Author Hannah Begbie charts the history of a friendship in six holidays.
Hannah Begbie On The Holidays That Defined Her Friendship
Melissa is my best friend. Aged seven we traded our My Little Ponies. Aged 18, we trade tips on homework and boys, and share our diamanté belts and white wine. We have been longing to step into a world beyond north London and, finally free of school, Ayia Napa in Cyprus will be our first proper holiday as grown-ups. We arrive at a towering apartment block in a dusty and neglected part of town, and slather ourselves in low-factor suncream, frying ourselves beside the pool. When the sun goes down we play drinking games with tequila, put on iridescent makeup and baby-doll dresses, and go out dancing to club anthems until dawn.
Melissa and I escape to a nearby beach where we tear into watermelon flesh and laugh about the improbable number of men in Ayia Napa who claim to be firemen. I decide it’s the perfect moment to tell her the most important thing that has ever happened to me: I’m in love with a boy.
(L to R) Hannah Begbie and her friend, Melissa
She confides she is too and for a moment we are giddy with the joy of it. Now we’ll have this in common, along with everything else. I ask who she has fallen for and discover we are talking about the same boy. With one minor difference – he has declared his love for her.
I’m devastated, even though the boy is half my size and we’d look ridiculous together. In truth, I had been more excited about the drama of falling in love than anything this boy said or did. Melissa and I don’t fall out over it. On some level, even in the middle of the tears and the heartache, I know this boy will be a footnote in a friendship that will last forever.
After graduation, I dive headfirst into managing the careers of comedians and Melissa goes into PR. Our lives are a charmed merry-go-round of wine bars, parties, comedy clubs, house-shares and flings. It is a time of possibility, of trying out everything and everyone, and Sri Lanka feels like the kind of place we might have a real adventure. On the plane to the capital, Colombo, I take one too many of Melissa’s sleeping pills and wake to find her wheeling me through the airport on a luggage trolley. This sets the tone for our entire holiday: she books and schedules everything from feeding baby elephants and trekking in the jungle, to a stay at the luxurious Hotel Kandalama and visits to temples where we sit for hours chatting.
When we return to Colombo for our flight home we discover a tourist plane has been blown up on the tarmac by the Tamil Tigers. No one is hurt but our return is delayed by a few days. While she is delighted with the bonus holiday days, I feel sad: I have just started going out with a boy and, for the first time, I’m in love with more than the idea of someone. It raises an anxiety in us both and we have been avoiding this subject.
Once home in London, we drink wine and tearfully reassure one another that boys won’t change anything between us, even if this one is more my size and also probably my future husband. But it does change things for Melissa because she meets his brother and falls in love with him. Everything is perfect – the soaring, albeit clichéd third act resolution of a movie.
Then everything changes again. Melissa’s beautiful younger sister is killed in a bus accident while on a medical placement in Uganda and the skies fill with black clouds in an instant.
In the months that follow, we go to a yoga retreat in Kent. We walk on carpets of cobnuts in the woods, and along the edge of chalk cliffs in silence because we can’t find words for such a seismic loss. We do yoga and meditation, eat vegetarian food, and go to bed early. One afternoon, we’re lying on our yoga mats when I turn to see Melissa, wrapped in her sister’s pink pashmina, tears running silently down her cheek. I hold out my hand and know then that my only job is to always be close, even if I cannot join her in the loneliness of grief.
Despite the profound absence in her immediate family, the years that follow have periods of immense joy. We marry the brothers in two laughter-filled days of singing, eating and dancing, and are swept into the embrace of a shared wider family, gaining new sisters, brothers and parents-in-law. We have our first children and those children are cousins. Our first holiday together as a new family is on the Jurassic Coast in Dorset, where I get mastitis and Melissa takes my baby when I need to recover. We buy scones from the bakery in Corfe and our babies splash in the same baby-bath out on the decking. The air is warm and dry, and smells of pine, gorse and barbecue smoke. We sit on the jetty, our feet dangling in cold water, drinking rosé. We talk about her sister and the charity Melissa is setting up in her name. We laugh about leaking boobs, office politics and dysfunctional comedians.
In the next few years, we both give birth to our second children and it’s hard to find time to run away on holiday together. Instead, we meet in our homes, in pubs and cafés. Then one day, a nurse comes to give my new baby a follow-up blood test for cystic fibrosis, after the standard heel-prick test proved inconclusive. I tell Melissa that if my baby is given a formal diagnosis, I’ll give up my career in comedy, write novels, and campaign for access to the best medicines. All of that happens, in time, but first it is my turn to go to the darkest of places. I hold my children tight and grieve the loss of their cloudless skies – and Melissa is always close by.
One day, when my son is admitted to hospital for CF-related tests, Melissa’s daughter is admitted to another hospital, suffering from pain in her right elbow and raised glands. By the time my son has been discharged, her daughter has been diagnosed with leukaemia. It is another seismic shock and the waves are felt far and wide. Melissa sets aside her civil service job, her future plans and her scheduled holidays, and her family focuses on the two-year treatment plan. It is a feat of strength and endurance for them all.
Her daughter makes a full recovery, walking out of her hospital ward to applause. When life in both homes feels strong again, we finally plan to go away together. I suggest New York for its distracting colours and sights, for the cocktails we could drink, and walks we could take down the High Line and over the Brooklyn Bridge, but Melissa is bone tired. Instead, we book a boutique hotel in the Algarve. By day, we swim in the freezing Atlantic and read by the pool. At sunset, we drink cocktails, eat Ibérico ham and play cards. We talk about how we both still feel exactly as we did when we first met and yet completely different. The women and mothers we are now have been forged, like swords, in fire. Mostly, though, we laugh, doubling over until our stomach muscles ache. On the last day, she takes a call from the GP, who says her exhaustion is due to low iron levels. She is prescribed tablets and we think little more of it.
Soon after, the pandemic hits. Amid global chaos comes more news. My son will have access to new, life-changing medicine. And Melissa is diagnosed with stage 3 bowel cancer, her low iron levels a symptom. We talk on the phone, unable to see each other, trying to process the shock and fear. Plans are calmly made. She leaves her job for the second time in five years, and goes into treatment. Holidays are shelved and all focus turns to recovery. I watch her meet every phase with grace and determination.
She goes into remission, building her strength beyond where it was even years before diagnosis, and we plan a holiday to mark our youngest children finishing primary school. This time it is me who calls for somewhere that is undemanding and close to home. My mum has recently died after a long battle with Parkinson’s, and my dad has just been diagnosed with terminal cancer. I am sad and unsteady, like the ground beneath me is giving way. I can’t go far. The idea of distance makes me anxious.
So we board a train to Margate with our children and visit the Turner gallery, the Tracey Emin gallery, second-hand clothes shops, Margate Bookshop and The Shell Grotto. Over fish and chips, we try to teach the kids our favourite card games, but they’d rather talk to each other about national flags and their future travel plans. We walk along the beach toward Broadstairs and talk about Melissa’s new business, her recently awarded CBE and the new book I’m writing – about best friends, set on the same stretch of Jurassic Coast we once visited with our babies.
Those babies have now grown into the best of friends. They are walking ahead of us, chattering away. When we finally catch up with them we ask what they’ve been talking about. Japan, they tell us. They’re planning to go there together, as soon as they’re grown-up.
The Last Weekend by Hannah Begbie (HarperCollins, £9.99) is out now. bookshop.org
