Endgame: A Trip Constrained In School Uniform & A Time-Twisted Tutelage

(“Humiliation is a strictly disciplined pleated-skirt gymslip, rubber-lined gabardine mackintosh, starched school blouse, tie and latex-lined school knickers. To be spanked or caned over the knee of a strict Victorian governess or nurse or to suffer spanking or caning with a bamboo or rattan cane, in plastic pants or in straightjacket restraint bondage in an asylum with head shaved and wrists bound”)

Beyond the main gates the narrow, branch-roofed lanes stealthily skirted around the more treacherous parts of the moors. Cutting along densely forested hollows long sculpted by moorland run off and tracing out contours, boundaries and land-owner’s rights, the route painfully meandered and writhed as if agonising over direction at every turn. Where sunlight had previously flickered hypnotically through the green broad-leafed canopy a nocturnal gloom had now settled in and rain bucketed, bringing leaves and showers of twigs with it.

In due course, minor country roads, village-lined and quaint-bridged, had been reached - then trickled through until opening into more major thoroughfares, themselves mere tributaries of the arterial motorway system and the very backbone of Britain. Then had come the safe monotony of the motorway itself; the inevitable speed restrictions, the coned-off sections and the frustration of the equally inevitable tailback. And through it all nary a sigh nor groan of discomfort nor disturbance of any sort had disturbed the two deep-slumbering girls, both propped up in the back seat and securely strapped into what amounted to a pair of scaled-up, adult-sized toddler safety harnesses; an arrangement of broad shoulder straps and waist belts fabricated in the usual tough webbing car seatbelt material and designed specifically with the safety of the ‘learning impaired’ young adult in mind - should any awkward questions be asked - having tamper proof fastenings and discreetly locked attachment points. In its turn dawn had risen, the lifeless grey morning light adding its own dispiriting company to the gentle snuffling and sleepy shallow breathing of her pretty young passengers - there would be another three exhausting hours of non-stop motorway driving before, with a sigh of relief, Julia Soames would sight the turn off.

Only now, as they were approaching the house, did either girl stir. In the back, Susan Stringer, her eye lids fluttering like petals in the breeze, the draft from the now wound down driver’s window quickly chilling the car’s interior, was twisting and turning her neck and rocking her head, squinting in the morning rays and trying to throw off the ache of a night spent seated - only to be reminded once more of the discomfiture of the tightly-buttoned and stiffly-starched high collar of the school uniform blouse she was now required to wear.

The tightly-belted nipped, waspish waist-band of the gymslip and the uncompromising over-warm confinement of the heavyweight white nylon full-length under-slip, form fitting and sheath-like, were making their presence felt in no uncertain terms. Her tightly constrained waist was sore and damp beneath her ribs, the long sleeves of her green and white striped blouse clung to her arms, the fabric no longer crisp but sodden from the infiltration of moisture from her skin, and perspiration tickled and trickled irritatingly down the centre of her back - an affect at least partly due to her keenness to retain her cape, despite the warmth of the car’s heater in the yielding clinginess of the rear passenger seat’s venerable leather upholstery.

The latter garment was an anachronistic thing not unlike the sort of thing that would have been worn by the district nurses of old and fastened with a ribbon bow at the neck, just below the knot of her school tie and in such a way that the stiffened collar of her school blouse would lie above it. Of a light-grey gabardine and waterproofed by way of a rubberised interlining layer, that lay behind the lining proper and added greatly to its weight and warmth, the cape was of a length that brought its hem to just below her knee when walking. Although left open at the front she could nevertheless gather it about herself, rather than expose to the world the embarrassing matching, old-fashioned childhood garment she had on beneath it. It was a vanity that now, in her present uncomfortable and sticky state, she had come to regret.

The folds of nylon-lined rubber-backed fabric lay open now, in any case, to either side of her frontage, the tailored bib-like bodice of her gymslip protruding through, pressed outward by the very maturity that the juvenile garment seemed at first sight to be designed to deny. Momentarily, despite her discomfiture, she had made as if to defensively pull those folds around her, but her wrists were constrained and crossed meekly in her lap - each encircled by a broad band of the same grey webbing fabric as the safety harness’s lap belt, of which the arrangement formed part.

She looked down at herself, as much as the stiffened blouse collar would allow: How odd it was that she should be quite so distressed about the outfit - yes it was embarrassing, there were so many odd little features about it that seemed to serve no other purpose other than to enhance the wearer’s sense of humiliation - but the way she felt about it, her distress, seemed so out of proportion. She dreaded being seen in it, really dreaded it; seeing it all laid out there in the doctor’s office for the first time had left her experiencing a similar emotion to that she would customarily feel if a spider was to scurry across the bathroom floor in front of her or she was to brush past a web occupied by one of those loathsome fat orange spiders that would invade the bushes and flowerbeds of Aunt Julia’s garden as autumn approached. She thanked God that she had never actually had one of those disgusting creatures get on her and yet somehow she knew that if it had ever come about, the way she would have felt about it would have not been dissimilar to the way she felt about being dressed in that uniform. It was like some sort of deep-seated phobia. That was it - she had become phobic about it; or rather about being seen dressed in it. It was something that had intensified with every button she had done up - and with it had come a deep sense of shame, inexplicable in its intensity.

She had felt clammy, cold, sick to the stomach, her cheeks burning like hot coals. But the alternative had been to disobey the doctor, something that filled her with a similar inexplicable dread, an unimaginable dread - and there, resting on the table in front of her, had been the doctor’s crook-handled bamboo cane; an unveiled threat and a statement rolled into one and pointedly left in plain sight of all present.

And all this had been in front of her aunt - the doctor had actually asked her if she would prefer a few strokes of the cane across her bare behind; right there, in front of her aunt! Then there was that other bombshell; the doctor had told her that she could either go with Aunt Julia, there and then - although she was going to have to return in the autumn to start the whole thing afresh - or her aunt was going to be going on a cruise with her hated stepmother and she would have to wait out the rest of the summer confined in the clinic, cooped up in one of their ‘holding rooms’. And none of that time would count towards her fulfilling her contract; they were still going to insist that she successfully serve out a full three-months as a clinical study ‘volunteer’ before she would be allowed to leave. It would still be autumn before a place became available back on the workhouse-regimen study that she had just come from - and in the meantime she would be placed in what amounted to solitary confinement, other than for her regular visits to the doctor’s office.

Psychological appraisal, behaviour modification therapy, speech therapy and all the rest - all that would continue; and she felt sure that it was part and parcel, in some way, of the way she now felt about things; about that school uniform for instance, her almost total inability to disobey the doctor and the nurses, the way she now felt almost grateful for the slightest words of praise, despite the way they treated her, even the way she went meekly along with the speech therapy sessions, despite the underlying suspicion that it was in some way more cause than cure. What was more, she would remain under the strict disciplinary regime of the hospital throughout, be subject to corporal punishment as necessary and be kept in that ugly green-striped prison uniform dress. The latter she found almost as shaming as the prospect of the school uniform she was being proffered - just being made to appear in front of her aunt in it had brought tears to her eyes and made her break down in the utter humiliation of it; that was an awful thing for them to have done.

