Friends come and go. But best friends, real best friends, are here to stay. I have three, and I can’t imagine life without them. I met my three friends at secondary school, and although we started as a large group, it has been whittled down to the four of us. We are soul mates. We have never fallen out. We don’t argue. We’ve never grown apart like friends often seem to. Sure, now we’re at university, we only see each other every few months, but whenever we reunite, it is as if no time has passed at all.

Megan was one of the first people I talked to in year 7. We were similar heights and were stood next to each other on the school photo. This was the beginning of a beautiful friendship. We were very similar in weird levels, we were in all the same lessons, and basically we had the same taste in everything. Now, she is extremely loud and clever and wonderful and is studying Medicine at uni.

Rebekah (aka Solveig) is my favourite quarter-Norwegian. We met in choir at school and she is utterly mad. She looks like Rapunzel and she has as much enthusiasm as Kimmy Schmidt. She loves ballet dancing and Disney films and will inevitably end up crying whenever we watch any of them. She is now studying French and Spanish and is still super excited about life.

Naomi was a friend of a friend at school. She was always the cool one and we still find it strange that she would choose to hang out with such a bunch of misfits. She epitomises hipster, and of course, being a hipster, denies this fact. She likes to dress like Wednesday Addams. She is extremely well read and so prodigiously intelligent it makes you feel completely dense. Naomi was the only person in our school to get into Oxford and is now there studying History and winning at life. Though she isn’t best pleased to be in Margaret Thatcher’s old college.

From my own past friendship fails and successes, there are four necessary elements to a solid friendship;

1. Shared experience. There is a significant bond that is created when you have gone through both tough times and epic times together.

2. Giving as much as you take. If you only talk to someone when you want their help, and don’t return the favour, it isn’t really fair on anyone. Friendships work best when you want to bring each other up, when everyone can benefit

3. Some sort of mutual interest. It can be hard to start a friendship when you have nothing in common. Also, if you have been friends for years and then realise that you are now very different people who don’t really have anything to talk about, that can suck too

4. Liking each other. The past three points can all apply and yet you still don’t really like your friend. I have a friend who I’ve known since birth as we went to the same church. We have a hell of a lot of shared experience. We both put an equal amount of effort into our friendship. We actually have quite a few things in common. However, she can be quite rude. And judgemental. And a bit too honest even if it means she hurts people’s feelings. That is just part of her personality, along with many other great qualities. She is still my oldest friend, but do I really like her as a person? I’m not entirely sure.

I am sure that there are some more well-researched ideas about what makes a good friend, but this is what I have found to be the recipe for a pretty wonderful friendship. My three friends are the people who will be the bridesmaids at my wedding, who I’ll go to the One Direction reunion tour with, and who I will play Beatles rock band with when we’re in our 80s. Everyone deserves to have a friendship like this.