Dearest Dottie,
You came crashing into my life when we were ten years old. It was summer 1990, the school holidays just beginning in our north Glasgow scheme, with long days ahead of hide ’n seek, chappie door and kerbie, begrudgingly going home only when the street lights burned their orange glow at sunset.
You came barreling down a hilled driveway, kneeling on a black skateboard with blue wheels, almost knocking me down before you zoomed across the road and hit the pavement opposite. You shot forward and face-planted into a hedge, all while laughing the infectious, loud guffaw that became your trademark.
“Hiya,” you beamed at me between chuckles as you picked yourself up and brushed leaves off your baggy lemon t-shirt and shorts. Your long, straight ebony hair was scraped back into a low ponytail, an uneven fringe growing past your brown eyes. “Sorry, didnae see ye… I’m Dottie.” Your warm smile beamed welcomingly at me, a shy only child new to the area who had made just two pals.
We chatted and you let me have a shot of your skateboard, planting a bud of friendship that would blossom over many years. Your warm “hiya” that day filled my heart. Then you broke it. After 17 years you left my life as abruptly as you had entered. No warning, no explanation, no skateboard.
So this is my goodbye to you, the one I didn’t get to give, or receive. My chance to say how much I loved you, and still miss you, 20 years later. I also want admit that I was angry at you for leaving – and to confess my shame that I let you down.
Let’s go back to the beginning. After we met, I learned you were already pals with my new-found friends Lizzie and Shelly, who both lived near the tenement where I had moved with my mum. The scrawny yet gobby Shelly had marched into my close one day and firmly rapped on my door to demand I come out and play. She’d seen me sitting alone in the veranda of our first-floor tenement, brushing the hair of a Barbie and looking down wistfully at the other kids.
We all became inseparable. We’d meet outside Lizzie’s house, on a row of roughcasted council semis, where all the kids would play together while cool older Alan blasted Guns N’ Roses from his bedroom window.
At 15, you moved in with your Da. You didn’t like your mum’s latest boyfriend. Your Da was fond of the bevvy and wasn’t home much. Back then, the freedom you had seemed enviable – no curfews, no chores, no one checking you went to school.
Your life appeared exciting, dangerous – while you were shoplifting, drinking and staying out all night with a pal from your Da’s scheme, I was studying. You’d be partying in the city centre and sleeping in homeless shelters, smuggled in by blokes you’d met. They’d share their carry out and buy you breakfast rolls. I had no daring adventures to share, yet you never found me boring.
After we left school – me to university, you and Lizzie to a YTS scheme – we’d meet at your Da’s place the odd Saturday. Your 30-something neighbour Joe would buy us cider; it smelled like cat food but only cost £3. We’d drink and dance to Pulp around the living room, talking about lads, life and our shared love of music. Our lives were different, but our friendship endured. We focused on the things we had in common and our shared memories.
Unlike me, you had a string of boyfriends, seemed so mature. There was Euan with the plukes, and the married bus driver who’d touch you up on the back seat of the 41A after his shift. There was Gordon who worked on the waltzers in Ayr – you snogged him in the ladies’ toilets at the swimming baths and it was love for a fortnight. Next was Gary, who worked in a supermarket and whose brother tried to stab their mum, then you moved in with the mum’s ex, Bill, who was as old as your Da.
You met Jay when the Buroo forced you on a ‘get into work’ scheme. You were 19, he was 24. Within a year, you were pregnant. Within three, Jay was in the Bar-L for dealing and you were a single mum.
And what an incredible mum you were to your little Teeny – loving, protective, inspiring. I admired your strength, courage and tenacity. No matter what life threw at you, you were always smiling and laughing.
Teeny was eight when I got the call from Lizzie to say you were dead. It was a Friday afternoon. Jay, then released and going straight, had gone to your flat to pick up Teeny, who told him through the letterbox that Mummy wouldn’t wake up. Jay broke down the door and found you covered in vomit.
The world stopped. The music died. The laughter was silenced.
I didn’t get the chance to say goodbye, or tell you how much I loved you. You knew, of course. But I want to say it now: you were, you are, so deeply loved.
I often think about what you’d be doing now. Would you still fancy Stefan Dennis from Neighbours? Would you still wear that bloody blue Berghaus jacket that seemed superglued onto your back? Would you have finally chucked the Mr Bean impressions? Would we still be friends? I hope so.
Teeny is a smasher, you’d be proud. Lizzie kept in touch with Teeny, though I’m incredibly ashamed to say I didn’t. I didn’t know what to say, what to do, how to act. So this is also my apology for not being the friend you or Teeny deserved. I hope you forgive me.
I’ll always miss you, though you live on through a legacy of love, laughter and memories of badly driven skateboards. Sleep well, darling Dottie.
Love, L