I first met Sue when we started at Richmond County School for Girls, but we were not in the same class and she had friends already, having been to the preparatory school, so it was some years before we really met up, all the class groups having then been reorganised because of the looming School Certificate exams. We had both been dumped recently by our hitherto “Best friends for life” so initially it was a rather rebellious alliance of two people who were not particularly enamoured of school life and couldn’t wait to see the end of it. And there was still at least eighteen months to go! We both started to behave abominably. School itself did not improve, but genuine friendship blossomed, and I think it was then that we both started to grow up. I think it could be said that in a way we brought each other up. We met each other’s families, we discovered that we could discuss with each other’s mothers things that we could never have mentioned to our own. They trusted us to go on holiday by ourselves, cycle touring and staying at youth hostels, and, even more trusting, a fortnight in Paris. We returned unscathed, we didn’t let them down, God knows what those two nice women suffered as they waved us goodbye at Victoria. The next shock that awaited them was our insistence that at seventeen or so it was OK – indeed necessary – to sleep on the pavement outside the Royal Opera House as each new tranche of tickets went on sale. I had had an interest in ballet for about two years, and now it had spread to Sue. We lived in Soho every spare moment, though now Sue was working in a civil service office in Kingston, and I too had left school and started at Kingston Art School. Throughout those times, and despite my early marriage, we carried our friendship on, and it gave me great pleasure to see that my husband and my friend seemed to get on well. Sue was the kindest, warmest most generous and scattiest BFF a girl could have, my main sorrow at the moment is that my retirement took me so far away. I wish I could have been more practical help. Dorothy