One of my earliest memories of Lettie was when she beat me up with a hairbrush; turns out that would be the beginning of a beautiful friendship! From there we spent hours on end singing awful R & B songs (she was always the better singer and could do a mean impersonation of R Kelly), eating three-packs of dodgy cakes outside school when we should have been in registration, and planning the next trip to France. Those trips punctuated our teenage years – years spent fancying deeply inappropriate boys, singing in the playground (always singing!), inventing new names for the boys we liked, walking around trying to find said boys, inadvertently drinking Nikki and Ian’s expensive champagne (twice!) and raiding the patisserie for something a bit more exotic than our usual cake-trio fare. I cherish those times. In Lettie I found a soulmate and partner in crime for those not-easy-to-navigate teenage years. She was loving, boisterous, cheeky and stubborn – elements that were either lamented or celebrated by our teachers who saw in her a force to be reckoned with, which challenged some of the less able members of staff. She knew her mind, and she knew exactly what she did and didn’t want to do, which sometimes gave other people the impression that she was older than her years. Thanks to Lettie, I look back on my teens as a vibrant and exciting time, full of adventure, fun, and, of course, a liberal dose of naughtiness. Inseparable for years, we then took different paths in life which gradually distanced us until 2007, courtesy of Facebook, we get back in touch. Lettie’s first words to me then were “Yo Biatch!” an unlikely affectionate term we always used for one another, and at that point I knew we’d pick up exactly where we’d left off those years before. I’m so glad that we did. Lettie was a pillar in my life, and that can never be undone. She’ll always be an integral part of my early life, and her memory will continue into my future.