The Agony Of Losing Friends

Author Cally Taylor promised she’d keep in touch, but now regrets not trying harder

- CL Taylor

I’m 45, and two of my three best friends from school are dead. It sounds like a line from one of my novels; a mystery to draw the reader in and keep them turning the pages. But it’s not fiction, and no matter how much I’d like to delete that sentence and start things again, I can’t.

When we left school in summer 1991, Charlotte, Heidi, Lucy and I, all aged 18, hugged each other tearfully and promised to stay in touch. We’d spent our formative years almost y each other’s company, moaning about teachers, long walks chatting about boys – all the things that teenage girls need to work through with their friends by their side. When we started university, we kept in contact as we always had, by writing.

For the first year, we wrote letters to each other frequently, but as time passed, our exchanges dwindled until they gradually stopped. I loved university, not least because I really hadn’t enjoyed the last two years of school or the person I’d become – I’d struggled with the stress of sixth form and A-levels – so it gave me the opportunity to reinvent myself. But I was sad to lose touch with Charlotte, Heidi and Lucy because, despite everything,​ they had always been there for me, supporting me and loving me.