Doctor’s Orders
A story from Janus 19 by Martin Kempson Sally, a very pretty, green-eyed 18-year-old brunette with a habitual impending pout, had been packed off by her elderly guardian to spend two weeks with Doctor Saverini, an old family friend and retired university lecturer living just outside Pisa. Like any teenage girl the prospect of visiting Italy, a country whose beauties she’d heard of and read about so much, appealed to her enormously. But there was one snag. It wasn’t going to be just an ordinary holiday abroad. There was another, far less pleasurable reason for her going. Although she’d left college the previous summer, Sally had not adapted at all well to the grown-up world outside. In fact she’d proved quite unable to behave herself as a young lady should, but continued to act as she had at school, more like a silly, naughty fifth-former than someone approaching responsible young womanhood. She was extravagant, insolent, moody, prone to childish tantrums and also at times inclined to...