Like all good friends, Chandler Bing was guaranteed to lift my mood and make me laugh

Ireached a bit of a writing milestone this week as I prepared to release my tenth novel. A decade in the business. As usual with a new publication, I’d various media interviews lined up to discuss the book, my writing process and the theme. It was during these conversations that I found myself dissecting the themes of all my books with the interviewers and surprisingly realised something – that all my books were masquerading as romantic fiction but were in fact all stories about the importance of friendship.

Every book had this true line, painting the picture in glaringly bright strokes of how important our friends are. I wasn’t aware that the take-away from that decade of work was to cherish your friendships but I was more than delighted at the revelation. In all my stories, my protagonist has a best friend she can turn to, a safe pair of hands, someone who has her back, someone who lifts her up when she’s down, someone she trusts implicitly, and most importantly, someone who is guaranteed to make her laugh.

You see laughter is my Kryptonite, I love to laugh and I laugh a lot. I’m a throw-myhead-back-see-my-tonsils-leg-slapping type of gal and I surround myself with people who make me laugh. So as I practiced what I was preaching and typed away on my phone, reconnecting with some friends I hadn’t spoken to in while, arranging coffee, I heard that Matthew Perry had died.

It took me a minute to process, to catch my breath almost when I read that news. I truly felt like I had lost a friend, because I had. No, I didn’t know Matthew Perry, I never had the privilege to meet him, we never shared the same worldly space, but I grew up with him, still watch him on repeat religiously, devoured his autobiography, followed him on social media, prayed for his recovery... Because like all good friends, when I needed it, he was there – a flick of a button and Chandler Bing was guaranteed to lift my mood and make me laugh. Could he be any funnier? No. He was a perfectionist at comedic timing and never failed to make me laugh out loud.

The death of a celebrity is always a strange one because you feel as though you know them. Obviously though you don’t, so you feel somewhat foolish grieving. But this one hit hard. It brought so many memories flooding back. I had just moved to Manchester for the summer with my best friend Louise. It was gloriously hot weather and we were giddy goats, full of adventure and excitement, getting away from our parents for a while before college started. We had three whole months of freedom. We rented a less than salubrious one-bedroom flat over an abandoned dry cleaners and started making the place liveable. We tried to persuade the landlord to at least give us a TV and he did. We were ecstatic.

We had no other furniture to speak of apart from two single beds, two cups, a kettle and two pink plastic plates. We had no fridge, no sofa, not even a chair to sit on. But we were young and happy and I can distinctly remember my parents posting me £20 to buy food as we had only just arrived and were still job hunting. Did we buy food? No we didn’t. Eatin’ was cheatin’ and it was on that hot Friday evening in sunny Salford that we skipped on down to the ‘offie’ a few feet away and bought some cans of beer for me, cider for Louise, and I purchased a TV Guide. Back in our glorious, rule-less empty nest, we lay down on the wooden floor in front of our TV perched on a milk crate and I flicked through the guide. A small square picture of six twenty-somethings caught my eye and I said to Louise, ‘Oh we have Channel 4, this looks good.’ It was Friends.

With our heads resting in our cupped hands, our feet criss-crossed in the air behind us, we watched that very first episode known as ‘The

Pilot’ also known as ‘The One Where Monica Gets A Roommate’ and as we sipped on our cheap cold cans we howled laughing because, I mean, it was us. We recognised these six people immediately because they were going through the same things we were – unsure what the future would hold; navigating life; nurturing their friendships; and being there for each other. Even with all the insecurities, there was laughing. So much laughing.

To this day, over 25 years ago now, I still feel that sense of freedom when I watch the show. I can recite it word for word and still picture where I was in life by a simple line that Ross says, a dress that Rachel wears or a self-deprecating joke Chandler makes. The show is part of my DNA.

I truly believe friends are everything in life. I’m beyond lucky to have really close ones who show up for me all the time, as I do for them – after all, friendship must be a two-way street.

But we all have days when we’re just in need of a little chuckle, a breeze of familiarity, some light relief from life and on those days I reach out to my other Friends. I look for the dots in between and there they are, always available to me, my F.R.I.E.N.D.S.