane fit of hacking – phlegmy, lung-rattling coughs, as if he was trying to hawk up Satan himself from his lungs. I was kind of bummed about it. What activities was he talking about? I really would have liked to know what a guy with a lifelong chastity vow imagines we’re getting up to. Like, just crazy, animalistic, green-plaid orgies in the math classrooms at night?

Father Vincent yanked a drawer open and fumbled with shaking hands for a cough drop, which he unwrapped hurriedly and popped into his mouth. But, when he started to speak again, his voice was barely a wheeze, and Mary Kate, perched precariously on the edge of her seat and clearly terrified he was about to be carried away by another asphyxial spasm, cut him off.

‘What if we get rid of all the offensive language?’ she burst out.

‘Wait, what?’ I said. ‘I said we can cut the F-bombs, but –’

‘All the curse words, and anything else offensive!’

What the hell was Mary Kate doing? I hadn’t agreed to this! Cut out ‘anything else offensive’? Oh hell, no! Vagina Sudoku would have been better than this!

But clearly she thought she was on a roll. Now she was flipping rapidly through the pages, ruthlessly throwing phrase after brilliant phrase out the window because of a ‘shit’ or a ‘hell’ or a ‘screw’.

‘The word at the bottom of page two … the phrase at the top of page three … page four, the whole last paragraph …’

Father Vincent must have thought she was on a roll, too, because his cough had slowed. He leaned back in his chair, sucking his cough drop and following along, turning the pages of his copy and nodding thoughtfully.

‘So that just leaves …’ Mary Kate flipped back to the cover, which had the big, bold VAGINA on it. ‘Well, obviously, there’s the …’

‘Ehem, ehem –’ Father Vincent leaned forward in his chair again.