Yawning, the urge to stretch stifled by the constraint of the safety harness’s broad webbing straps and her strictly-corseted torso, Susan Stringer glanced to her right, remembering for the first time the oddly vacant-looking girl who had been led out to join them at the hospital. Aunt Julia clearly knew the girl, whoever she was - she had certainly shown no sign of surprise at any rate. For a time, a heavy drugged weariness having again begun to swim over her, she blearily watched the shallow, rhythmic rising and falling of her more conventionally attired companion’s bosom. Obviously left braless beneath the thin tented fabric of her tee shirt, there was no such restrictive discomfort for her - if one was to discount the poor girl’s leg callipers and neck brace that is. Idly, she wondered what was wrong with her, what had happened - an accident, perhaps? Whatever; at least she was dressed normally; she did at least look her age, whatever her circumstances - about eighteen, she estimated.

The other girl being clearly lost in the land of nod and snoring contentedly, her attention returned to her own circumstances: Ahead a gravel driveway curved steeply to the right, lined on both sides by dwarf confers that alternated with black-painted, mock-antique (or at least so she assumed) carriage lamps mounted atop barley-sugar twist cast-iron posts. The latter could just as easily have formed part of Jack the Ripper’s old Whitechapel, had they been lit by gas - as it was, electric bulbs replaced gas mantles and glowed still, despite the arrival of the dawn.

Wherever they were, they were not on any public road, so they had arrived somewhere - but where? It certainly wasn’t Aunt Julia’s farmhouse-style country cottage, neither was it her own home. For that at least she was grateful - her stepmother was the last person she would want to encounter, dressed as she was. She would have to face off against that woman at some stage, but not now and not dressed as some sort of strictly-disciplined, bygone-age, reform-school girl -particularly not while half a dozen purple, swollen and deeply corrugated cane wheals still throbbed in time with her heart across her bottom.

That last thought brought her mind back to her more immediate discomfort. Seized with frustration and irritation she begun to furtively shift her weight from one full buttock cheek to the other, then back again, all the time keeping one eye on the driver’s rear-view mirror, lest she be castigated for fidgeting. In that respect, in keeping her mindful of the institution’s discipline and that she remained under the institution’s authority and would have to conform to their restrictions and dictates, the uniform was already serving its purpose well. Psychologically, it kept her linked to the hospital as if by an invisible chain by which she might be tugged back at any moment. Despite having been temporarily released into her aunt’s custody she was anything but a free woman - a whole raft of restrictions and provisos had come with her release and now bore down upon every aspect of her movements and activities.

She was not to be allowed contact with any of her old friends. Not that there were any that she hadn’t lost contact with over the period that she had lived with her aunt, let alone during the time she had spent in the hospital - Aunt Julia had seen to that in her own inimitably subtle way. In fact the guidelines had been worded in such a way as to pretty much stymie any social contact, outside of her aunt, the psychotherapist she would be regularly visiting and their immediate circle.

But there had been more: Newspapers, magazines and periodicals, television and radio and anything else that might “over-excite, disturb or concern her unnecessarily” were to be kept from her; she was not to have access to the telephone nor to computers nor have possession of writing materials nor any device or object through which she might harm herself or that might result in her becoming unduly stressed. She was at all times to be under the direct supervision of either her aunt or someone of authority appointed by her aunt and with prior approval by the hospital and she was not to leave her aunt’s house, or wherever else she might be staying, unaccompanied. ‘Appropriate measures’ were to be in place to ensure her compliance to this latter rule.

Susan already knew something of what ‘appropriate measures’ might imply - she had lost the privilege of being able to come and go as she pleased only two months into her stay with her aunt, when she had been moved, on some pretext or other, lock-stock-and-bedspread, into the box-room on the top floor. Having been long used for the storage of various valuables, it had a sturdy, lockable door and bars on the window and - being double glazed - was as quite as the grave to boot. If left to the dictates of the hospital, she didn’t doubt that by now that cosy room would house little more than a bed - and probably a hospital bed at that - would have had the carpet replaced by spongy white linoleum, the walls whitewashed, and probably the window too, for that matter.

But Aunt Julia would never cooperate to that extent, in fact Susan couldn’t understand why she would co-operate at all - she would probably just play along with it sufficiently so as to ensure that the institution would have to pay out the fee; and it was a pretty penny, after all was said and done. But then, Aunt Julia had changed, somehow, hadn’t she? Ok, she had always been a trifle overbearing, even stern, but never in the manner in that she came across now, never domineering. And of course it been Aunt Julia, together with her psychotherapist friend, that had been so instrumental in persuading her to join the study in the first place - both of whom having, in common, a connection with the hospital and some sort of vested interest in the study itself, or so it now appeared. She felt sure that neither of them could possibly have any inkling of what went on in the place - clearly, the wool had been well and truly pulled over their eyes. And yet... there’d be no attempt to hide the doctor’s cane nor play down the attitude of the staff towards her - and she had been paraded in front of her aunt, straight from the ‘prison’ workroom, swathed in her own personal haze of intermingling carbolic soap and sour perspiration and still dressed in her sweaty, nylon, green-striped prison work-dress, its embroidered breast-pocket badge proclaiming her as an inmate of “St Mary’s Hospital, psychiatric wing” and boldly emblazoned with the two digits and single letter by which she had been pointedly referred to throughout the proceedings.

Aunt Julia had barely batted an eyelid, even though Susan knew well that her eyes would have been swollen and puffy and her face streaked with drying tears. If anything it had been the matching green and white striped Victorian-style bonnet that had seemed to draw her aunt’s eye and she had felt deeply wounded when, just for a moment, it appeared as if her aunt was actually stifling a giggle. That too had been emblazoned with her patient number embroidered in large bold black characters - yet the fact that she was uniformed and numbered and addressed by that number never seem to faze her aunt. Even the fact that the glossy, waist-length, blond hair that Aunt Julia had always taken such delight in brushing over and over practically every evening was now a thing of the past, replaced by short stubby black pigtails and tied with oversized green and white ribbon bows, had failed to engender comment or even the slightest betrayal of surprise.

Only a matter of minutes before, she had been punished and, of course, as was their way, she had not been permitted to wipe her face - that was never allowed; after a caning it was always ‘“ eyes down...straight back to work”. It had been one of those situations that was so typical of the place; she had not personally been at fault but another girl had fallen behind with her stitch-work and of course that had the follow-on effect of delaying the completion of the entire wedding gown.

They had been told that it was a short-notice commission for a very important patron and with a rigid deadline. As such, they had all been put to work on different aspects of the one dress. But there had been a weak link in the chain - and it is at the weakest link that a chain breaks. None of them could possibly meet their work quota for that day and so all had to be chastised.

Somehow, though, there was always some rationale through which all had to pay for one another’s mistakes - it had the effect of fermenting resentment between them and even though they were allowed no form of social interaction as it was, it caused each girl to in effect deepen her own well of isolation. Susan, for what it was worth, although “well down the line” and “coming along quite nicely” according to the reports of the nurses and staff, still held on to a little spark of compassion - she couldn’t quite bring herself to hate the reason for her tears. The poor girl had been struggling with a particularly intricate piece of lacework, repeatedly blinking and squinting.

