“All right, Miss Sendak, you’ve asked for a very severe punishment, and now you’re going to get it.”

Mr Mortimer considered possibilities. The uniform would come off soon, but I liked its mixture of innocence and depravity, and I knew that Chloe had gone to a lot of trouble to set this up. It could stay on for now. I let the strap thwack onto my palm again, looking into her eyes. “What happens to naughty, cheeky girls?”

“It’s sweets, isn’t it, sir?” (Then we can do a Curly-Wurly joke.)

“They get given sweets and taken to the movies, sir?” Sir. I’d never been called sir before. It sounded sweet from her mouth, and satisfying. Yes. I would be sir.

“You will be taken, girl. But not to the movies. And not yet.” That was good for impromptu, I thought. I was starting to get the hang of being Mr Mortimer. “I want you to hold out your hands, Miss Sendak. If you could put both your hands together, palms upward?”

See? I was terrible at giving orders. But I swung the strap onto Chloe’s bed. I knew how to do that. It really was loud, and it made an impressive dent in her bedclothes where it had landed.