Essex Mums

Katie Orme and I have known each other since we were zilch – or since I was zilch, and she was three months old. Actually, Katie says that “we were probably best friends in the womb”, which could well be true. Our parents met at ante-natal class in 1979, and here we are, 30 years later, still in touch, still bosom buddies, as we dubbed ourselves in our teens.

I remember quite clearly when Katie and I decided to be best friends: we were four-year-olds at Elmwood Road Montessori school, where our parents must have sent us in the hope of making us rounded individuals (a venture that succeeded with Katie – happily married, living in a gorgeous house in a desirable part of London – but was less of a success with me). Anyway, it was the nativity play, and Katie had landed the plum role of Mary – I was cast as a shepherd – but on the day, she forgot her lines and started to cry. Thomas Finn had to step in (I wonder how he’s turned out), while I comforted her stage left. “Will you be my best friend?” she pleaded, through snot and tears, and of course I said yes. Who says no to the Virgin Mary?

The news that one in four of us is still in touch with our first best friend doesn’t surprise me in the slightest. We may live in an age of fleeting, fickle Facebook friendships, but despite that, and perhaps because of it, childhood relationships will always thrive. Katie and I will forever be friends – whether she likes it or not – because our relationship was built on sterner stuff than meeting at a party over seven gin and tonics.

It’s not just that we have known each other our whole lives. It’s not even due to the fact that we got married at the age of six (I was the bride, and she was the groom in her father’s nightshirt). I think it’s because children choose their friends – and their enemies – quite intuitively. There is a sixth sense, an ability to just know whom we will like, that gets lost somewhere past puberty, in a maelstrom of hormones and boys.

That’s not to say that I don’t love the chums I have made in later life. Oh, they have their moments. But it takes a long time to grow an old friend, and as cheesy as this sounds, I’m truly glad she forgot her lines that day in 1984.