I’ve passed through Greenwich lots of times on the bus, enjoying the sight of the elegant quadrants and colonnaded facades of the Old Royal Naval College, but now that I’m actually walking through the campus I can’t shake the idea of studying here from my head. Sometimes I get a strong feeling about a place. An affinity for it. As if I know, without a shadow of a doubt, that I’ll come back, or that it will have some special significance for me. All this grand baroque architecture, all this history. I feel inspired just being here.

“No wonder they use this location for so many films,” says the girl walking next to me. We’ve just bonded over a croissant and coffee in the café under the chapel in Queen Mary Court.

“I know, I keep expecting Johnny Depp in full Captain Jack costume to leap out from behind one of these pillars.”

I’m delighted at how easily we’ve fallen into conversation. How fast we’ve clicked. It was the right decision to come here today. I’ve got a stack of information already and I get the distinct impression from the tutor I’ve just spoken to that, with my A-level grades and the fact that I’m a mature student—mature, it makes me sound like a ripe cheese—I’ll be in with a good chance of being offered a place. What’s more, if I study part time, I can even apply direct, without all the rigmarole of going through UCAS.

It’ll be expensive, of course, but Mum and Dad have always said they’d help me out financially if I wanted to do a course. I can apply for a student loan as well. It’ll mean giving up on the idea of a full-time job, for the time being at least, but ultimately, I’ll be better qualified. And Ross is hardly likely to complain, not after the conversation we had the other day.

The sun twinkles on the River Thames and the sound of violins floats out of the open windows of King Charles Court, where the Trinity Laban music students are doing their practice. It’s a beautiful piece of music, something classical I vaguely recognize but can’t name. The type of music that fits this setting perfectly. It’s like having my own personal soundtrack, and I imagine walking back from the library with my fellow students, books under our arms, exchanging confidences between lectures, discussing what we’re reading and the assignments we’ve been set.