My oldest friend has the same name as me: Rachel. But I call her Kitty, a variation on her surname. We have been close for more than 40 years. She and I will, I believe, know each other now until one of us finds ourself at the other’s funeral, where she will, perhaps, be required to tell funny stories to a crowd of unfamiliar people. Kitty, if you’re reading this, please don’t bring up that school trip to Normandy during which I famously disgraced myself.
We were 14 when we met at our Sheffield comprehensive; I wonder now that we found each other, because the school was unimaginably vast. But then I remember that it was the 1980s. Our teachers were often on strike: lessons began with a long wait for substitute staff to turn up, and in those minutes the gossip, like the bad behaviour, was frantic, everyone squeezing in as much as they could before the door opened and some slightly desperate figure tried to bring us to attention. Stuck in the same stream for maths, we spoke in those snatched moments about makeup and music – and, of course, about boys: about who we liked, and who we thought liked us, and which of these creatures we might nonchalantly pass in the corridor when the bell rang, or stand next to in the lunch queue.
