Deep in my phone is a lone contact labelled with their first name only. No job title, no relevant organisation, no second name, no elusive “Kate from Yoga” or “(someone’s mum)”. And that alone tells you everything you need to know about our relationship.

That she’s an original. A BFF. My ride-or-die. My oldest friend. Not in the wise and wrinkled sense. Although we do have our moments as regards the former, and we’re well on our way when it comes to the latter. Oldest in that she was there before either of us used eye cream or learnt that skinny jeans were a mistake.

There’s something fundamentally different about the people you’ve known since braces and bad poetry. Credit: Getty images

We met in high school, originally disliking one another with a ferocity worthy of a noughties chick-flick before bonding over a mutual friend’s romantic entanglement. And that was it. We were in. Sharing teary speeches at one another’s 21st birthdays and character-building nights out dressed in slight variations of our uniform – “jeans and a nice top”. Inseparable through law school, we graduated to jobs in different cities, spending hours on the phone dissecting our careers, families and love lives.

Friendships that stretch across decades evolve in strange and wonderful ways. Early on, they’re cemented by physical proximity, regularity of contact........

© The Sydney Morning Herald