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The ferals go to School

17th June 2013 by Helena Leave a Comment  

I have decided to try my hand at an internet bestseller. It worked for 50 Shades so why not? This is not going to be badly-written porn though, rather more in the Enid Blyton vein of writing. Let me know what you think….

Chapter One

“What is the naughtiest thing a girl has ever done at this school?”
As she sat in her office gazing out of the window contemplating the several hundred bits of loo roll on the lacrosse pitch, Priscilla Pontsford, headmistress of Shaw House School for Girls, remembered those words and wondered why she hadn’t picked up on them at the time.
They had been uttered by a young lady called Kitty as she was being interviewed for a place in Form III, along with her pretty little sister Samantha, better known as Sam, who was going into Form II. This was only a matter of weeks ago and since then the girls had settled in to school life with remarkable ease, especially considering they had never been to an English school before. Some might say with rather too much ease.
Mrs Pontsford turned her gaze from the window to the school records now sitting on her desk. She flicked through Kitty’s file and interview notes. When questioned whom she would most like to take to the Antarctic the girl had responded: “John Terry.” At the time Mrs Pontsford had no idea who he was, but assumed he was a rather common uncle or relation of some sort. Further investigation today had revealed he was a footballer. More alarm bells. This was clearly not the sort of girl Shaw House needed. But here she was, and so was the loo paper all over the lacrosse pitch.
“Miss Blythe,” she called her secretary on the intercom. “Send the five girls involved in the incident in here, I will deal with them now.”
“Yes Mrs Pontsford,” replied her dozy assistant, who for once was awake. Nothing like a crisis on the lacrosse pitch to get the juices flowing. “You can go in now girls.” She heard her say through the door. Seconds later it opened and four tall, slim, scarily self-assured young thirteen year olds traipsed in wearing their skirts, as always, far too short. Not even when being reprimanded did they have the decency to comply. Mrs Pontsford sighed and glared at them all. This time, she vowed to herself, the punishment would be harsh enough to make them think twice before pulling any more stunts. Order at Shaw House must be restored. And so must the correct wearing of the hallowed tartan uniform.

After their telling off the Form III girls went back to their dorm. There wasn’t really much choice for them, as they were gated for two days so not allowed to go anywhere but lessons, dining room and dorm.images
“What a bore she is,” said Milly, flicking her blonde hair and scrunching up her nose, a gesture, which to those who knew her meant she was irritated.
“Totes,” agreed Tilly, her best friend. “It’s only a bit of loo paper.”
“It was a bit naughty though,” countered Georgina, the only one of the group who found their japes a little nerve-wracking.
“Ha! This was just the warm-up,” said Kitty. “Last one to the dorm’s a rotten banana!” She raced off down the corridor thus breaking yet another school rule. Tilly and Milly raced after her, leaving Georgina in their wake, worrying about them getting caught.
Being gated was not the only punishment they had been given. Their phones were going to be taken away for a week. This was no great hardship, at least not to Kitty who had what she called her “spare phone” to hand in at times like this. Most galling though was the fact that they were going to miss the weekend social with the local boys’ school, Harrington Hall.
“Soooo annoying,” wailed Kitty as she flung herself on her bed. “I was finally going to meet Jack.”
“How long have you known him now?” asked Milly.
“Two months, can you believe it? And we haven’t even met.”
“Well then you can’t really say you know him,” a voice piped up from the corner of the room. It was Natasha, the Russian billionaire’s daughter. No one liked her since the ‘hair removal cream on the hairbrush’ incident where she’d totally lost her sense of humour and reported them to old Badger Brigit the housemistress.
“Of course she can,” chorused Tilly and Milly.
“I know people who have been out with boys they met on Facebook and even chucked them before they met them,” continued Tilly.
“It’s called safe sex,” added Georgina. This was why they all liked Georgina. She might not be the bravest of girls, but she as almost certainly the cleverest. And she also wasn’t too pretty to pose a threat to the blonde supremacy of Milly and Tilly. Kitty was dark, so she was a different kind of pretty altogether. And as a foreign student, despite being English, far too exotic to ignore.
No one had really got to grips with Kitty’s background yet. When asked where she lived she replied with a name of somewhere unpronounceable in the Middle East. Rumours circulated that her father was a pirate, or even a fugitive (though no one knew how to spell fugitive or what it meant). She had been dropped off by her mother who seemed fairly normal but one never could tell. Her tuck box was always full, how was that possible? Even Georgina wasn’t able to work it out; hers seemed to have a self-emptying mechanism.
So Kitty quickly gained a reputation as a Pippi Longstocking type character, only much prettier, and without the monkey. Well, unless you counted Sam.


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Helena Frith Powell was born in Sweden to a Swedish mother and Italian father, but grew up mainly in England. She is the author of eleven books, translated into several languages including Chinese and Russian. She wrote the French Mistress column The Sunday Times about life in France for several years. She is a regular contributor to the Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday, The Times, Daily Telegraph, Tatler Magazine and Harper’s Bazaar.

Helena has been the editor of four magazines, including M Magazine, a supplement for the Abu Dhabi-based National Newspaper and FIVE, a high-end fashion glossy, also published in Abu Dhabi. Helena was also editor-in-chief of 360 Life, a quarterly glossy magazine published with the Sports 360 Newspaper in Dubai, part of the Chalhoub Group.

Helena contributes regularly to UK-based newspapers and magazines and holds a Masters in Creative Writing from the University of Cambridge. She is working on a thriller set in Sweden as well as a novel about the relationship between Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield called Sense of an Echo.

In 2022 her short story The Japanese Gardener came second in the Fish Publishing Short Story Prize. One of her stories was also shortlisted for the Bridport Short Story Prize. When she’s not writing, she works as a headhunter for the media and entertainment industry for the Sucherman Group. 

Helena, who was educated at Durham University, lives in the Languedoc region of France with her husband Rupert and their three children.

Bibliography

More France Please, we’re British; Gibson Square 2004

Two Lipsticks and a Lover 2005; Gibson Square (hardback)

All You Need to be Impossibly French; (US version of above) Penguin 2006

Two Lipsticks and a Lover; Arrow Books (paperback) 2007

Ciao Bella Gibson Square; (hardback) 2006

Ciao Bella Gibson Square; (paperback) 2007

So Chic! (French version of Two Lipsticks) Leduc Editions 2008 (also translated into Chinese, Russian and Thai)

More, More France; Gibson Square 2009

To Hell in High Heels; Arrow Books 2009 (also translated into Polish)

The Viva Mayr Diet; Harper Collins 2009

Love in a Warm Climate; Gibson Square 2011

The Ex-Factor; Gibson Square 2013

Smart Women Don’t Get Wrinkles; Gibson Square 2016

The Arnolfini Marriage; Amazon Kindle December 2016

Smart Women Don’t Get Wrinkles (paperback); Gibson Square spring 2018

The Longest Night; Gibson Square spring 2019

 

 

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