It must have been obvious to all concerned that the work was straining her eyes, possibly even damaging her sight. It hadn’t been the first time that particular girl had been the cause of their punishment and it had been noticeable that her failing, with the attendant screwing up of her face and pained squinting, had gradually become more frequent overtime - to Susan and to just about anyone else of any intelligence it was quite patent that the young lady’s eyesight was deteriorating. Yet, despite being the least able of them all in that respect - and not possessing the most nimble of fingers - she always seemed to be allocated the most intricate of tasks. Fine bead work, minutely embroidered flowers and the most delicate of lace, all these and more were laid at her hands and the most inconsequential of faults and she would be made to pick apart her work and begin again.

Unbeknownst to the girls, there had indeed been a marked deterioration in that young woman’s distance vision. It was something that had been well-documented in eye test after eye test and the evidence languished in a buff folder on a desk somewhere. And there had been opportunity enough for many, many tests - she was one of those subjects that they quietly labelled as ‘long-term’, having progressed in stages through very many signed waivers, then through appraisals ending with more impressive signatures; there was money and favours involved in her incarceration, but more importantly, there was personal satisfaction. In short, it suited someone, somewhere, to have her there - indefinitely and kept under those particular circumstances to boot - someone who found little in life more satisfying than leafing through buff folders, medical reports, psychological evaluations and the results of eye exams and to whom the type of work she was allocated held a very special interest.

Yes, they had all been punished several times on account of that particular girl - even had they been allowed to intermingle and chat, she would undoubtedly have found herself ostracised. Yet had she been allowed to retain her glasses, then she might have still had a fighting chance. As it was, spectacles, as they were quaintly described in the staff handbook, were not part of the patient uniform.

Spectacles could be harmful or could be used to cause harm to others; as such, the powers that be had had no other course of action open to them other than to ban their wearing by secure-wing patients - even if, nominally at least, they might be volunteer experimental psychology test candidates.

But that recollection in itself opened up another can of worms; the dresses she had been made to work on in that little sweatshop of theirs, under the guise of experimental psychology - the bridal veils, wedding gowns and bridesmaids dresses - all had carried the label of her family company, the little exclusive business that her late father had built from scratch and that she was to have taken control of at age eighteen. It had been Aunt Julia’s persuasion that had first convinced her to consider the prerogative of accepting the earlier - and more traditional - definition of her ‘coming of age’, as specified in her father’s will, as referring to her twenty-first birthday.

She had been ensconced in the institution a considerable number of months by the time that the paperwork had come through. Whether it had been actually on her eighteenth birthday or after it - and if so, how long after - she had no idea. She knew only that by then she had changed her mind, having become concerned about the amount of control it would hand her stepmother over the company and the family finances - but also by then she had been in their hands long enough to be ready to sign practically anything if only they would release her from the project and simply let her go.

As it was they were not satisfied with that, it was not the option on the table - the only choice they had given her revolved around whether or not she wanted the stigma of having been a psychiatric patient hanging over her head and whether or not she wanted the University, that at that time she was supposed to be moving on to later in the year, to know that she had been held in a secure psychiatric unit; the part about her being a volunteer clinical research subject would of course have been left out. In order to avoid the latter she had been obliged to sign herself in as a self-admitted voluntary patient and in order to be allowed to do that she had first to sign to accept the age of twenty-one as the age she would receive her inheritance, being obliged to write something along the lines of how she felt she was too immature at present to take on the responsibility.

Then had come a few strokes of the doctor’s cane to encourage her before again she had been obliged to put pen to paper, this time to deal with the little matter of enduring power of attorney and to pass over control of all her financial dealings to her aunt - for what little they amounted to, consisting only of some small savings and the rather modest monthly allowance paid to her by her father’s estate. A couple of witness signatures provided by the doctor and a well-respected professor of psychology and the whole thing had been done and dusted; her stepmother had been handed complete control of the company and the rest of the family assets - at least up until her twenty-first birthday - and she had become a voluntarily admitted psychiatric patient.

If her stepmother was farming-out work to the place on behalf of the family company it seemed too much of a coincidence for her not to know about what went on - and more importantly from Susan’s standpoint, that her stepdaughter had been residing there.

Susan could only guess at the pleasure it must have given that hateful woman to know that her stepdaughter had been bent over a workbench, quite literally slaving on her behalf. But if her stepmother had found out she had been staying there and somehow had been able to involve herself with the hospital and with their research work, then that information could only have come from her ‘aunt’.

Yet, somehow Susan still clung on to the belief that Aunt Julia was on her side and that she would only have sided with the woman in order to eventually help mount a proper legal challenge - as she had always promised - once they had the funds she would earn by taking part in the project. Even if Aunt Julia really did intend to kowtow to all their stipulations, she knew she would rather stay with her then remain another minute in the institution.

But Aunt Julia had changed, there was no doubt about that; Susan knew that she would be strict with her, she had said so - and she knew what that meant. After all Aunt Julia had been the first person to have ever curbed her physically - she had caned her for the first time some months before she had applied for a place on the research project and it was a method that her aunt had used when she deemed it necessary from that point on, right up to the day she was admitted. But that had all been for her own good, her aunt had had little choice - she had caught her doing something that nice girls just didn’t do; and not once but many, many times. Her therapist had been informed and had condoned the method, opining that the behaviour was becoming ‘obsessive’ and that while she would suggest a form of aversion therapy, something they had begun to work on in the institution, perhaps in the domestic environment the older more traditional methods might be tried first.

It had been several months before they had first introduced her to corporal punishment in the unit, though. But there had been method in their restrained approach - they had wanted to mould her way of thinking first. By the time she had received her first institutional caning at the hands of a nurse, the mere sight of a nurse’s uniform had come to represent unassailable authority - that such a figure should have the right to reduce her to tears for some infraction or other had become an unquestionable truth.

They had tamed her, crushed her - what would have happen had she been left in their hands even longer, what would happen to her if she really did go back? She felt sure they had damaged her psychologically already - if she went back and they had their way, she might never recover her nerve, her gumption. But she would be going back - Aunt Julia had been quite adamant on that point. Susan would definitely be returning in the autumn. And, like it or not, until that time she could expect to wear nothing else except the absurd school uniform she was presently dressed in - other than for bed, of course, but she doubted if, even then, she would be free of their stipulations.

And she could forget university life for foreseeable future; she had been told that much. After three postponements they could no longer hold a place open for her. Aunt Julia had told her straight; she had only herself to blame - she should have tried harder to fit in and comply with the demands of the unit’s experimental protocols from the start. Meanwhile she was to consider herself still very much under the authority of the hospital.

Indeed, Aunt Julia had gone on to warn that now that she was officially registered as a self-admitted psychiatric patient, rather than the clinical research volunteer she had been initially, she could be pulled in at any point, quite legally, and kept for a seventy-two hour evaluation. From there it would be only a very short hop to finding herself compulsorily admitted - and that was what would be on the cards if she was to step outside any of the hospital’s stipulations regarding her behaviour or appearance while outside of the institution. Susan was pretty sure it was all a bluff, it certainly didn’t sound likely to be legal and she felt sure her aunt would soon relent somewhat once they reached her cottage... But what if it wasn’t; she’d heard all sorts of stories regarding the use of the mental health act to put people away...what if they did have the power, what then?...

