It doesn’t seem possible, but my two youngest children, twins Henry and Flora, are on the last run of their GCSE exams. Prom follows at the end of the month and then one of them, Flora, is off with her best friend to the South of France for an entire month. They’ve been best friends since they were 4 and met at infant school. Meanwhile, my eldest son George is still working in Melbourne, has a 3 week holiday booked in Brisbane and contacts me very intermittently – usually because an uncle of his leaves notes on his kitchen table saying “time to ring your mother”. And in London, Ella has now finished and delivered her first commercial music video for a recording studio, with a second for an independent band almost complete. I’ve heard it said over and over again – and now I find myself saying it. “Where has all the time gone”? And I’ve realised that those days when I could bundle them all into the car and take them where I wanted to go, have long, long gone. When I go camping for my birthday this year, it will be my first camping holiday without any of them since they were born.

So when I took these photos of best friends Lorna and Hannah in Kendal last month, it really hit me how important the stages of growing and friendship are. Like my own daughter Flora and her friend, these two have been friends since they were tiny – and now they are about to embark on their next big adventure.. university and moving away from home. I love the pictures – they are beautiful – and I hope they will treasure them for years to come, reminding them of this stage in their lives and how important friendship is.

To mark your teen’s next passage in life, whether that’s Prom, university, leaving home, travelling the world, get in touch for details of a special offer – and do consider getting together with your teen’s best friend’s parents and look at doing a joint photo shoot to celebrate friendship and life.