Caroline Stern is just like any London teenager. Except that she lives in a religious sect.

As a child of 'The Organization' her every move - from what she eats to when she talks and whom she'll marry - is dictated by her elders. But as Caroline's free-thinking ways bring her into conflict with terrifying Miss Fowler and brutal punishments push her to breaking point, she acts on a terrible impulse and exacts a horrifying revenge.

Twenty years later Caroline is living with her lover, Joe. He knows her as Lorrie and is unaware of the troubled childhood she's left behind. Until an old friend reappears and Caroline discovers that the past isn't so easily buried ...

» Read the first chapter of Shame On You by downloading the Penguin Taster here

» Visit Penguin Tasters

Download Reading Group notes for Shame On You.

Mr Steinberg was young and fresh and beautiful, and we were all dumbfounded by him. On his first day at school, he had stood before us at the front of Room 8, holding his black briefcase up in front of him with both hands, like a shield.

‘Hi,’ he said. And with that one word, we knew that he was different. We could almost smell the outside world on his breath.

Everything about him didn’t belong: his perfect teeth, his modern round glasses, his smile, the biro sticking out of his pocket, the ring on his middle finger, the word ‘Hi’. He clearly didn’t know that biros, jewellery and slang were not permitted here. Someone asked him how old he was and he had blushed and run his hands through his thick, dark, wavy hair and said, ‘Twenty-two.’ Only he hadn’t said that, he’d said, ‘Twenny-two,’ because the best thing about Mr Steinberg was that he was an American. I had never met an American before, but I knew that most things that Americans did were forbidden.

I wondered how on earth he had ended up here with us, all the way across the ocean. They had probably told him he was saving the world or something; us children, this new school, we were the future. One day, they’d have told him, it would be down to these children to spread the word. (Which was ‘Om’, by the way. And personally, I wouldn’t be spreading it; I’d be keeping quiet about the whole thing. We attracted enough unwanted attention as it was.)

Mr Steinberg had come to teach Ancient Greek, which was a modern language to us. We only learnt Sanskrit, the oldest language in the history of the world. I imagined it was what the cavemen spoke, ‘bahbah dahdah gahgah’ sort of thing. That’s what it sounded like; all breathy and primitive. Thousands of years ago, the Sanskrit people had written the first ever book of rules called the Vedas, and Miss Fowler told us that the mysteries of the universe were held in just the Sanskrit alphabet alone. Which was why we had to chant it endlessly, hoping they’d slip in by osmosis, I suppose. We were sick to death of the mysteries of the universe. Greek would make a pleasant change. We could listen to Mr Steinberg’s beautiful voice all day long, and sometimes we did. He taught us to chant the first three chapters of the Odyssey from memory, and boy, oh boy, did we chant. We’d mimic his accent as we did so, and at first he wouldn’t notice but, when he did, he would laugh so hard that he would have to take his glasses off and wipe his eyes. Watching him do that would make the whole day worthwhile.

Everyone wanted to get betrothed to Mr Steinberg. Everyone was in love with him, so, naturally, everyone was good at Greek. Even the thickos were excelling themselves. But for me, Greek was more than a subject; I wasn’t just good at it, I was the best at it. I didn’t even have to try; it all just stayed in my head as if I already knew it. It was, therefore, most upsetting to be stuck in the cupboard at the back of the classroom when Mr Steinberg was out there taking the Greek class. I had been hiding from Fowler but had mistimed my exit and when I’d attempted to reappear, it was too late; they had already started ‘pausing’. Eyes tightly shut, chins up, palms facing upwards like curling leaves on their laps, clearing their minds, making space for something new.

I carefully closed the door and resigned myself to the fact that I would have to stay in the cupboard until the end of the lesson.

‘Om paramatmanaynama attah.’ As one, they mumbled the beginning-of-anything prayer.

For a while, I listened in the darkness as Mr Steinberg handed out the homework, blindly picking the paint off the back of the door, still annoyed with myself for getting stuck.

‘Where’s Caroline?’ I heard him ask and I stopped picking; it felt good to hear him say my name and notice my absence.

‘She’s ill,’ said Megan.

It was cramped in the cupboard. There was only room enough for two people standing up, although we did once go for a record and squeezed six of us in, piled on top of each other like Smarties in a tube.

I felt around for some jumpers and decided to make myself a little bed. I sank to my bottom and leant against the pegs. I must have been leaning against Kate’s blazer, I could smell her. She’d smelt the same since we were tiny, musty with a hint of mothball. I leant to my other side and inhaled an aertex shirt, doughy and milky. Easy peasy japoneesy, that was Megan. I moved my nose along the row. Pears soap, that’d be Jane. I tugged at a jumper above me and pressed it to my face; grassy with a touch of pee, Anna’s without a doubt.

Whenever my parents were away on retreat, I always made a point of staying the week with as many people in the class as possible, just to compare notes. I’d pretty much stayed with everyone, but our houses were all much of a muchness; functional, minimal and holy. However, one thing I had noticed was that whole families smelt the same, even houses. The moment you entered Anna’s house there was a whiff of wee. I wondered what smell my family gave off. I sniffed my knee – chlorine from the swimming pool. I licked it then sniffed it again. It was rather nice.

Years ago, when I was about five, before Miss Fowler and I hated each other, I would ask her every lunchtime if she could butter my bread for me. She would get up from the head of the trestle table and come round and put her arms over mine, and I’d sit there as she buttered the bread, inches from my face. I could actually butter my own bread, but I did so love the smell of her hands; they smelt of Dettol. Now, of course, I can’t bear the stink of disinfectant.

When I got bored of sniffing clothes, I lay on my back and stuck my legs up against the boiler and waited whilst the rest of them did a vocabulary test. I marked myself with hardly any cheating. Nineteen out of twenty.

Every now and then at the end of a Greek lesson, if we’d been especially good, Steinberg would make his way around the table, rubbing his hands, a crafty smile on his face, and he’d perch on the edge of the table, right at the front of the classroom and say, ‘Well, Form Two, would you like to hear the story of Medea?’ or ‘Who knows the story of Theseus and the Minotaur?’ or ‘Did I ever tell you about Oedipus?’ Immediately, we would all shut our books and sit on the edge of our seats in anticipation, hanging on to his every word. He’d tell us stories full of gore, murder, incest, sex and death, and our tongues would hang out. None of us would breathe a word about these stories out of class, at home. They were our secret. Mr Steinberg never quite got the hang of the Organization, and we weren’t going to enlighten him.

When I heard the class hush excitedly, I knew exactly what was happening. This just wasn’t fair, to be stuck in the cupboard on a storytelling day! Oh, how I wished to be out there! I sat up as quickly as I could and pushed the door a little so that I might catch a glimpse of him. You had to watch him telling his stories.