I wish we’d taken more photos: Debra Adelaide on losing her best friend after 50 years

We stood watching the school bus as it pulled out from the kerb, leaving us in silent disbelief. Her home was closer but mine was five kilometres away, and neither of us expected to be stranded at the end of our first day of high school.

When we had first met the year before, Gabrielle Carey and I had never really connected. Although we were both relative newcomers to our tiny primary school, she had formed other friendships and for obvious reasons: she was short, pretty and blonde, while I was tall, dark and unhandsome.

But that first day, at southern Sydney’s Gymea High, we bonded for safety, then all but clung together at the school gate while our only means of getting home disappeared around the corner. My older sister had told me where to catch this bus but had omitted the vital information that we had to run for it as soon as the bell rang, because the surly driver would wait for no child. We resigned ourselves to a long walk home, during which we talked about books, discovering we had both read the English set texts before the school year commenced. I cannot remember what those texts were back in 1971, but I do remember reading them eagerly over the holiday break. Without reading, my entire childhood would have been dismally boring. For Gabrielle, reading was a natural part of what, by contrast, was her educated and culturally vibrant family.

Many years later, she taught in a university subject I had devised, called Creative Reading, and told me it was the best teaching experience of her career. While we both became writers, it was reading that began and continued the connection between us.

I always knew I had very few photos of us together, but when I went back through my albums I was intrigued to discover just how few. Perhaps the longevity of our friendship, beginning decades before digital times, meant neither of us was inclined to turn the camera on ourselves, even when smartphones made it  easy. Assiduously snapping grandchildren, prized garden blooms, interesting trees on our walks, yes. But ourselves, never. We shared our lives intimately for a long time – children, work, ageing parents, books both written and read, grandchildren – but no photos.

When our children were young we were each the photographer in our families, so it makes sense that at our gatherings no one took photos of us. I finally came across a couple where we were with other people, including one at a book launch, but the only ones I found featuring just the two of us were on her wedding day in May 2004. I am dressed in dark clothes and literally in the shadows, while she is radiantly pastel, bathed in the afternoon sunlight, which is totally appropriate given that it was her day. All our lives together, I never felt that I was in her shadow, but I know that other people thought that, and scrutinising this photo now I wonder if I was compliant in this, accepting of her fair primacy.

The other photo is taken at her house before the wedding. She had rung me in a panic, having returned from the hairdresser deeply dissatisfied with the style they had done. She wanted me to come and fix it, do the French braids encircling her head they somehow had not managed. I drove to her place to discover she had already undone the hairstyle, and was waiting for me to redo it. After I fixed her hair, I drove home to get ready for the wedding. Naturally, I arrived late. I  received glares from the people around me, but I could hardly point to her hair and say it was because of that. I also have a photo of the back of her head showing my handiwork in all its amateur glory.

It is nearly three years since I lost my friend Gabrielle. In the months leading up to her death we spent a lot of time together, when I understood that her struggle with depression was best addressed in practical ways. So we spent time walking, cooking together, fixing things around her house. These simple domestic activities seemed to help ease her pain. During that time, it still never occurred to either of us to take a photo together, though to be honest if we had, it would have been a solemn one, there being little to smile about.

She was a famous writer and so of course I can easily find photos of Gabrielle – gorgeous ones, too, as she was always photogenic – to add to the amateur ones I have kept over the years. But it is not the same. Looking back now, how I wish we had taken at least one of those selfies we both scoffed at. What I would love and will never have is a photo of us in our later life, marking more than 50 years of friendship.

I am not looking for metaphor, but they tend to leap out at writers. It is fair to say that Gabrielle’s school career ended as it began with that missed school bus: she left as soon as she could, at the end of 1973. Needless to say, there are no school photos of the two of us.

Debra Adelaide’s new novel, When I Am Sixty-Four (UQP, $35), out March 31, is based on her friendship with Gabrielle Carey.