Even with the morning breeze blowing in her face Susan Stringer had almost began to doze off again, the monotonous driveway seemingly meandering forever and her mind wandering through an equally confused maze of questions and recollections - but her aching limbs and overall discomfiture wouldn’t quite let her go. The detail had been slowly resolving itself in parallel with her growing wakefulness, but only now did it come into full focus - the metal suspender clips, digging into her flesh, itched and burned furiously where her weight bore down and her thighs, fuller now from her long months of confinement and inactivity, pressed outward insistently through the short gap left open between the stocking tops and her buttocks. The short, tight elastic of the suspenders themselves - and there were eight in all, four each side, running down the front and rear and inner and outer thigh - pinched and furrowed the soft skin of her upper thighs. But it was the clips fastening those dreadfully itchy bottle-green lyle stockings that were by far the major source of irritation; she could feel that the skin around them was deeply inflamed. Even though her weight buried those to her rear deep into her flesh, the suspender clips finding the soft crease between her buttocks and legs, it was the two on either inner thigh that were becoming the most troublesome. Her hose, being of opera-length, reached to the very top of the thigh, just below the buttock - the inflamed region of her inner thighs was therefore disconcertingly close to her more intimate regions and indeed the inflammation seemed to be spreading from either side, bridging across and encompassing that area; an effect amplified within the humid micro-climate of her rubber-lined school knickers.

This was a sensation she had experienced a couple of times before, albeit presently magnified a thousand fold, and infinitely more embarrassing. The first time had been long ago, the day she had made the mistake of buying cheap earrings from a market stool - somewhere in London it had been, though she couldn’t quite recall where. She could recall the cause, though - nickel. They must be nickel, she thought, oh my God - the itching! Yet her aunt knew of her allergy to the metal - and Aunt Julia had been consulted about the design of what the hospital had termed her ‘temporary-release uniform’; that much she had overheard. Oh God! Why? How could they have made such a mistake? Indeed, was it a mistake? But it had to be, surely they couldn’t be so cruel - and Aunt Julia certainly wouldn’t be so cruel... would she?

But her stiff limbs and aching muscles were only a part of it.

Even the occasional throbbing of the cane lines of the previous day and the numb burning of those fresher wheals, presently developing around those oh so tight suspender straps with their irritating metal clips that seemed to dig themselves deeper into her flesh with every bounce of the car’s suspension, did not tell the whole story.

Beneath it all there was the vice-like grip of the corsellete to contend with. While supporting those suspenders that were slowly driving her to distraction and forming the very foundation of that waspish profile - without which the tightly encircling waistband of the gymslip could not possibly have accommodated her - the unrelenting control of its complexity of straps, zips, buckles and hook-and-eye fastenings challenged her for every breath. Added to that was the further discomfiture of the garment’s under-belt - the latter, adjusted by four buckles on either side, was an accessory which, in its original historical context, was intended to reinforce the sagging muscles of post-pregnancy or the obese abdomen. Neither of these contingencies had any relevance to her whatsoever, of course. But the under-belt was to be included as part of her ‘stays’, as the staff had quaintly referred to her foundation-wear back at the hospital, nonetheless - it was about discipline as much as functionality, that much she understood.

Then there were the corselet’s rigidly under-wired bra cups to take account of. While not physically that uncomfortable, psychologically she found their effect the most disturbing of all. Their somewhat over-elevated support created a jutting bullet-breasted profile rarely seen since the late 1940s or early 1950s and of such an ironically aggressive thrust as to have required the specific tailoring of both the blouse and the gymslip’s open-sided bib-like bodice in order to accommodate her bust with any semblance of girlish modesty. And therein lay the very crux of the irony, the little seed from which, in expert hands, can be crystallised the most exquisitely soul-destroying and agonising humiliation. A rare, delicately crafted, shame that, given time, eats away at self-confidence, etches away vanity and can turn a vivacious, lively, blossoming young woman into a crushed child-like shrinking-violet wallflower - the sort of girl that waits at table with downcast eyes or kneels quietly on her heels at her mistresses side, her hands resting submissively, palms open and uppermost, in her frothy satin pinafored lap.

In the first place there was that ironic juxtaposition of the aggressively overly-mature sexuality - sketched out by her curvaceous, artificially enhanced profile - and the dependent, supplicating and submissively downcast nature demanded of her; all ‘seen and not heard’.

Then there was that aspect of innocent modesty, best exemplified by the sun-burst puddle of bottle-green knife-pleats encircling her on the tan leather upholstery and the coy peeking of old fashioned flannel school knickers. The latter - of a starkly-contrasting light-grey and anachronistically styled in the form of high-waisted, short-legged bloomers - were decorated at the leg-cuffs by threaded glossy bottle green ribbon that tied in bows to either side and that irresistibly drew the eye whenever the girl was seated and her skirt would ride up. Not that those ugly, broad leg-cuffs required any augmentation by tied ribbons for their security; they dimpled the flesh at mid-thigh as it was, their taut elastic and ridged rubberised underside clinging to the fabric of the thick stockings below as if striving to merge with them in their zeal to form a good airtight seal.

But then again - and in direct contrast, to the mundane, if old-fashioned, appearance of those childish underpinnings - one has to take into account the closeness of their fit to the more intimate aspects of her person. An embarrassingly revealing dimpling was notable around the crotch and - at the rear - her rounded, maturely-fecund backside looked to have been cleaved and sheaved so closely as to have been spray-painted in grey. The deeply-vanishing inwardly-sweeping back-seam was all but lost in the cleft between her buttock cheeks and pressed tightly against her rosebud in a perpetual sweaty kiss. Even that traditional outward appearance of innocent, passion-killing, flannel and kite-panelled double gusset hid a very untraditional rubberised lining that now slipped and slid with the slick oozed build-up of a night’s perspiration - and worse. And much to young Susan Stringer’s chagrin, none of this had been a matter of chance.

Manufactured of a very finely woven yet heavyweight flannel - only later lined with a thin layer of latex - the knickers possessed very little by way of stretch or give and that extreme snugness of fit was more due to their careful tailoring and cut then their actually being of a tight fit per se. There had been so many careful and often embarrassingly intimate measurements taken back at the hospital that it had seemed to have gone on for weeks. Her buttocks would be parted; the latex gloved hands of a nurse holding the cheeks wide apart, while the depth of the cleft was measured at various points. Even the protrusion of her labia had been carefully gauged and a tape measure, pulled tight up between her legs, had been pressed into service to measure the distance between her anus and vagina - each detail duly noted on a clipboard. Then she had been fitted, as one might be fitted for a bespoke dress or suit, not once but three times before they had been satisfied with the result. Marks had been made with chalk and pins inserted while she stood, naked from the waist up save for a transparent plastic brassiere - this provided especially for the occasion - and with her hands on her head like some castigated child.

Not that she had been able to directly view much the proceedings. She had been obliged, throughout, to stand with her chin held high and looking straight ahead, her arms aching with the effort of keeping her elbows sufficiently stiffly out to the sides while her fingers - barely brushing at the very tips - were kept just clear of her head and not actually resting upon it. It was a discipline so taxing that more than once in the proceedings she’d obliged the nurse to encourage her by way of a sound slap from the flat of her open hand across one side of her face or the other.

