I wrote this for Grazia last year. It’s about being dumped by a friend. I still dream about this friend.

All names have been changed, obviously. 

It is the night before my wedding. Sarah* and I are staying in a hotel in Berkshire, drinking champagne, giggling about old times and smoothing out my vintage ‘30s wedding dress. There’s no one I’d rather have with me.

Fast-forward another five years and it’s the summer of 2009: Sarah is getting married. But I only find this out when she mentions it abruptly in an email. She does not invite me to the wedding. I have not seen the dress or met the groom. In fact I have not seen Sarah for almost two years, despite attempts to do so. At the time I put it down to us just drifting apart, but not this far surely? Convinced there’s been some terrible misunderstanding, I email her back, sending congratulations, suggesting we meet for a drink. I don’t get a response. I try again. Nothing. Mortified, I moon around the house. What have I done, or not done? When? How will I find out if I can’t see her? Slowly, it sinks in. The unimaginable has happened. For some reason unknown to me, I have been friend-dumped. It feels like a betrayal. And it hurts.

It is no surprise to me that according to a recent survey, being dumped by a girlfriend is cited as being more painful than being jilted by a lover, both for the dumped and the dumpee, who will apparently suffer terrible guilt afterwards. Boyfriends are meant to come and go. Trusted old girlfriends are forever.

When I walked into a traveler’s lodge in India one hot, dusty evening in 1993 the first thing I heard was Sarah’s London accent and irrepressible laugh. We got chatting. I liked her immediately. Sarah was funny, glamorous and smart, not a flakey backpacker. She was 26, taking a sabbatical from her job, travelling the world with her boyfriend, while I was 21 taking some time out after university. That night we sat up talking, laughing and putting the world to rights. As the dawn broke I knew I’d made a friend for life.

Sarah and I grew close on our return to London. Now single, she was rising fast up the career ladder in a glamorous media job. I was living an exciting, slightly chaotic life as a journalist working for style magazines. She always seemed so much more grown up than me. Whereas I was living in rented accommodation with friends, Sarah had her own flat full of designer clothes, living the kind of independent well-connected girl-about-town life that every twentysomething wants. We had separate groups of friends and we were quite different - I was bookish but impetuous and prone to scrapes, she was from the university of life, streetwise and more sensible - but we had a real connection. We both loved fashion, gossip and music, and, more than anything, made each other weep with laughter like no one else. We often went on holiday together in our own inimitable way. I’ll never forget the time we set off for Sri Lanka and spotted some beautiful Bally knee-high boots on sale for half price at Heathrow. They were too good a bargain to miss, we decided. So we each bought a pair and carted them through the jungle in our rucksacks for two weeks. Summer meant our annual pilgrimage to Glastonbury. We’d hang out backstage, party hard, but at the end of the night we’d always go back to the B&B together: it was part of our girlie code of conduct that we left when the other wanted to. We always used to joke we were like an old married couple.

However, we weren’t a couple. During my twenties I was busily embroiled in love affairs with rather unsuitable men – artistic, self absorbed and non-committal - or enjoying a succession of dates and dalliances that were mostly just great gossip fodder to dissect in gory detail with girlfriends over a cocktail. Sometimes I broke hearts. Other times I had my heart broken. Usual twentysomething stuff. When it got messy Sarah was often the friend I’d turn to, the older, stablising, almost maternal influence. I’d head to her flat, she’d cook a carby supper, crack open the Chablis, declare the man totally unworthy and I’d wake up on her sofa bed the next morning feeling better about the world.

Did she resent her role? It didn’t seem so at the time. Of course, now, in the confusion of hindsight, I wonder. During this time, Sarah had remained more or less single despite wanting to settle down. This was unfathomable to those who knew her because she was gorgeous, successful, and smart, a real catch. But I don’t think she saw herself like that. She lacked confidence when it came to men. As the years rolled by and the happy relationship she wanted didn’t happen, she lost more confidence, although she never wallowed in self-pity. She was not someone who wanted a baby at any cost – a relationship came first – but as she hit her late thirties inevitably that became more of an issue. I guess the life she’d once imagined for herself wasn’t panning out.

