Trishie saved my life. Not just a dramatic opening to a tale but the plain fact. We were travelling through sub-Saharan Africa, after we had finished our teaching stint in Uganda, when I fell ill with malaria. At the tip of Monkey Bay, on the beach, very remote, nearest doctor 20ks away, no cars anywhere. Trish found a lorry-load of tourists doing an overland trip and demanded they hand over their medication supplies for me. I knew nothing of this at the time as i was delirious in a beach hut. It took several days before i was well enough ti sitnup and chat. I would almost certainly  have died if she hadn’t acted when she did.  Afterwards it occurred to me how brave she was and how frightened and alone she must have felt (in those pre mobile phone days). 

So many memories: watching the lightening storms while perched on the balcony of our little house in Uganda, as the rains saturated the red earth, celebrating our 21st birthdays there, with a food parcel from home and tapes of Yentl, Les Mis and selected country music favourites (Trishie making up her own words if she couldn’t remember the lyrics, for years she would sing “you picked a fine time to leave me Lucille, with four hundred children and a crop in the field“ - if you’re interested the actual line is ‘four hungry children which makes rather more sense’)

Sitting our star painted kitchen in Brixton with our feet up on the Aga, revising for our law exams. Cocktails with Clairie and Luce in Hush bar (and later when we all had a little more money at Soho House). Walks in Kew, planting bulbs, her phone going off in the opera house, at my wedding singing through all the musicals we could remember, accompanied by my brother on the piano. 

We had planned to go to the theatre for her birthday in 2014. But a few days before, my beloved brother went into a hospice, failing fast in his own battle with cancer. He died two days after her birthday. We didn’t make it to the theatre; instead Trish, Claire and I went to see the poppies displayed at the Tower commemorating the dead of the First World War. Somehow that seemed more fitting. 

Three months later, Trishie died.

I’ve never met anyone who had so many best friends as Trish; it’s a testament to how she touched our lives that so many of us thought of her as especially ‘ours’. Kind, determined, gracious, thoughtful, funny, silly, wonderful: I feel blessed to have counted her my friend.