I drove into St Neots this morning to join with the U3A writing group. The Priory Centre has a terrace where we could buy a coffee and sit by the river, undisturbed, and read our pieces to each other.

The topic this week was a short paragraph revealing something about ourselves that the group didn’t know. Nothing too salacious. I read mine and H, sitting next to me, then read hers. The big reveal was that she had appeared in two TV adverts in the 1970’s when she was training at the Ballet Rambert.

My ears pricked up. She finished reading and others commented. Then I asked her, “did you know my friend Malko? She trained at Rambert.”

“She was in the year above me.” H looked amazed. I told her that Malko had left dancing (most dancers never “make it”) and then she and I trained at physio school together. Later Malko went back to live near her family in the Netherlands and died just before her 50th birthday. J and I went to visit her shortly before she became bed bound and blind from her cruel disease.

She was forthright in the way that Dutch people are and I always had great arguments and discussions with her both in person and by letter. Her sister, who lives in Devon, commissioned a sculpture of Malko dancing and when I saw it a few years ago (just as now) I sat and cried. I miss her.