My oldest friend and I have been separated by a toss of the cruellest coin

My oldest friend. We used to sometimes boast that, technically, we’d known each other before we were born, since our mothers, who’d grown up on the same road, sat together in the waiting room for their ante-natal appointments, their two little bumps growing alongside each other.

But our formal meeting was the first day at school, when our mothers put us sitting beside each other. Already, Catherine had the swagger of an old timer: her sister, a Big Girl, was helping the young teacher manage her 52 four-year-old charges, so while I indulged in a spot of discreet crying, there was no such emotional wrench for my delighted-with-herself new next-door neighbour. At the end of that first week, we sang The Wheels on the Bus and when we did the bit about the horn going beep, beep, beep, Catherine pressed my nose so hard I cried all over again. It wasn’t the most auspicious start to a friendship that would last more than half a century.

The next time she injured me was in third class. The pair of us had been caught feckacting and sent to stand outside the door to examine our consciences. When we saw the head nun approaching, Catherine instructed me to pretend to be drinking from the water fountain. I lowered my head and, to be sure to be sure, Catherine pushed it down towards the tap and neatly knocked a sizeable chip off my front tooth. Later, in secondary school, she regularly greeted my return after lunch by performing one of our many memes-before-there-were-memes so robustly that I’d regularly fall off my chair. I don’t think she ever knew her own strength. I don’t think any of us did.

There are a million stories; indulge me in a couple more. In business organisation we subscribed to Business & Finance magathe zine, one copy between two, which we’d read aloud in class, underlining the important bits. Only for Catherine and I, the key words and phrases were anything even vaguely sexual. ‘Interest’ was popular, and ‘inflation’ and ‘rising’. By the time we’d get to the end of every sober article, we’d be underlining every ‘up’ and ‘in’, while Catherine maintained a sort of steely eye contact designed to bring my shaking laughter to the attention of the truly terrifying teacher.

One more: on a school trip to London, we bought sexy lingerie in Top Shop — back then, all underwear in Ireland was white and came from Dunnes Stores — and when we got to Paris, we tried it on and went out on our hotel room balcony because, I don’t know, Paris. Except Catherine was on De Witt’s tablets for a kidney complaint and she laughed so much she wet herself, in process turning her pristine new white silky knickers blue, which made the rest of us laugh so much they probably had to change the carpets after we left.

We were four by then. Sib, Fi, Cat and Debs. Natural born show-offs. While other teenagers pasted Spandau Ballet on their bedroom walls, we’d walk to the pub performing the complicated Tonight Quintet from Westside Story. And down the many years, across different countries and continents, through marriages, children, fallouts, reunions, flowers, cards, emails and mad, mad nights, that was how we stayed.

We were baffled when Catherine got breast cancer for the first time. She was the force of nature, the most physically robust of us. She was supposed to be bulletproof. But she beat it and when the rest of us moaned about how awful it was to turn 50, she wouldn’t have it, reminding us that she had contemplated the alternative and that these were, in fact, the best of days.

And then it came back with a vengeance. And because we were no longer four or 14, we all understood that this was serious, even if it was still beyond our comprehension. The last time she was home from Chicago, in May, she told me she had bought a grave up in Newlands and even though I was supposed to be the supporting one, a wretched, involuntary noise came from deep inside me. ‘Will you be going up there as well?’ she wondered, knowing it’s where my brother and my dad are buried. ‘Well, I’ll f*****g have to now, won’t I?’ I told her and we laughed again, because with Catherine, there was never long between laughs.

Her beloved husband and daughter will bring her ashes up there once they can face the trip. God knows the funeral was hard enough. My oldest friend. Two little bumps, two little girls. And a single toss of the cruellest coin.