"Stop here," said Isla, at the postbox, three minutes before the school gate. I stopped. Alfie stopped, with one foot on his scooter. Isla looked at the corner ahead, where her friend Nell was waiting with her book bag over both shoulders, and then back at me with an expression I have seen on Rob's face when he has told me something is "nearly fixed".
"You can watch from here," she said, "but you can't come."
That was the first morning of Year 6, Thursday 3 September, and it had been negotiated the week before at the kitchen table. Walking the last bit with a friend is the whole of the deal. I do the drop-off as I always do, out of the door by 8:32, but the final three minutes belong to Isla. Alfie and I watched her go, upright and not looking back, in a pair of shoes that still smelled of the shop. Then Alfie said, "Is she in trouble?" and I said no, she was just ten.
Top of the school
Year 6 get jobs. Isla's name went on a list for the library and for reading with the Reception children on Tuesdays, and she came home on Thursday with her chin slightly up. Her teacher this year is Mr Haigh, who has a reputation for reading aloud in voices. Alfie, meanwhile, has started Year 2 and a new classroom with a reading corner shaped like a boat. His first sentence on the way home was, "Zain's still in my class," which is the only information I needed.
Rob did the Thursday pick-up, as he does, and said the playground had the feel of a day when everyone has grown overnight. I was working from home, which on the first day meant sitting at the kitchen table and listening to the clock. The day was bright and blowy, 17 degrees. On Friday it rained, and the shoes had their first puddle.
The letter in the book bag
On day two there was a letter in Isla's book bag. It came from the school, with a cover note and a leaflet from the council, and it begins "Dear parents and carers of Year 6". It says that applications for secondary school open this month, that the closing date is 31 October, and that offers come out in March. It lists the open evenings for the schools in our area, including the three we have been talking about since the summer, in a list at the bottom that looks like a bus timetable.
The one up the road is on Tuesday 15 September. The big academy across the ring road is on Wednesday 23rd. The faith school two buses away is on Thursday 24th. I stuck the letter on the fridge next to the whiteboard with the meal plan, where it will stay until it's done. Rob read it standing at the fridge with a slice of toast and said "Right," in the voice he uses for the boiler.
I did not say that I'd spent most of the summer pretending this wasn't about to happen. She started at that school as a four-year-old in a jumper down to her knees, and she is now the size of a small teenager, with opinions about trainers and a notebook headed "Reasons" that I haven't been allowed to read. The phone is on page one. I know this because she told me.
What the next few weeks look like
It will be busy but not dramatic. Three open evenings in ten days, with Alfie going to Linda and Steve for two of them. Isla's first Guides meeting is next week. Alfie's football starts next Saturday morning. The £35 a month for the Year 6 residential left the account on 1 September for the first time (it's £245 in total), and Isla's packed lunches are bigger than they were in July, so the spreadsheet is going to need some attention.
By Friday night I had the whole thing on the whiteboard in three colours: school, clubs, open evenings. Then I stood in front of it and understood that I had made a plan to feel in control of something that is mostly her business. She is ten. She has a friend called Nell and a notebook and a postbox. I'm allowed to watch from here.