Her received impression was that these bloomer-style horrors had actually started out life as a pair of genuine, vintage school knickers which had somehow been obtained and which subsequently required these painstakingly alterations in order to meet the clinic’s exacting specifications. Indeed they still retained the traditional double back panel at the rear, but this was now bisected by an inwardly-sweeping back seam. The undergarment also still retained what appeared to be the original manufacturer’s label on the inside of the waistband - albeit now accompanied by an additional tab embroidered with the usual St Mary’s Hospital, secure psychiatric wing, identification and her patient number - as if in some way, perhaps psychologically, this was of some importance in the scheme of things; it was certainly unlikely to have been an overlooked detail.

Over all of that there was the full-length white nylon slip, currently ruched up around her hips beneath the gymslip’s knife-pleated skirt, the thick starched green and white striped form-fitting blouse and then the heavyweight polyester gabardine of the gymslip itself.

A dense bottle-green in colour, the smooth finish of the gymslip’s gabardine fabric gave the childish garment a modicum of sheen when viewed under certain lighting conditions - a characteristic, it seemed to Susan, that was most in evidence around the smoothly-sculpted tailored, pin-tucked lines of the bodice’s bib-like yoke, whereupon it tended to draw the eye to the mature out-swelling that, dressed as she now was, she was already beginning to wish she no longer possessed. Considered essential by the designers to ensure a pleasing ‘fall’, the garment sported a contrasting, light-grey satin-finish heavyweight lining, that on occasion could be glimpsed beneath a shoulder strap or catching the light from an upturned skirt pleat and that gave the garment a surprisingly weighty feel. Indeed, the gymslip’s closely fitted, tailored lines and over-warm construction served to add still more to the stifling sense of juvenile constraint and repression that the uniform had seemed to induce in the late-teenage girl from the very first moment she had first been put in it.

Then finally, there was the unrequited warmth of the light-grey cape - itself lined in bottle-green and trimmed with bottle-green and grey, diagonally striped, ribbon braiding so as to match the detail picked out on the gymslip and as with the latter, sporting her patient number in a large block of gold-threaded embroidery along with the words; St Mary’s Hospital, Reformatory School. Her vanity had insisted she retain the thing, even within the confines of the car, notwithstanding that humiliating identification - not that she could remove it now, restrained as she was by the harness. That she had been allowed her wish owed more to the anticipation of her self-inflicted discomfort than to any consideration for her emotional well being her ‘aunt’ might have had.

Everything about the uniform seemed designed for maximum inconvenience and discomfort. Even those horrid knickers hadn’t been deemed satisfactory in their original incarnation, despite all their troublesome alterations. They now fastened to her corsellete by way of broad rubber buttons sewn evenly spaced around the latter’s narrowest point, just above the hips, and locating into button holes formed in the deep rubber-lined waistband of the bloomers. The arrangement insured the unrelenting continuation of that snug fit throughout the day - and, of course, the irksome ordeal of having to fastened and refasten all six buttons in the course of her lavatory.

Then there was that ridiculously irksome and awkward method they had chosen by which to fasten the gymslip’s yoke. Two or three buttons running in a line across at the top of each shoulder would have been the traditional method, or sometimes the buttons would be mounted a short distance down the front of the shoulder straps or even at the point where the bib of the yoke met the shoulder straps at each side, so as to facilitate the younger child’s independence in dressing herself. No one, in that long gone age when such garments were commonplace -although even then, in its present configuration, likely confined to the junior miss - would have dreamed of designing something that fastened a good one third of the way down the back of each of its shoulder straps.

But that was exactly how the thing had been designed; fastening by a row of three tiresomely fiddly buttons, positioned just out of reach of her fingertips, whichever way she went about reaching around herself, and that required she be assisted in both dressing and undressing.

Similarly the striped school blouse, although sporting a traditional, high, stiffly-starched collar - traditional that is had she been some Edwardian or late Victorian boarding-school girl - and looking resplendent with the diagonally striped school tie tightly-knotted at the neck, departed from tradition in being fastened up the back by a myriad fiddly white plastic buttons.

First Impressions and a strict Victorian Governess

Ahead, viewed through the now road-grubby windscreen, rich red tulips vied for attention with a few struggling, limping daffodils and were interspersed here and there with dead and dying, shrivelled narcissi. Spring had arrived late this year and elsewhere the colours of early summer were mingling with vernal blooms long past retirement. Not that Susan, nor her unknown and still slumbering companion, would have known anything about that.

The clues were all there - and Susan couldn’t help but struggle with them - but had she the temerity to inquire she knew to expect a slap to the cheek or even a few strokes of the cane later in the day. The discipline that had started in the clinic was to be continued in Aunt Julia’s custody, she had no doubt about that. Had she not already been told, in no uncertain terms, that she was to speak only when spoken to? Not that she would she have been told the day, let alone the date, in any case - it was all part of the treatment, designed to foster in her a greater level of dependency on her carers, a childish docility and blind obedience to authority. It was a subtle thing, but one of very many subtle things - and sometimes it was the subtle things that were hardest to strive against.

She was gradually being turned into a psychological wreck; she could recognise it, yet could do nothing about it. Being told she was to wear some kind of special identifying uniform outside of the hospital walls had seemed like a joke - once out of their grasp and back with her aunt she thought she could say goodbye to all that, fight back, regain a modicum of self-confidence and a little independence. Now she knew better. She had been almost overcome with relief when the driveway had finally negotiated the last tight turn and opened up onto the broad gravel-surrounded, ovoid flower bed that fronted the house - but now, with that latter thought still resonating in her mind, the sight greeting her caused an audible gasp to flee her lips and her jaw to despondently drop.

Up ahead, in the driver’s seat, her aunt, or rather the woman she had come to accept as her aunt, grumbled inwardly at the lack of power steering as she brought the Jaguar sweeping around the floral island, the smoothness of the execution belying her road-weary exhaustion. In the back, biting her lip nervously in fear of retribution - she had been told twice, already, to remain looking straight ahead - Susan Stringer couldn’t help but glance up from the side window.

The house was unfamiliar, certainly nothing to do with either her aunt or her family. A large grey-stone-built house, it was an architectural delight of the mid-18th-century, possessing an elegance of line that, had circumstances been different, she would have considered quite enchanting.

Of two stories and having semi-circular dormer windows lining the frontage of the roof, thus providing a third, the building was adorned everywhere with pendulous violet bunches of wisteria, the plant clambering across the length and breadth of its yellow-grey block-stone walls. The flowers hung like blue-purple froth from the gnarled, writhing ancient-looking woody stems that, arising from either side of the façade, fanned out exploring around windows and probing under sills, twisting around down pipes before meeting and intertwining like lovers and garlanding the door with their blooms.

It was an imposing frontage for sure, yet not so as to justify what had seemed like miles of winding private drive and acres upon acres of open meadow land. The received impression was that here was some kind of outhouse set in the grounds of some fairly major manor house that, if such was indeed the case, lay some fair distance off, as she had seen nothing to indicate the existence of any other structure on their approach other than for a much broader, straight driveway that just seemed to dissolve into the mist and trees in the distance.

If anything was noteworthy it was that to one side, on the upper floor, all the windows seemed to be shuttered and huddled back, inset, behind cages comprising thick black iron bars that curved out and back from the stonework, above and below and across from either side. All else seemed perfectly normal but this one single incongruous feature, once noted, seemed to Susan to instantly destroy the peace of the place. It disrupted the symmetry of the façade like some brutish scar, and in so doing was disturbing in of itself - even if that malevolent air proved unfounded. But this was not the origin of her shock in any case. No, the latter had come in the form of the four figures that had come out to greet them.

