Liz and I met on the first day of nursery school in 1988 when I marched over, grabbed her hand and told her to stop crying. We had the perfect dynamic – she was sensitive and kind, and I was bold enough for the both of us. But the thing that ultimately bound us was loyalty.

I barely remember having another friend between the ages of four and 10. Almost all my childhood memories feature her: sleepovers and birthday parties and building a snowman from slush. We would sit for hours on her computer after school playing Chip’s Challenge and Worms; we played make-believe dance competitions and she would award me her real-life ballet medals.

I followed her to church on Sundays not because I was interested in God but because I wanted to be where she was. At school we were inseparable – Liz and Loz – then we were put in different classes because we talked too much. I was devastated, but no more so than when my family moved four hours away soon after.

It was before the internet so it would have been easy to lose touch, yet the letters decorated with Forever Friends stickers went back and forth. In our teenage years we moved on to email, then visits to her university, where she tried to set me up with a friend. We giggled, danced and, for reasons now lost to me, developed an obsession with Wild Cherry’s Play That Funky Music. In spite of the separation we continued to hit silly, normal friendship milestones for years.