Every classroom window with a view onto the playground was colonised by faces, little noses pressed against the glass. The children’s fierce and uncompromising headmaster occupied the centre circle of the netball court, arms folded, foot tapping, about to get a taste of his own medicine. The younger ones squealed and giggled, watching this act of revenge unfold – a revenge that fell within the bounds of safety, the headmaster being in on the joke.

The sound of the Eldest Girls thumping their batons was thrilling in its barbarity. Boom boom boom boom – they counted the student body into another round of the chant.

Out you go, and stay you out,

We’re claiming back the day.

Say yes to fun, and in you’ll come,

Oh, master – whaddya say?

It was customary for Mr Crane to hold his ground for three renditions of the chant, then, loudly, playfully, he would agree to close the school. At this, everyone would spill from the building towards the chapel, so the festivities could begin. Mr Crane was well rehearsed after thirteen years in the post; he roared out his given line with Santa Claus good cheer: ‘Oh, all right then, let’s take the day off!’

But – boom boom boom boom – the Eldest Girls counted the pupils in for another round of the rhyme.

Then another.

Then another.

By the seventh turn, the girls were chanting alone and no one was smiling, Mr Crane especially. The little children were confused and growing anxious.

‘What’s going on? Why aren’t we letting him back in?’ asked a tearful Second Year infant.

Their teacher, Barbara Stanney, exchanged worried glances with her assistant, Faith Moran, before hurrying to the main doors, where Ruth French and Benjamin Hailey were already trying to prise batons from the unrelenting clutches of Anna and Jade-Marie.

Britta, meanwhile, orchestrated an end to it all, flipping the lock of the double doors that led onto the playground, before kicking those doors wide open. She held her baton aloft for one brief, triumphant moment, then released her grip, letting it drop from this great height with a clatter, an action that only the handsome coycrock teacher seemed to find amusing.

Anna and Jade-Marie relinquished their batons in similar fashion – a high hold, a noisy drop – and before anyone could ask what on earth they were playing at, the girls called out to the younger years, who ran cheering from their classrooms, the tiniest ones grabbing the hands of senior pupils as they went. This small but buoyant gang poured out across the playground, flowing around their headmaster, still stranded there in the centre circle, not giving him a backward glance, as they made their way to chapel carried along in joyous song.

‘Look at them,’ Ruth French was heard to mutter, not disparagingly, ‘the Pied Pipers of St Rita’s.’