Five curving stone steps, painted here and there by lichen in dusty blues and mottled roughened yellows, rose up from the gravel at the very centre of the frontage, the house being arranged with near perfect symmetry to ether side. The door had already been thrown back by the time they had pulled up and waiting on the half-moon stone apron of the uppermost step stood a tall dark haired, dark-eyed woman. Fair skinned and with notably refined features, her thick, long hair was pinned back severely and arranged into a high bun - her scrubbed fresh-faced, cosmetic-free complexion, although austere, if anything enhanced her high cheek-boned beauty and lent her an aura of command that was echoed and magnified further by her costume. Dressed from head to foot almost entirely in black, as if in mourning, she looked to have come straight from the latter part of the 19th-century or from the pages of some Gothic novel.

Although, from Susan’s judgment, probably not much more than thirty to thirty-five years of age, she was dressed as if to suite a much older woman - and a Victorian woman at that. A long black heavy silk dress swelled out full-skirted from her hips - exaggerating their broadness - and fell in long folds to its hem at near floor-length, whereat a pair of highly polished, Victorian, black button-fastening boots peeked out. From just beneath her chin, from where a broad white circular lace collar spread out, the bodice tightly buttoned over a substantially-mature bosom before sweeping acutely in to a waist that was tightly encircled by a broad, black belt - this having a large filigree silver clasp similar to the nurses’ belts of old - and that displayed an extreme of curvature that was only achievable by the strictest tight-laced whale-bone corsetry.

Exaggeratedly puffed shoulders tapered down to sleeves that terminated with close-fitting deep cuffs edged in lace to match the collar - these each fastening by way of a row of three in-line buttons that in their turn were each covered in the same black fabric as the dress, as were those on her bodice. Somehow the detail seemed to emphasise still further the aura of austere severity surrounding her.

Moments later and she was joined by another, this being a notably younger, woman - perhaps in her mid-twenties but, by Susan’s judgement, possibly of not many more years herself. She was dressed in the instantly recognizable uniform of a nurse, as might have been encountered in any British hospital of the 1960s, but with elements of styling so as to suit the era of the other woman’s costume - an ankle length pale-blue linen dress, high necked and having a high starched collar had been teamed with a voluminous smartly starched pinafore-apron, yet retained the three-quarter sleeves and elasticated arm-cuffs common in the 1960s. Ice-blue eyed and flaxen haired and very much of a Nordic stamp, she was coiffured much as the first woman, her hair being styled in a severe tightly-pinned bun, but hers was smartly surmounted by a high-fronted starched white nurses cap to match the apron - the very image of the strict children’s nursery-nurse or nanny of old, writ large.

Then, the first woman - the one in the Victorian black dress with its spreading tiered skirts - having raised her right hand as if in signal, two others emerged from the shadows, each taking her by the hand then curtsying low before standing with lowered eyes and bowed heads. Two girls, with short, side-parted, boyishly-short hair and dressed as Victorian schoolgirls, or rather, in a style suggesting a Victorian take on her own ridiculously juvenile garb, stood there - certainly one of the strangest sights Susan had ever seen; including her time in the institution. Under different circumstances she would undoubtedly have been stifling a giggle - as it was she was only too aware of the effect her own appearance would likely have had on others of her own age.

Stammering and Stuttering

Glancing back in the rear-view mirror, Julia Soames found herself smiling condescendingly at her adopted niece’s frightened, open-mouthed gawping. She was slipping, she would have to take greater care, become more guarded or she risked compromising the end result:

“You are going to be staying here for a time, just until I get one or two things straightened out on your behalf. I’m sure you and you new friend there will get along just fine here without me - and I’ll be back before you know it.”

“But, b, but, but...where a, a are we, where, where is this, aunty? How long a,a,and...and...who are th these, these p,people? A,a,a,and...who are th...they, why are they d,d...dressed like that?”

Julia Soames had been caught off balance by the improvement in her ‘niece’s’ fluency of speech now that she was outside the walls of the institution. The pauses and repeated words showed that the girl was still following the speech therapist’s instructions that she had been given in the institution. Which in turn showed that she was nevertheless still very self-conscious of her speech - something that those suggestions had been designed to ensure.

She knew Susan would have been taught to pause and to concentrate on the word she was trying to get out if she thought she was about to stammer - and to press her tongue up to the roof of her mouth while doing so, as a reminder. She would have been taught to always repeat a word, if she should stumble over it, until she could get it out correctly. Furthermore she would have been advised that, unless she felt absolutely one hundred percent certain she was not going to stammer, it was always better to avoid that particular word or phrase entirely - or even not to say anything at all, if it could at all be avoided. And of course that would have been backed up with the dire warning that it would only worsen her stammer if she failed to follow these instructions to the letter and that the more she allowed herself to stumble the more she risked her stammer becoming permanent.

Of course she had expected some improvement: Susan associated her impairment with her father’s lingering demise, but more so with her time at her Julia’s own cottage and then the four walls of the institution. Association, like suggestion, could be a powerful thing - now removed from those environments she was freed of those associations. But much in the way that phobias have been shown to propagate and gain strength from one another under certain circumstances, so one problematic situation can quite easily become associated with another - so deepening the problem. With such a vulnerable case as was her niece’s it was a delicate situation.

It was the magnitude of the recovery that had taken her by surprise. Given a few moments to regain her composure though and it could be easily dealt with - this was the perfect opportunity and it had to be grasped with both hands. At this point, after such a breakthrough, the girl’s self-confidence, what there was of it, would be growing in stature by the second and with every word she got out successfully - the human spirit could be remarkably resilient. The right comment or phrase at this moment in time could do more good than untold months of speech therapy - but, by the same token, the ill-considered word could do worse then unravel all those months of hard work. On what might appear to be the verge of recovery, such a setback could cruelly crush the sufferer’s spirit completely - she had to tread carefully, think quickly, if she was to fully exploit the situation.

“Now, now... why don’t you slow down, sweetheart? All those questions, all running into each other! How is anybody ever going to understand you if you insist on babbling on so? Now take your time and let’s start again. Think about what you’re trying to say before you say it and remember what your therapist said - practice each syllable in your head first and if you think you’re going to stumble then stop, start again and if necessary try to choose a different word that you think you’ll be able to get out without stammering. Now then, what did you want to ask me... come along, hurry it up just a little, there are people waiting - one doesn’t want to appear rude.

“P,p,pp...I,I,I me, mean...w,w,w, wwhere, wwwhe...where, wwwhere a,a,a,aaar, are, are, are....whe...wwwhere iiiii,is th ,th, th,th....I,I,I m,m,...

“Look, I’ve got to get out...hurry along for heaven’s sake, try again. Just try and get one word out, at least.”

“I,I,I, m,m,m,...oh....,p,p,please I,I,I c,c,ca ca can’t..I jjj,ju ,just”......’sob’.

Flustered tears had begun literally gushing down the girl’s flushed face - her instinct was to bring her hands up and bury her head in shame, the wrist restraints on the lap belt of the safety harness had other ideas. She was fighting for breath, now - something not helped by the constriction of her corselet and her other ‘underpinnings’ - and buried deep within a growing anxiety attack.

