Aurélie Cates stands at 5’3” and is quite slim. She has brown eyes and wavy, light brown hair. Some of her mannerisms make her easy to caricature: her glasses slip down her nose so she tends to look over the top; she almost always uses a navy ribbon to tie her hair back in a high ponytail; the way she fastens her school tie invariably leaves the front part slightly too long. She never seems quite as self-assured as her peers, especially around boys.

Aurélie sometimes feels that her classmates find her difficult to warm to. She has been trying hard to overcome her natural shyness but it always takes so much of her energy. Perhaps she does take herself too seriously but other girls can be so frivolous. Even so, she knows she can over-react to being teased. And that she detests PE and games has never helped her fit in.

Aurélie’s parents divorced when she was seven. Her father, who is French, is the CEO of a large Swiss insurance company. He has lived in Geneva since the divorce. Aurélie and her mother stayed in England, and he has been paying for her boarding school in Kent.

“Cates” is Aurélie’s mother’s maiden name, which she uses in preference to “Delaunay” to spite her father.

When her mother remarried, her father saw it as an opportunity to impose some changes. He insisted that her education continue somewhere closer to him and his family, where she would have an opportunity to perfect her French. He was also clear that he wanted her educated in a setting that conformed with his philosophie pédagogique and that Oaks and Pines was a logical choice.

Aurélie isn’t sure what that meant but she has seen references to corporal punishment in the school’s online prospectus, including one rather ominous mention of the cane. She could have refused to go, but the alternative of life with three younger step-siblings made her choose O&P.

Aurélie’s father was responsible for her earliest memories of corporal punishment. He has taken his “méchante” daughter over his knee on a few occasions. However, at school, Aurélie has always been well-behaved and attentive. There was only one unfortunate incident in her last year at prep school. She let another girl copy her math homework and they were both slippered for it. This still seems terribly unfair to her.