Ironically it was thanks to Sarah that I met the man who is now my husband. We were in a Soho members’ club and she knew someone who was in his party. I noticed him right away: he was the most handsome man in the room and was wearing a truly terrible pair of tartan trousers. There was a spare stool next to him at the table. We started talking and I was drawn to his intelligence and humour. Everyone else kind of faded away that night. Little did I know that that random meeting would change my life. Five months later I discovered I was pregnant. It was a big shock but we were in love and both wanted the baby.

Of course, I underestimated the impact of the baby – a teeny thing born six weeks premature - the lack of freedom, the lack of sleep. My life did a back flip. Sarah’s life continued as normal. Although she was supportive inevitably the dynamic of our relationship changed. When we did see each other I was careful not to bang on about the joys of motherhood, or moan about it either, not wanting to be insensitive. And she became more guarded about her feelings about being single, as if my being settled meant I could no longer empathise. So we weren’t as close as we had been but I’ve always believed that good friendships are cyclical and, in the nicest possible way, should be taken for granted. You weave in and out of each other’s lives, tighter at some times than others. And I never doubted that Sarah would meet the right man one day – I’d lucked out, she would too - and we’d share more common ground again. As it turned out when she finally did meet him, the opposite was true.

The last time I saw Sarah was on a warm evening in the summer of 2007, sitting in the garden of her lovely new west London flat. We were both in a good place. I had realised my dream of writing fiction for a living - my debut novel The Rise and Fall of a Yummy Mummy was a bestseller - and was thrilled to be pregnant with my second child. Sarah was looking radiant having just met a man  - the man! - in a pub the night before and spent the night with him. We giggled and discussed it. Should she text him? (No!) When would he call her? (Later that evening, yay!) After supper I kissed her goodbye. For good, it would turn out. At the time I wasn’t surprised that Sarah became elusive after that night - she was in love after all and she had a full-on big job. I thought she’d disappear for a few months, as smitten friends do. But Sarah never reappeared. Nor did she ever meet my new baby. I couldn’t understand how something so important to me could mean so little to her. My husband suggested that maybe she couldn’t be happy for me for her own reasons – babies can bring out all sort of emotions in people - and told me to go with it, give her time. Time zoomed past with occasional email flutters, dates to meet that somehow never happened. Our last correspondence - those emails about her wedding – were exchanged last summer. Then, nothing. She no longer replied. Since then I’ve put efforts to find out why I’ve been friend-dumped aside – there were friends of hers I could have called to dig for an explanation - because it feels futile, like picking over the bones of a dead love affair. She obviously had her reasons. And I’m aware that her account of this story will, undoubtedly, be different to mine. Since our final meeting, I’ve had a third baby, written four more books, made wonderful new friends, and thankfully haven’t lost any more old ones. Life moves on, at about a million miles an hour. Even so I still get ‘Oh, I must call Sarah,’ moments, usually because I’ve seen something she’d love in a shop, heard something that would make her laugh, or just because I want to check she’s OK. Sometimes I even consider calling her but then, of course, I don’t. A baby needs feeding. There’s a book deadline. And, well, there’s just so much stuff between us now. But I haven’t deleted her number from my phone - I like to think that one day I may actually call her, if only to find out why I was dumped, if only to say goodbye. Far better to have a bloody final blow-out than let a friendship slither away silently like a casual fling that’s best forgotten. It still worries me that I might have hurt her without knowing it, or was a crap friend, or, worse, that she made a decision that she now regrets but feels there’s no coming back from. I guess the point is, friendships cemented during adventurous times are precious and oddly irreplaceable. And it still feels wrong that she’s no longer in my life.

*not her real name