As for Ms Julia Soames: a conflicting frisson of emotions were surging around inside her - sympathy vied against guilty excitement - and she couldn’t help the latter’s betraying quaver colouring her empathic tone:

“You, can’t? ...you can’t get it out, is that what you’re trying to say? Well, look, just calm down a little, try to take deep breaths. Remember what Dr Ecclestone said to do in theses situations - don’t try to talk, it’ll only make things worse. You’re just too upset at the moment and you won’t be able to get any words out at all in that state - which will only make you still more upset if you try. It’s a vicious circle and one that we have to break - that’s why we have our little ‘no-talking’ rule. When I, or any one else kind enough to help you, gives you permission then you’ll find it much easier - that is because we are better placed to judge when you’re calm enough not to let your tongue run away with you, than you are.”

Turning off the engine, without a further word or acknowledgement to her securely restrained passengers, the other girl now drowsily greeting the morning sun, Julia Soames, stiff from the hours spent on the road, tentatively stepped out into the bracing Northumberland morning air. Many, many miles from their homes, her cottage, where Susan had spent so much of her time, the hospital or anything else much of note, even a vague inkling of the geographic location was beyond either girl. And she had gone to no little trouble to ensure that remained the case.

Not that either girl had had much idea of their point of departure, either. True, Susan had been told that the hospital resided somewhere in the West Country when she had first applied as a clinical trial candidate. But they had travelled by night and then - as now - she had ensured her ‘niece’ had taken just a couple of capsules or so on top of her regular sedative prescription before they had set out. She had slept soundly throughout the entire journey and once ensconced within the security of Dr Anne Ecclestone’s experimental psychology unit she would have known nothing more of the sights and sounds of the outside world, other than through their manipulations of night and day and any cues they might have decided to feed her.

As for the other girl, Meredith Hewson; well, as far as she was concerned, she had just woken up in hospital in plaster casts and leg-braces - she had never known much more than that, other than she had been moved at some point to a secure psychiatric ward in order to treat her ‘delusions’. And what a good job they had done too - the poor thing hardly knew reality from fantasy any more, was as docile as a doe-eyed fawn and would have signed her own committal papers at the drop of a hat.

Still, she could be taken much further yet - they both could - there was always a little spark of defiance that remained, those last embers were best lovingly deprived of sustenance rather than stamped upon.

There was more satisfaction to be from that approach - the way of artistry and subtlety - and the effect would be that much more permanent as a result.

She had dedicated much time, trouble and effort and it had taken much detailed, careful planning to get these two this stage. If the two of them had any idea where they were, just how isolated this place was, they would be amazed. But she could be certain that they were ignorant of the geography and the woman into whose care they were about to pass would go to great pains to ensure they remained so. That sense of disorientation, she knew, would leave the two of them easier to handle and more susceptible to the woman’s unique form of treatment.

A highly qualified psychotherapist in her own right, despite in her present incarnation being on paper at least employed as a children’s governess, her skills were exceptional. She could bring to heel even the most defiant, rebellious teenager without having laid hands on her - she had personally seen her bring a grown woman to tears by words alone and turn her back-chatting, argumentative, sharp tongued teenage sister - precociously erudite and eloquent - into a blushing, flustered stammering tearful rag doll of a child. Only then had she introduced them to her cane and strap.

Five months under her tutelage and subject to her special brand of discipline was going to work wonders for them, she felt sure. Yes, she’d set up a meeting for her little blushing Susan with her stepmother and her stepmother’s tame solicitor. But then it would be straight back to the clinic with her. Even if she wouldn’t sign the necessary papers, there was no hurry - there was a little over two years to run yet before she reached the revised age of majority she had agreed to. In the meantime, she would be surprised if she didn’t spend eighteen months of that behind bars in the workhouse unit, ironically sweating away at further lining her stepmother’s pockets. Yes, a delicious irony indeed - she couldn’t help but lick her lips at the prospect, a familiar excitement was beginning to rise in her that she could only hope she would not betray by flushing.

Bathed and glorying in the first warm rays of the morning sun - only now peering over the hedgerow extending out from the far side of the house - Ms Julia Soames, pressing both hands into the small of her back, pulled back her shoulders, stretching out cramped muscles and stiffened joints and shaking off the tiresome rigour of driver fatigue. Taking in a long deep breath, the ex-psychiatric nurse smiled to herself with tired satisfaction. The mingled scent of the north-east coast was refreshing to the senses; the combined notes of late-blossoming apple and cherry, the subtlety of magnolia and the headier perfume of jasmine floated on an easterly breeze flavoured with the salty-sandy tang of the distant North Sea dunes and the frothing grey tumult that lay beyond their protection. Characteristically for the area, she noted, the wind was already gathering in strength, rising with the rising of the sun - soon that clement breeze would be something less pleasant. But then, she reflected, it was the very proximity of that exposed coastline and the harsh climate that came with it which had helped maintain the isolation of the place over so many years, while so much of Britain had succumbed to the developer and to the horrors of urbanisation. It was this stark isolation that had been part and parcel of Lady Marchment’s decision to make her home here in the first place: she was a woman who placed a very high value on privacy.

Stretching out each leg in turn, Julia made toward the waiting group, a triumphal spring entering into her step - at last she had the two of them where she wanted them; out of harm’s way and beyond any possibility of their causing interference to her plans. For the remainder of the summer she would be free of their responsibility and yet, at the same time, through this arrangement, the direct cooperation of Lady Marchment and the remarkable abilities of the soberly dressed woman she was now approaching and her nursing assistant colleague, she would have the wonderful satisfaction of retaining complete control, albeit by proxy, of every nuance of their behaviour - down to the tiniest detail.

She had added stipulations of her own to those required by the hospital - and they had spent many intimate moments, the widow Springer and herself, devising those stipulations and restrictions. Writhing and near sobbing with pleasure, rolling over and over, whispering breathlessly, endlessly, of their love for each other and of their plans for the future and those already in place for the woman’s delectable young stepdaughter, their intermingled torrid sopping fantasies and unfettered imaginations would soar entwined, spiralling out of control through ever more restrictive and demeaning disciplinary regimes, inventing and reinventing impositions, punishments, methods of control and every way imaginable of curbing their girl. Throughout it all, on the near wall-width plasma screen overlooking their bed, the hapless young Susan Springer would flicker - a most charming backdrop to their passion.

She might, perhaps have been pictured bent across a trestle, the prison cane slashing down under the hand of the wardress or Matron, the girl’s defiance subsiding as much as their ardour would grow, stroke upon stroke. At other times she would be pictured, sitting hopelessly on her bunk sobbing and with her head in hands, an impassive array of thick, white-painted steel bars as the backdrop and the numb, blank windowless white walls as only witnesses - other than the prying eyes of the cameras of course.

Mounted high up, out of reach and each camera was identified by a slowly blinking red lamp, so that the subject might be continuously reminded of their all-seeing, ever-present gaze. Quite besides the crushing oppression of 24 hour surveillance, the slowly flashing red lights themselves became like a subtle form of torture after a time in the absence of any other distraction; blinking on-off, on-off, like some optical water torture, one or other would catch the corner of the girl’s eye whichever way she turned.

