Business Studies (My Choice, How Silly)

Our daughter, Matilda, is fourteen. I had chosen Triple Science, Geography, Spanish and Computer Science, because they keep doors open. She wanted Art. I had written Art in pencil in the margin, which in our house is how a thing gets considered.

At Rochester, Ronke recalls, the principal looked at the subjects and suggested Media, since her daughter was already a budding TV presenter. The girl settled on English, Media and Photography. The college looked to Ronke more like a small university in town, with students in their own clothes and on first-name terms with their teachers. The college’s own page adds that classes gather round one table, tutorial style, instead of sitting in rows.

Seven years later a Year 13 student in one of the college’s videos describes the freedoms. Sixth-formers can leave at lunchtime, so when exams get intense she goes for bubble tea on the High Street. Last exam season she and her friends took their maths textbooks to the castle grounds and opened them in the middle of the fields. The automatic captions, which have never heard of RIC, call the college Rick throughout. I have never revised in a castle. I revised in a Ford Fiesta outside my mother’s work.

I showed Matilda the video as evidence that happy people do maths. She watched it twice and said the girl was happy because she had chosen her own subjects. I said the girl had chosen Further Maths. Matilda said, “Exactly.”

The part of Ronke’s account I keep going back to comes near the end. Mother and daughter had a photoshoot together, and the daughter, putting her Photography to use, took over. The subject nobody had chosen for her was now running the shoot.

On Sunday I rubbed out Computer Science and wrote Art, in pen. Matilda read the form, moved Spanish, and asked me to stand by the fridge holding it so she could take a picture, for the record. Then she moved me out of the light. I went.