Goodbye

When you’ve been friends with someone for 28 years, you take it for granted that you’ll know them for at least another 40. Taking things for granted is dangerous.

You usually only learn this when it’s too late to change things.

In this instance, I’m talking about a beloved friend known since we were in nappies, who was stolen from us just as she was giving life to her first child.

This was not a natural misdemeanour – my friend forfeited her life due to the incompetence of the person responsible for her wellbeing. When she was at her most vulnerable, starved of breath, this person of supposed medical superiority made a catastrophic error.

I don’t believe it’s healthy to dwell on the crime – we can’t turn back the clock.

All I can hope for is that justice will prevail.

It happened a month ago, and yet, it’s still so hard to process.

There will be no more letters, no more calls, and no more get-togethers on birthdays and Christmases.

Last time I saw you, you were sat in the long grass at Kew Gardens, in a circle of adoring friends. A summer picnic, a baby-shower, the first I’d ever been to.

The weather was perfect – the food offerings bountiful, the banter whip-crackling. You were the picture of maternal bliss: make-up free and beaming with health, a spectacular bump, even at that early stage in your pregnancy. We talked of the house you were in the process of buying and all the exciting nesting rituals you were having fun with.

I have since visited that nest: it is just as you’d described it, but the tragic truth is I will never actually see you there, tending the roses or feeding Isaac on the terrace.  

When I start to think about not seeing you again – this is when I have to dig into the abundant treasure chest of memories I have of our lives together, very much entwined together from your year dot.

Although I was two years older than you, and can’t actually remember you first coming along – we grew close and spent many weekends and after-school nights coming up with enterprising business ideas and letting our imaginations run wild out in the countryside and gardens surrounding our childhood homes, separated by a measly half a mile.   

George’s Marvelous Medicine-style potions and perfumes were concocted from grape hyacinths and whatever flora and forna we could lay hands on. Dirt under the nails, a staple occurrence.

Pom-poms and friendship bracelets were made and sold from the wall outside your house – occasionally purchased by locals taking pity on us. The meager proceeds were swiftly traded in at the Spar where our penchant for E numbers was satisfied in penny sweets.

There was one time when a local mafia-type property tycoon stopped in his blacked-out Mercedes (rosary beads hanging from the rearview mirror) to peruse our wares. He gave us our biggest sale, though I don’t know if he actually took his purchase away with him. I just remember a big shiny coin, maybe a 50p piece, the biggest one garnered from this particular enterprise.

Our parents were very salt-of-the-earth: we regularly swam amongst the tadpoles in a lake, ate strawberries till our stomachs hurt from fields owned by our parents’ friends, built dens on the farm, modeled for Homes and Gardens magazine. Sounds idyllic: it truly was.

Passengers in your mum’s Nissan Cherry, we’d often sing along to ‘You Drive me Crazy’ by the Fine Young Cannibals.  Long summers running amok, freedom never tasted and felt so good.

We also spent a lot of time in the pub. The Walnut. Oh course we were too young to drink, but drinking was the last thing on our minds – especially when there was a rabbit warren of hotel corridors to explore and cunningly acquire a stray bowl of chips when we knocked on the frosted glass window of the kitchen. Jolly chef Ali never failed to pander to our opportunist charms.

Summer pub expeditions usually involved us commandeering cardboard boxes in which we would either sit in for a different perspective, or try to race down hills in – though I’m not sure how successful this was. Boxes were also used to picnic in, out in the garden.

We went to different school, but after-school activities such as choir and brownies brought us together in the evenings, after which we’d watch East Enders together. We nicknamed you Sanjay. It was the era of hopeless Nigel and partner in crime Sanjay.  

As teenagers we had separate friendship groups, but then those groups came together for the awkward years of excess: alcohol, parties, mischief.

Then all of a sudden, you were grown-up, wise beyond your years and getting a serious career. Perhaps those years of friendship bracelet making were setting you up for the sales prowess you quickly developed as a young adult.

I selfishly hoped you’d take a job that you were interviewed for in Bristol, secretly looking forward to the potential of spending more time with you here. But you followed your heart back to Biarritz and the dream job. And the dream man.

You finally fell in love, the only thing that had been missing from your fruitful life. With all the pieces fitting neatly together, you beamed with confidence, self-assurance - reaching a higher level of happiness.

We were with you the weekend of the announcement. The youngest of our friendship group to become an expectant mum. We were overjoyed to hear the news and that most fulfilling of journeys started for you. Devastatingly, it was also the last of your journeys.

I have met you boy, held his warmth. He has your eyes. He is your being.

I will see him grow, develop his own unique personality. But I will be hoping he keeps your curiosity, your appreciation for nature, your verve, your calm and clarity of perspective.

Out of sadness there is light. He will be your light.