Walking down Redchurch Street...

How many years has it been now?

When I was five years old, I probably would have said I had only one friend. Her name was Rebecca and she was my best friend. It was a fact, just like it was a fact that my birthday is September 12, my middle name is Amy and I have an older brother.

We met in nursery, and were inseparable (I don’t even really remember this, us meeting, our first friendship in our first year, but I’ve been told by reliable sources). We grew up together, and as our small school grew even smaller, our class size went from 14 to 12 to nine, we became each other’s everything. I think. She was definitely mine.

We were fortunate - in a class with only 4 girls (one of whom didn’t really speak English) to find someone who could complete us so fully. It’s probably a lot easier to find when you are only seven years old and there’s a lot less going on in your head. But I don’t think that diminishes our friendship.

I was probably a similar age when I started going to dance classes. They were just local classes at the church hall, and they were quite low pressure really - we did exams once every few years, but mostly just mucked around and danced to songs from musicals. We did shows at Whitley Bay Playhouse which were the highlight of my year, but besides that it was just a nice way to be active and get dressed up in little pink leotards and socialise with other girls. But for some reason I never did the socialising part. I was going from the age of four or five, and I never managed to make any friends. That hadn’t been a problem at nursery or school, or anywhere else I went. Just at dance classes. I don’t think it bothered me too much, definitely not enough to stop going or dread class. But I must have mentioned it to my Best Friend Rebecca (maybe my parents worked behind the scenes) because at some point, my Best Friend Rebecca started coming to class.

And Oh My God. Suddenly dance was the highlight of my week, because I now had my human confidence-booster, my double, my twin, my perfectly balanced other half by my side. I look back at that moment and I think it might be the kindest thing a friend has done for me. I didn’t realise it at the time but I was socially awkward and shy when I was around people who I didn’t have enough in common with. I never had to make friends at school because I always had one in-built from the very first day. I could be loud and confident and fun and friendly when I had my support by my side, but when she wasn’t there I didn’t know what to do. She came to class and it was a gift to me. It became something very special, at least in my memories, that I treasure. I think it was special to Rebecca too because from that moment on she was on a path to becoming a Dancer.

And then our small school, which had been shrinking and shrinking as the recession meant fewer and fewer families could afford to pay fees, announced it was slowly shutting down. Over the course of a few years, one year-group at a time, it would shut. My parents and Rebecca’s parents both knew that it was probably time to look elsewhere - we were eight years old, and our older siblings were 11 and moving on to senior school in the autumn.

We were eight years old, so we didn’t really get to choose what happened next. We consulted in the playground and agreed we’d go to one school or another, we took the same entrance exams as each other, and I think we thought our parents would all sit down together and have a long discussion to decided where Nadia and Rebecca would go.

And then it was September and I was putting on a purple tartan skirt and a purple jumper and purple tights and going to Sandyford to the all-girls school. And Rebecca was wearing blue and going to the west of Newcastle to a mixed class.

And then 10 years later she went to a famous contemporary dance school when I went to university, she moved to London and I moved to a tiny town in Scotland. We would see each other a couple of times a year, and sometimes when one of us was going through a tough time we would call, sometimes for hours. I remember phone calls while I walked the little streets of St Andrews in the dark, and she talked about her boyfriend and I talked about mine and we thought how did we get here, when did it all become so confusing, why was it so easy to communicate with each other and now so hard to communicate with these men we were supposed to share everything with. I think we forgot how much we used to fight, when we were seven years old and Best Friends in the playground. Our older siblings had to separate us, the whole school became an audience to a Nadia and Rebecca fight. Now we agonised over the pitfalls of a first serious relationship, and our diverging paths in life seemed to be running parallel.

I can see us back at Linden School, I’m watching us play. My hair is too straight, my ears stick out, my teeth are too big for my face and I smile constantly. Rebecca’s hair is as light as brown hair can be and still be called brown. She has a round cherub face and freckles that I envied my whole life. She has asthma and I’m jealous of her inhaler. She goes red whenever she is upset, which I’m not jealous of. But everyone worries about her and fusses over her when she cries and goes red (usually after we have fought) and I’m definitely jealous of that. We both can’t stop talking and we both love to read and we both were top of the class together. I want to be a writer and if our homework is a story I know my story has to be the longest in the class, because that’s the sign of a good writer. We share a single part in the school play, and we are Lilo & Stitch in the dance show. Her mum is a teacher and my parents are doctors and I never really know what her dad does except he worked in shipping. And my parents never let me have sweets so her grandpa brings me sweets on Mondays when he picks Rebecca up from school and its a secret. We both can’t stop talking and we need everyone to know we are best friends. Best Friends. I want to tell Nadia that will never change, even when you think it might. Don’t worry, she’ll be there forever. I want her to know that we may have lives that look completely different and you may not really know her boyfriend and you might live even further away than Forest Hall and Gosforth, you’ll live a seven hour train journey away or you’ll live a short flight away but you’ll always be there and you’ll always tell each other the worst bits and the best bits of your newest life.

And then you’ll be 26 and every time Rebecca comes back to London to visit you’ll meet before work and get a coffee and a pastry from Jolene’s on Redchurch Street. You will both order pastries and both order coffees and even if its cold you’ll walk around Shoreditch and talk about how your job isn’t what you thought it would be and how she might stay another year in Amsterdam and how different her friends are in Amsterdam to her friends from dance school and how even more different they are from her school friends. And you’ll wonder how you managed to stand the test of time, but then you think about how easy it is just to talk for hours like it hasn’t been 6 months, and how exciting both of your lives are so it really makes perfect sense that you still are best friends. And really when you’ve known someone since you were three or four, you can be a contemporary dancer, multi-media artist who works in a coffee shop and vintage store and runs a feminist lecture series and lives in a 17-person student flat in Amsterdam with one kitchen, and your best friend can be a broadcast journalist who likes cooking and reading and doing Pilates and hosting her friends for dinners and lives in North London with her boyfriend who would like to get a cat. And you’ll both be in awe of each other, and you’ll both be proud of what you are doing, but you’ll also both be confused and directionless and lost.

Our birthdays were 12 days apart, but I only remember once having a joint birthday party. We went to the circus then had a party at Becca’s house. At the circus we drank Ribena cartons which I wasn’t usually allowed. We both got Bratz dolls as presents (I got Jade, she got Sasha). And we played pass the parcel and I cried because I was the only one not to have a turn unwrapping. And then the next year we were at different schools with different friends and suddenly we were the outsider at each other’s birthdays. It took years, maybe 10 or 15, for us to get used to playing that role. Not knowing each other’s worlds as intimately, as comfortably, as school friends or university friends or colleagues. But we have always had a longevity, and an understanding.

I wonder if either of us will get married, and if we do, whether we feel lonely or excluded at each other’s weddings. When we were girls we promised we would be each other’s maid of honor. Our lives have been separate for so many years, it’s hard to understand how much we don’t really understand about one another’s worlds. We’ve met each other’s long term partners once a piece, I think. But we walk down Redchurch Street together and she knows almost every name I mention, from every stage of my life. And she can talk about her school friends and I will be able to picture each of their faces. I remember every holiday she’s been on since we were children and she can tell when I’m not happy with my job even if I say its okay. And I think that I will take this, this distant but intimate version of friendship that has many constraints and limitations but that has outlasted almost every other relationship in my life. And we will keep walking our paths, and even as it becomes clear they will continue to diverge, we will hold hands or wave at each other from afar, and trust that we can be patient and wait until those paths cross again.