This article is taken from the June 2024 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Right now we’re offering five issues for just £10.

Why do I periodically do this to myself? My four-yearly pilgrimage to the Hurlingham Club for the dreaded ISS — not a terrorist organisation, but the Independent Schools Show.

Actually, in many ways it does feel like some kind of indoctrination camp, not that any of us needed any persuasion beyond “to board or not to board”.

Speaking of which, last week my friend Saskia announced that she was going to go state for secondary, halfway through dinner at Lemonia. Everyone kind of froze, and then said politely how great it was and how emphatically they don’t want their kids to grow up “in a bubble”, and this was why they did forest school and girls’ football and sometimes travelled by Tube.

Obviously, we’re all used to Saskia’s need to be provocative (frustrated actress), but this interest in the local academy was bold even by her standards. They live in Hackney, FFS! And her father would clearly happily pay for his grandchildren not to go there. Actually, she’s probably just trying to annoy him. Though she claims to have been inspired by some actor she knows, possibly a Doctor Who, whose offspring attend said academy and are apparently “really politically engaged”.

Anyway, Saskia notwithstanding, off I went to the weird Fulham trade fair of mental housemistresses and banners displaying children in boaters. The last time I went was in 2021, when Lyra was nine and the great “Where next”? question loomed.

And now, here we are, wondering the same about Hector. Saskia’s take on this dilemma was “Would you not just send them all to the same school?” provoking almost as much horror as the performative state school announcement.

There she was with a giant chunk of a husband who I recognised

Of course the minute I walked in I saw Kate Hexington, my nemesis from St Paul’s. There she was with a giant chunk of a husband who I recognised as Rory Webster-Rickett.

Background: Rory and I “pulled” — to use the historically accurate term — at the Feathers Ball, aged 13. Quite a shock to find the blonde mini-Adonis of my memory had done a full Prince Will hair-wise, and quadrupled in girth. Literally unrecognisable. Except that I knew him immediately.

So there I was, trying to hide behind a prospectus, until Kate began neighing (only way to describe the voice accurately) “Claudia!” and then, in case everyone hadn’t heard, moved on to my school nicknames “Earwig!” and “Nympho!” Exactly what I needed whilst trying to impress the headmaster of a Radley-Lite school, which we think might suit Hector.

When I turned round, as if I’d only just heard the bellowing, she was chortling into Rory’s ear. No doubt explaining the origins of both nicknames. We then endured 15 minutes of Kate talking at me: “Couldn’t your husband make it? I’m so lucky this one’s his own boss. And so committed! Genuinely, he’s more obsessed with the girls than I am!” Rory went for mute grinning.

I said, pointedly, “I guess he remembers what teenage boys are like!” expecting a rueful nod of recognition. But they just both looked at me with mild distaste — Rory clearly having no recollection of ever having met me before. Alarmed, I began showing off photos of Minnie (who, luckily for her, looks like me at that age and not her father). Still nothing.

Seriously, it was like having my entire worldview upended. I had assumed that he, like me, had committed the whole formative experience to memory. But no. Clearly not.

I left feeling both very old and 12 again, and no closer to finding a school for Hector.