THIS LIFE Sam Blake

The key lesson I’ve learned in life is you can create your own opportunities, make things happen for yourself

SO WHY DID YOU DO HISTORY? That was the first question asked when I went back to my old school to give a talk to the sixth years and a writing workshop to the fourth years. It was a very good question – especially when I’d just explained that I’d wanted to go into marketing. When we look back it’s fascinating to see how the decisions we make affect our path. Now I run my own business and I’m a writer, but when I was at school, there wasn’t a course for that.

I explained that I’d always wanted to do law, but was worried I wouldn’t remember the case histories, so instead I chose the one subject riddled with dates to study at university. But I’m not really a date type of historian, I’m a social historian, I’m interested in people and in what makes them tick, particularly how they react to situations. My degree in Queen Mary College in London focused mainly on the two World Wars, my thesis being on the French Resistance, through which I met and befriended some of the most incredible men and women. They fought against fascism, and the war changed every one of them.

My talk was introduced by the head of psychology – I would have loved to have studied that at school. The marketing role I did eventually end up in was all about how people think, about what influences them and how they react to situations. Psychology would have been very useful but one of the bonuses of writing fiction is that you can live vicariously through your characters – my fictional character Detective Garda Cat Connolly does an MA in forensic psychology between books one and two.

But what were the real lessons that I’d learned that I could share with these girls? The key one was that in life you can create your own opportunities, make things happen for yourself. Sitting back and waiting for things to happen will never get you where you want to be, but by learning about the business you want to go into, and then networking and connecting with people, you can achieve your objectives.

I started writing fiction in 1999 when my husband went sailing across the Atlantic for eight weeks. I thought my first book was amazing, brilliant, and was (obviously) going to be a bestseller. I sent it out to everyone who might be vaguely interested in publishing crime fiction, and it was duly rejected. I realised I needed to learn how to improve my fiction, but I couldn’t do an evening class as by then I had two small children and my husband was a member of An Garda Síochána and worked shifts.

So I started running my own workshops. Developed on a corporate model – I was working in corporate event management – I wanted to hear from bestselling authors, from the top agents in Ireland and the very best editors. And so my agency, Inkwell, was born, starting me on the path to writing a book that people actually wanted to read.

As I was speaking to the girls in my old school that day, another key lesson I wanted to share was that when you look back on life, often something that feels dreadful at the time, is actually the precursor to something unexpected that takes you in an entirely new direction, one that you could not have imagined happening. Like getting rejected.

When I first applied to go to senior school in Britain my parents chose three academic girls’ schools as possibilities. I ended up being given a place in the worst co-ed in the county. It was a disaster. After much wrangling I managed to get a place at Bishops Hatfield – a girls’ school with a wide catchment but I was, scarily, the only girl from my town in the first year. As it turned out, it was the best possible outcome. Then, as today, Bishops has an outstanding record and nurtures girls who see obstacles as challenges, as opportunities to think outside the box.

When I went back to school, I was looking forward to seeing the black and white tiled corridors, the walls of photographs, girls lined up in their honeyyellow blouses, navy skirts, and navy blazers with red-and-gold piping. And the huge hall with its elevated stage and dusty parquet floor.

When I got there, however, I discovered a magnificent new building with wide, bright, carpeted corridors, a dance studio, and a tiered theatre-style hall. And the girls were wearing tartan kilts! But in essence they are just the same, exploring fascinating subjects – there was even a forensics workshop in full flow when I arrived.

As we looked out over the old, now condemned, 1960s school building with its drafty corridors and narrow stairs, I wished I could have visited it one last time. But the future is in the new building, and in the talented girls thronging the corridors. I wonder, though, if they know just how close Bishops Hatfield once came to being called Miss Ashworth’s Academy for Young Girls...