Bomb claims Kiwi teen’s Brit pen pal
They were best friends but never met face to face. Now they never will.
Skye Gallagher met Georgina Callander online two and-a-half years ago and, despite living on opposite sides of the the world, the pair quickly became best friends.
Gallagher lives in Hamilton East, New Zealand while Callander lived in Hesketh Bank, near Preston, England.
The pair spent hours talking online and wrote many letters to each other.
They had plans to meet in person until Callander went to see pop star Ariana Grande’s concert at Manchester Arena on May 22.
Gallagher was in class at Hillcrest High School when she heard that a bomb went off as fans were leaving. She knew Callander was at the concert as they had been talking about it that morning.
‘‘I messaged Georgina, on all social media pages, then I got a text, it was from her Imessage. It was, ‘this is Georgina’s mum, Georgina has been killed’.
‘‘I kind of just stopped, sat down at the seat, I rang dad up crying.
‘‘There was the slimmest chance that she was one of those people out of thousands and thousands but I had this horrible gut feeling that she was. ‘‘I felt sick to my stomach.’’ The pair met online in 2015 through their shared love of boyband One Direction. They quickly became friends. ’’We would video chat. We always messaged. We tried to FaceTime once a week. ‘‘We managed through the time zones ... we always managed to talk.’’
They would watch the television show Once Upon A Time together through FaceTime - it was their favourite TV show.
They would set up their TVs so it would play at the same time.
Although they messaged each other every day, they still managed to find words to share in handwritten notes. Gallagher said she spent a lot of money on stamps.
She has a collection of pages, often double sided, from her friend that were posted across the world.
They would send birthday presents and Christmas present too.
When Callander went on a family trip through Europe she sent postcards from every country they visited. In Paris, Callander hung a padlock with their names written on it on a bridge.
They talked about meeting in person. Gallagher wanted to one day find the lock on the bridge.
‘‘We always talked about meeting in the future but I guess it’s kind of like I appreciate the time I did get to spend with her and knowing the bond we had.
‘‘She would always tell me that I was always there for her, when she was starting college she was really nervous and none of her friends were going to the same college as her ... she always came to me because she felt that I was the one who was always there for her.
‘‘I think we were always there for each other.’’