My name is Sophie Atherton. I grew up and live in London. Daddy and Mummy both work in the City. Daddy is a fund manager and Mummy is a partner in one of the big law firms. I attended an exclusive private day school for girls a short walk from our house in Knightsbridge. 

I have inherited Mummy’s facility with words and Daddy’s head for number so I find it easy to do very well at school. Except I don’t really do that well. School bores me so I do just enough to keep the teachers happy; I’m much smarter that them and I think they know it, my report always say “Sophie is a bright girl who could achieve much more if she applied herself“, or something like that. Fortunately Mummy and Daddy are too busy making money to read my reports or really notice too much about what I do. I’m also very good at sport, especially tennis but again it doesn’t interest me that much so I play enough to make it look like I’m involved, even when I don’t try I’m still one of the best in the school.  

All this means nobody really bothers me or pays too much attention to what I get up to in London, and there is plenty to do. My spiritual home is Harrods and shopping is my favourite pastime and one at which I truly excel. I’ve learnt how to charge things to Daddy’s credit cards without him noticing so I can buy whatever I want and go to lots of nice places. I’ve always been able to charm or bribe my way into clubs even if I’m not exactly old enough and our house is so big that sneaking out at nigh is pretty easy, Mummy and Daddy often work late anyway. There are also lots of really nice boys in London that you can meet at these places, and I do mean lots of them.

My lovely fun life in London hit a problem last summer though. Mummy and Daddy decided to take a long second honeymoon traveling around the world and I wasn’t allowed to stay in the house alone, which is pretty ironic given I’m largely there alone when they are in London. Instead I got sent to stay with Aunt Caroline in Devon. She lives in a massive pile of a house but in the middle of nowhere. I was bored out of my mind in days and quickly started looking for entertainment, including trying to sneak back to London. Unfortunately Auntie C had more time to keep an eye on me and we quickly clashed. I got told I needed to start behaving or there would be consequences. Nobody had ever spoken to me like that so I ignored her. 

It turned out, pretty quickly, that “consequences” meant being marched into the library and being put over her knee for a “jolly good slippering”, knickers pulled down and everything. I’ve never been treated so appallingly and I really couldn’t see what was “jolly” or “good” about being spanked. If I could have run out the door and back to London I would have but it was two miles form the house just to the front gate.

A normal person would have got the message and begun to toe the line at this point but I am nothing if not stubborn. I stuck to my guns and behaved the way I always do, well maybe worse, just to show Aunty C I couldn’t be intimidated. Trips to the Library and over Aunty’s knee became a regular and frequent occurrence. When it became clear the slipper wasn’t curbing my wayward habits, I got promoted to the Hairbrush. On the bare bottom that really stung but I was determined to show her I could do what I wanted regardless. I have never in my life spent so much time in a library as I did that summer. I’m sure the maids and the gardener all though it was very amusing, Aunty C never bothered to close the doors when I was taken in there to have my bottom smacked. A little privacy would have been nice.

At the end of the summer Aunty C persuaded Mummy and Daddy that I needed more supervision and discipline that I would get in London and that I should be sent to Switzerland to Oaks & Pines School. It turned out Aunty C was an alumni, she had been quite a rebel at my age apparently. “It did me the world of good, and its  just what you need” she kept saying. So off to Oaks & Pines I am going it seems. 

Apparently the academic standards there are very high, well that doesn’t bother me. I’m plenty smart enough, I’ll do what I did in London, do enough work to be left in peace and then enjoy my time in Switzerland. I might even play some tennis, just to show everyone how good I am. Geneva has great shops and clubs and I’ve forged Daddy’s signature on some papers so I have a Swiss credit card linked to his offshore account, he’ll never notice so I can have as much fun as I want. As for the discipline at O&P? Well its probably best avoided and I figure I’m smart enough to do that. Aunty C caught me plenty of times but she had nothing else to do, O&P is a big school, I’ll be able to get away with what I like doing unnoticed I’m sure.  

So, the papers are all signed and I’m off for a year in Switzerland, it could be fun. I don’t think it will to too tough, I mean how bad can it really be?