The first person I ever chose.

Fiona was my best friend between the ages of seven and eleven, when I, a year older, hit the rocky road of senior school and we sadly drifted apart. Something I later learned would happen many times throughout life. It was not a failure of a friendship but rather the way the soul searches out what it needs (and sometimes very much does not): lessons in a different kind of love.Fiona was what I would call a gentle soul. We lived in and out of each other’s houses during those years, separated only by a small road that connected our two cul-de-sacs. I could run to hers in under a minute and roller blade in under 20!The houses were very similar. We lived on an estate where they were propped up like a Monopoly board, all identical and as many crammed into a small square as possible - but, I always thought Fiona’s house was very posh.They had glass French doors connecting the lounge and dining room and a garden that wrapped around the house because it was on a corner plot. They were also one of the only houses that had double glazing in the form of lead diamonds across the windows. In the 90s this was a surefire way of telling the outside world, and your neighbours, that you were stylish and rich.The wonderful thing about those first intense friendships is the chance to step into another world. To understand that all the little quirks your parents have, the ones that feel completely normal to you, aren’t the norm at all.Fiona lived, in my opinion, very differently from us, although looking back those differences were actually very small. She would always have tanned skin and mosquito-bitten legs because they holidayed every year in a French villa. I thought this sounded extremely flash compared to our UK-based holiday camps.Both her parents worked full-time. Her dad was an MD of a huge company and her mum — I don’t know exactly what she did, but I always assumed it was something very important and serious.This meant that Fiona was what you would call a latchkey kid.In the 90s it wasn’t overly common for both parents to work full-time. My mum was a stay-at-home mum; her first step back into work was part-time at the local Woolworths during hours that wouldn’t affect the full-time job she already had at home. Because of this, I never once came home to an empty house.A latchkey kid, however, would use their own key and spend the first couple of hours after school alone at home. I thought this was incredibly exciting.I remember going back to one friend’s house after school and watching in absolute awe as they whipped up dinner for us - an entire bowl of raw cake batter. Another friend made a huge plastic bowl of pasta and drained half a bottle of mayonnaise over it as the sauce. I was then handed a spoon and we both ate from the same bowl.This level of self-sufficiency was both impressive and enviable.Fiona would often make a Pot Noodle for tea, it was always the green chicken and mushroom flavour with a glass of cold water sitting next to it so she could dip her fork in to keep it cool between bites and therefore eat the noodles quicker.I suppose being thrown into that level of independence early allows genius ideas like this to form.We had many similarities too - maybe this is the basis of a perfect friendship: the ideal balance of difference and sameness.We both had swings in our gardens. Ours was green metal with metal handles and Fiona’s was red plastic with blue rope holding the seat.The joy of Fiona’s swing was that we could take turns sitting on it while the other twisted the ropes round and round before letting go, the swing spinning violently in the opposite direction until the ropes had unwound and you were left dizzy and disorientated.I remember once sitting on the swing with my head lowered to get the maximum number of twists, each turn creeping the rope closer to my head. Unfortunately, when the rope began to unwind it managed to pull my very long hair into its momentum, and I became temporarily part of the swing.I looked up to see Fiona’s mum walking towards me with an enormous pair of shearing scissors to cut me free. A vivid memory.Luckily, with a lot of care and precision, my hair and I were detached from the rope with minimal damage.We also both loved animals. She had a tortoise and later a guinea pig. Her sister had a hamster which we once got out of its red plastic home and promptly lost underneath the kitchen cabinets. Her mum came home from work and had to dismantle the lower cabinets and plinth to find the missing hamster before her sister found out.Exactly the sort of activity you hope to be greeted with after a long day at work.I recall she was very angry.Fiona was also very close to her grandma, who would often come along on days out, as was I with mine. My grandparents knew Fiona well and she even came on holiday with us.I was terribly carsick in my grandad’s car on the way there, but we still managed to practise our entry to the talent show ‘Mr Postman’, the Carpenters edition which we performed in matching outfits.Looking back now, I realise that first best friends are a kind of rehearsal for the rest of life.You learn how to share a world with someone who didn’t grow up inside your own. You learn that other families eat differently, holiday differently, live differently. You learn independence by watching someone else practise it first.And then, quietly, without any real drama, you learn that friendships can end too.Not with a bang, but with a change of schools, new surroundings, new people and the slow fading of a house just across the road.But for a few years, Fiona was my whole world.And I still can’t look at a Pot Noodle without thinking about the fork in the glass of water.Who was your first best friend?I’d love to hear about them. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit toriecampbell.substack.com