Goodbye to Malory Towers

After a sticky start, Darrell settles down well at Malory Towers. Her parents have every reason to be proud of her, and she eventually covers herself in the personal, scholastic and sporting glory that was originally expected of her. Each year she is voted the girl most likely to: head of the fourth form and games captain of the fifth. She is a successful tennis, lacrosse, weight-lifter and netball player, and the general feeling is that she will become Head Girl - leading on to a position of great prestige and influence in the outside world and beyond - in her last year at good old Mal Towers.

Things only start to go wrong for Darrell  when she spends her hols on the French Riviera and falls in with a disreputable set "hanging out" in the Monte Carlo area. Much to her parents' distress, she develops a nasty drug habit and becomes experienced in other activities which I cannot bring myself to mention here. Her work begins to suffer and she fails to win a coveted place at Strathclyde University to study Theology and Colonial Administration.

Cast out by her family, she eventually decides to make a fresh start in a foreign country, signing on as an EFL teacher (a dead-end job if ever there was one) at the Berlitz School in Lyon.