Do You Remember the First Time?

door I was pleased.
    ‘Come on, Mum,’ I said. ‘Remember how we used to bake together?’
    ‘When you were seven, we used to bake together,’ she said, confused.
    ‘Well, let’s try that again.’ I took her arm and we went into the kitchen.
    ‘Oh, no, it’s not a teacher, is it? Please, let it not be a teacher,’ she said.

Chapter Seven
    For a teenager, with supposedly very few responsibilities beyond school and my own good time, I couldn’t believe how unbelievably tired I was. I had thought I would be full of youthful energy, forgetting that teenagers sleep even more than students, amazingly. The situation was worse in my case because I felt I was constantly performing in a play without cues. I got through most of the following week under house arrest from my parents. They were watching me very carefully, and whispering to one another in corners, which I was going to have to take as a good sign, because last time round, they hardly spoke to each other at all.
    Then there was school. How the hell did I ever do any of this? I was doing English, maths, chemistry, and general studies A levels. Again. In fact, this was the first problem. I had long regretted – well, accountancy, obviously. One of the things I’d always wondered was, if, instead of doing business studies at university – dry as dust but, as my dad had pointed out before I went, ‘very useful’; obviously hewas already predicting who was going to have to be the main provider in our little family – I’d done something I’d always fancied – history of art, say. Long hours of cultural discussion in libraries. Ooh, maybe I could go to St Andrews and see if I couldn’t get a crack at Prince William. Or even go for the big boys, Oxford or Cambridge. Nothing wrong with Birmingham, of course, it was a great laugh. But it hadn’t taken me long in life to realise that yes, going to one of the really snobby places really did open doors for you.
    On the next day back at school I picked up the first book out of my book bag. The folded-over corner was on a chapter entitled ‘Reagents and Conditions for One-Stop Conversions’. It was full of Greek characters. I didn’t have a scooby about a single bit of it. And even if I read it and read it and managed to convince myself I did, what was the one thing I’d already worked out in my head? What was the one thing I knew for definite I did not want to be doing in whatever bollocks-up of a future I might be in for this time round?
    It wasn’t going to be accountancy, that was for effing sure.
    Miss Syzlack smiled sympathetically when I walked in. Honestly, when did the diktat come down that teachers were allowed – nay, expected – to dress like they’d had to run out of Oxfam when it was on fire and everything melted to their skin? Then I realised that perhaps looking sharp and sexy wasn’t the kind of thing you necessarily wanted to encourage standing in front of a roomful of fifteen-year-old boys.
    ‘Hello.’
    ‘Hello, Flora Jane,’ she smiled, sympathetically but a bit warily.
    ‘Can I sit down?’
    ‘Of course.’
    I really, really could not remember school etiquette.
    ‘It’s about my A levels,’ I said. ‘I think I’m doing the wrong ones.’
    She consulted the register sheet. ‘Maths, English, chemistry. You could do anything with those, surely?’
    ‘That’s the point, erm, miss. You can do anything with anything, unless I wanted to be a research chemist. And I can assure you, I’m not going to be one of those.’
    ‘Yes, your chemistry teacher agrees with you.’
    ‘See! Really?’
    We both leaned back at the same time, eyeing each other up. She cracked first.
    ‘Well, what were you thinking of taking?’
    ‘I’m going to swap maths for history, and chemistry for art,’ I announced grandly, based on a decision I’d made fourteen minutes before.
    ‘That’s quite a big change. What do your parents say?’
    ‘Erm … I haven’t mentioned it to them yet. But I’m sure they’ll be fine.’
    ‘Hmm. Flora, you don’t even have GCSE art. In fact, if the doodles in your English textbook are anything to go by, I’d say it’s really not the right direction to be heading in.’
    ‘I want to do history of art at university,’ I blurted. ‘I don’t want to end up doing … business studies in Birmingham, or something like that. I want to go to art school, or the London Film School. Or Notre Dame. OrHarvard. Or St Martin’s College of Art and Design.’ I