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grey-and-red uniform. She was also crying and standing with her mum. I walked over to her and said, ‘Hi. My name is Kelly.’ We becamebest friends for life from that day on. Sammy was the same height as me and we had the same curly blonde hair. Back then, that seemed to be more than enough to become best friends with someone. In the classroom, I sat next to her at a little square table and said, ‘You’ve got the same hair as me. Let’s be best friends.’
    But there was so much more to mine and Sammy’s friendship than our hair. She was the only person who never made fun of me and never questioned anything my parents did. She never said anything. Sometimes the other kids would go, ‘There is Ozzy’s daughter. He bit the head off a dove.’ They must have heard that from their parents. How would they have known that shit? But Sammy would just tell me to ignore them. I loved her for that.
    I had this great big, massive fringe. Sammy says to me now, ‘Kel, do you remember that great big fringe you had?’ And then pisses herself laughing.
    I’ve always been outspoken. During those first few weeks at school, I was constantly getting into trouble because I didn’t know what was a grown-up thing to say and what was a child thing to say. In our house we were allowed to talk about whatever we wanted to. If we ever had a question, we would go to my mum and she would tell us. Just like the time when I’d heard girls at school talking about this thing called ‘sex’. I thought, I’ll speak to Mum and find out what it’s all about.
    I went to school the next day and told everyone in my class what sex was. I announced to everyone, ‘Your dads stick their willies into your mothers’ vaginas.’ All this sex talk went flying around the school andthe teachers were trying to find out who it was who had started it. All hell broke loose.
    And then they realised it was me. I was called into the Head’s office and he said, ‘Kelly, was it you who spread those rumours?’
    I replied, ‘I told everyone what sex was.’
    I had to sit on a red chair outside the Head’s office every day for a week. When I told my mum, she laughed. She knew she hadn’t told me anything wrong. I was always free to express myself the way that I wanted to, not the way people thought I should. It was only when I wasn’t with my family and at school with the other kids that I realised it wasn’t the right way to talk.
    Sammy’s family was very different to mine. Her mum owned a hair salon and her dad was, and is, the best butcher in Buckinghamshire. Whenever I went to her house for Sunday lunch or breakfast we would have the best sausages. I absolutely loved it.
    Sammy’s mum used to make us go for a hike every Sunday! She was very organised and always on time. She is a tiny woman and her shoes would always clip-clop on the cobbles. She was forever bollocking my mum for being late to pick me up from school. Sammy would refuse to leave me with the teachers and would insist on waiting, so her mum had to wait too.
    I can still remember her parents’ home number off the top of my head today – I was always bloody ringing it. I was on the phone to her the whole time. One afternoon, Sammy and I set up the video camera in her living room and recorded a whole dance routine we’d made up to the Madonna song ‘Papa Don’t Preach’. Sammy was quiet and laid-back.
    My other good friend was Fleur Newman. Her dad and mum, Colin and Mette, were my mum and dad’s best friends. Colin is also their accountant and business partner. They first met when Colin worked for my mum’s dad. I have known Fleur since the day I was born. Mette brought Mum McDonald’s while she was in hospital. As they sat eating their chips, Mette laid Fleur next to me in the cot. Fleur knows my life inside out and backwards because of our parents’ friendship. She was born to like me. She knows more about how my family works than any of my friends.
    Fleur is one of the funniest