Henrietta — Edinburgh, October 1989. We were both eighteen and I had, in two days at Pollock Halls, decided that I hated everyone in Scotland. You knocked on my door on the third night with a bottle of Famous Grouse you had stolen from your brother and said, very seriously: "Diana, this is, I'm afraid, going to be a long friendship." It has been thirty-seven years. We have walked the West Highland Way three times, lost a husband each (mine to divorce, yours to a thankfully brief lapse of judgement in 2011), and held the line on every single Boxing Day at the cottage in Suffolk. You are, and have always been, the best person I know. Happy fiftieth, my darling girl. Pour yourself the Famous Grouse on the night.
