I met my best friend when we were 13: My friendship of a lifetime

On their first day at school, Jenny McEntegart met her bestie Sinéad Byrne... now they are 40 and she says the bond is as strong as ever

Jenny McEntegart (left) with buddy Sinéad Byrne at a Guns N' Roses concert

As I watched my niece begin secondary school recently, I found myself thinking back to my own first day, 27 years ago.

At lunchtime that day, unable to locate any of my friends from national school, I spotted an empty chair at a table and tentatively approached the blonde girl sitting across from it. “Is this seat free?” I asked. “Of course,” she smiled.

We got talking and quickly discovered that, only a few weeks earlier, my father, a carpenter, had fitted a wardrobe in her bedroom. During the job, he had mentioned that he had a daughter about to start at the same secondary school.

Jenny McEntegart (left) with her best friend Sinéad Byrne at her wedding

In a strange way, perhaps we were almost predestined to cross paths. That blonde girl was Sinéad Byrne and, 27 years later, at 40, she is still my best friend.

Our first year at Our Lady’s Bower in Athlone was spent in the convent, which was perhaps a daunting introduction to secondary education for two 13-year-olds. We were surrounded by religious imagery and suddenly encountering nuns as well as teachers.

As different as Sinéad and I are in many respects, stubbornness and a tendency to question things are two characteristics we have always shared. A convent was perhaps an interesting environment in which to put us.

Monica and Rachel. Meredith and Cristina. Sinéad and Jenny. There seems to be a recurring theme in great female friendships: One is organised and composed, while the other brings a little more chaos to proceedings.

Sinéad is, by far, the more organised of the two of us. According to my father, she is “a very refined and polite young lady”. That’s not quite how he describes me. I can be articulate and polished on paper, but in person I sometimes express myself with the vocabulary of a docker.

Sinéad and I are, in many ways, chalk and cheese, yet somehow, we fit together like salt and pepper.

The very woman my father describes as “a very refined and polite young lady” is no stranger to mosh pits, and braved Slane only five weeks before giving birth. Music has always been another thread running through our friendship. Over the years, we’ve seen everyone from the Rolling Stones to Guns N’ Roses together, adding concerts to the long list of experiences we’ve accumulated.

Of course, being chalk and cheese didn’t prevent us from being partners in crime. In third year, a few weeks after we’d been caught skipping school together, my father returned from a particularly disappointing parent-teacher meeting to find the two of us at home. “This alliance has to stop,” he announced.

It was a stern reprimand delivered to a teenager whose school report had left rather a lot to be desired. It was also spectacularly unsuccessful, much to my parents’ eventual delight. Sinéad was back in our house within days, and that same year she stayed over the night before we left on a school trip to Paris.

Almost a quarter of a century later, the alliance remains very much intact.

My parents have long regarded Sinéad as another daughter, just as hers have always treated me as one of their own. We grew up in each other’s homes and, somewhere along the way, the friendship stopped belonging solely to the two of us. Our families became intertwined too.

Jenny McEntegart and Sinéad Byrne skipped school to meet Hector Ó hEochagáin in their local Ticketmaster in Athlone, and he signed a photo taken of them at an earlier event

Even now, when Sinéad visits, Mam will sometimes ask: “Will I stick on some noodles, scrambled eggs and toast?” It’s a throwback to Sinéad’s Friday-night comfort food of choice when we were teenagers. Despite Mam being a fantastic cook, Sinéad never wanted anything elaborate. In many ways, it sums her up perfectly. She has never liked a fuss.

Twenty-seven years later, she still occasionally beats me to texting my own mother on Mother’s Day or her birthday. When I eventually send my message, Mam takes great pleasure in informing me: “Sinéad already got there before you.” I’ve long joked with Sinéad that she is the favourite daughter.

Her family became part of my life too. Her dad, an author, helped and encouraged me as I found my way into journalism, while her mum, who worked in healthcare, has shown me enormous kindness throughout some of the more difficult periods with my health.

Perhaps childhood friendship is easier in one respect. Our lives happened in largely the same place. We went to the same school, knew the same people, and spent our weekends in each other’s homes. At 40, one in Mayo, the other in Waterford, our lives look very different on paper.

Sinéad married, became a respected psychologist and a fantastic mother, while my adult life took a less conventional path. I studied law but built a freelance career and left some of the traditional milestones unticked.

Yet our friendship never required us to become the same kind of adults for it to survive. Perhaps that’s the elasticity of a life-long friendship: Two lives can stretch in completely different directions without necessarily pulling two people apart.

There have been wonderfully happy times, but inevitably, across almost three decades, there have been difficult ones too. After neuro-surgery, Sinéad came to visit me in hospital. At one point, my father, whom Sinéad has always called by his nickname, Mac, thanked her for sticking by me through some of the more difficult years.

There was something wonderfully ironic about it: the same man who had once declared that our alliance had to stop was now thanking her because it never had.

Having a friend who has known you for most of your life is a privilege. Sinéad doesn’t simply know the woman I am at 40. She remembers all the other versions of me too, just as I remember hers. We knew each other before boyfriends, careers, motherhood, illness, and all the other things that accumulate along the way to growing up.

Jenny McEntegart (right) with her bestie of 27 years, Sinéad Byrne

With that history comes a shorthand too. Sinéad’s husband feels more like a brother-in-law to me. He often jokes that the two of us can conduct an entire conversation in quotes and references that nobody else could possibly understand. By now, he is also completely accustomed to me bursting through their door as though it were my own home.

Some memories require only a word or a look to reduce us both to laughter. There are stories we’ve told so many times that neither of us needs to reach the end before the other knows exactly where it’s going.

And now another generation is growing up around our friendship. Sinéad has a little girl whom I adore and often call my honorary niece, while my own nieces know Sinéad as though she were another auntie. Watching my youngest niece laugh with Sinéad’s daughter, who is of a similar age, sometimes feels like catching a glimpse of the girls we once were.

Perhaps that’s the strange thing about a friendship that has lasted for most of your life. You can look at the woman sitting opposite you and know everything that has changed, while still recognising the girl she once was.

Maybe Sinéad and I are chalk and cheese. In many ways, we are the same but different. But, in the immortal words of Phoebe Buffay, some friendships are “for life”.