Becoming mindful of that effect, in response to the girl having shown some reluctance to continue with the experiment, the supervising psychologist had arranged for a similar LED lamp to be fitted at eye height in the corner of Susan’s cell, embedded flush with the wall surface and protected beneath a tough, transparent plastic film. Those clips they had watched wherein young Susan would be pictured in her green striped prison uniform dress standing with her nose pressed close into the corner, hands on head or fingertips on shoulders with elbows stiffly out to the sides, had taken on a new dimension once that modification had been made - they had played over and over those scenes in which the girl would have her face slapped or be made to bend for the cane or strap for having dared close her eyes.

Then there would be those quite exquisite shots of the freshly-broken Susan, trudging off with the rest of them to the workroom, her hands, as those of her comrades, cuffed tightly behind her back and her head bowed in submission. Or it might have been one of those delicious close-ups of the girl bent obediently over her needlework, beads of perspiration forming on her brow, the strain wrinkling that pretty face of hers, hands struggling for dexterity in chained fetters and a matching chain glinting from the collar at her neck; the perfect image of the modern galley-slave, the wheals of a well-deserved caning still throbbing across her backside, the pain and despair there to be read in her eyes.

At still other times their lovemaking would be stoked by the backdrop of a schoolroom - an entirely different set of girls and these dressed from head to foot in the strictest and most juvenile school uniform imaginable. Each would be pictured sitting bolt upright at her desk with eyes wide and paralysed with fear as, in tight black leather skirt, fitted white satin blouse and black leather tie, a woman, of an appearance sharing more in common with some men’s magazine fantasy dominatrix than a school marm, would stroll up and down between their ranks, flexing her cane near full circle as she went.

Both of them would wonder out loud what it must be like to be kept under such discipline; to be forbidden to speak without explicit permission - and even then, only ever to members of staff and never, ever to each other - to have to learn nonsense over and over, to have to sit stiffly to attention for the best part of seventeen hours a day, to be caned for the slightest failing or infraction and to be obliged to endure the same tedious routine, classroom-dormitory-classroom, day after day, seven days a week and for months or even years on end. The thought had horrified them both. And yet it had thrilled them too - to be kept locked away while innocent of any misdeed, to be depersonalised, numbered and uniformed and to know that it was purely in order to satisfy someone’s sense of curiosity as to what effect it might or might not have on the mind, while all the time undergoing continuous psychological appraisal of the damage undoubtedly being wreaked on self confidence and initiative, merely so that it might be ascertained at what point that impairment would become permanent.

What must it be like to have joined for a few months - perhaps it had even seemed likely to be ‘fun’ at the time - and to still be resident years later? Perhaps struggle to be released, only to find yourself brought up before a panel of psychiatrists and to find yourself legally committed and taken straight back to the classroom or prison cell? Perhaps then caned, long and hard, for having had the temerity to have objected in the first place?

That latter thought still running through her mind as she climbed the steps to the house, Julia Soames shivered inwardly - a shudder somewhere between chill, guilt and thrill. Having greeted the matriarch and her loyal nursing assistant - kissing the former affectionately, perhaps overly so, on both cheeks and nodding acknowledgement to the other - she followed them both inside. Smiling to herself, she noted the way in which the women’s two charges, having been ushered by gesture alone over the threshold before them, each automatically placed her hands meekly on her head as she walked - and notably with her fingertips just touching. Interlocked fingers would never do; it was far too slovenly.

She had met these two once before, when they had first been brought up from London. Originally hailing from Cheltenham, Gloucestershire and having once attended the famous ladies college there, they had come up to the big city expecting excitement and bright lights and Lord knows what - gold paving slabs, probably. What they’d got was robbery and harassment, sexual propositions and a few nights sleeping rough in doorways and subways - being to proud to admit defeat. Despite - and belying - the gentile image so often portrayed of their birth place, not to mention their parentage and their privileged upbringing, these two had been a couple of typical gum-chewing leather-jacketed mall-rats when last she’d laid eyes on them - a pair of real tearaways; although much of that was affected bluster and in truth, once away from home they had both found themselves hopelessly out of their depth.

Looking now at the curbed, submissive, little mouse-like things they had since become, it was difficult to believe they could possibly be the same two young women who had been brought here all that time ago. In their highly polished little button-fastening Victorian children’s ankle-boots - seemingly at least two sizes too small - and teetering along with daintily-disciplined mincing ultra-feminine steps, each foot landing deftly in front and in line with the other at each step, it was clear neither would so much as think of offering any form of back-chat now.

She had never seen two young women so totally tamed and dominated as these two - it would be fair to say that their old personalities had been all but eradicated. She knew something of this remarkable woman’s approach - after all, the two girls’ total immersion in this little faux-Victorian world that had been constructed around them was obvious enough. And she had previously been shown around the little nursery-style dormitory, marvelling at those soft, fluffy little beds and the childhood mobile of dangling holographic-print stars that hung from the headboard of each on a curving arm and that floated drowsily above the pillows - essentially silver-gold, thousands of little facets of laser-light colour would radiate kaleidoscopically in all directions at the slightest provocation of the summer breeze and the gentlest kiss of the leaked sunlight filtering through the shutters.

She had seen, too, the two strobe lamps, styled like tiny spot lamps, which focused on the mobile from either side of each headboard and the discrete speaker grilles lying back within the soft quilted leather to either side of the pilows. Those two girls had undoubtedly spent many, many delightful hours happily stargazing - the drawn heavy black velvet drapes having turned day to night - while their governess or her nursing assistant, seated by their bedsides, murmured sweet words of empty-headed compliance or the tape player was set to run and run.

These two sisters, both above the UK age of consent - one barely, the other of marriageable age - had been seen as a kind of demonstration project, a proof of concept, so to speak. It had been a project set up by Lady Marchment herself - after all, they were her own sweet nieces...and theoretically the owners of all of this, or at least, were due to ‘come into’ ownership before too long.

As for her two charges, patiently waiting outside in the car - they would be just fine where they were, for the time being. It was not as if they were likely to wander off, even if they weren’t totally helpless, locked in their safety harnesses.

One was hindered by her leg callipers, the ratcheted knee-joints currently locked into the seated position and both had become quite deeply afflicted by agoraphobia under the subtle guidance of Dr Ecclestone, working under the auspices of her research programme into the origins and propagation of phobias.

She had left them instruction that they were not to dare chat - they were simply to wait quietly and without fuss. She doubted Susan would be likely to feel like instigating conversation in any case - but the other might. But what of it - might it not be a good thing? After all, they would not be saying much of anything for the rest of summer, save, perhaps, for ‘yes Mistress Alison’ or ‘no Mistress Alison’ or to answer with ‘at once Mistress Alison’ if instructed as to some imposition or other. It would serve nicely to remind them both, once they were safely ensconced in their new home, of the little freedom they once had and to what extent they were now under control - and would remain so for the foreseeable future. Hold out a little hope...and then snatch it away - that was the way forward when training teenage girls like these.

Meanwhile there’d be time for a nice little chat, perhaps to have something of a little guided tour, see what changes had been made in her over-long absence. Then it would be time to pop out, bring the girls in and introduce the two of them to their brand new governess and their new nursery nurse...