August 10th 2023.
Amy Rowland and Rachael were brought together by one thing - their mutual love of the 90s boy band Take That. Amy, now 38 and living in London, recalls her childhood obsession: “My walls back at home in Derby were covered in posters of Take That, and when I finally went to my first concert in 1994 with my Dad, I knew I’d die happy. I loved everything about them.”
At the age of eight, Amy thought no one could possibly love the band as much as she did - until her mum’s boss put her in touch with Rachael, his granddaughter living in Libya. “The only way we could contact each other was by sending letters,” Amy explains. “We managed to get a letter to each other about every other month. We’d send each other pages and pages, all about our love of Take That – looking back, I have no idea how we had so much to say about them.”
The girls quickly became close. “We talked about boys that we fancied at school, and Rachael got expelled a few times,” Amy says. “I was an only child and she went to a different school to her sister, so we became like the sisters we never had. My mum became a bit of a surrogate mum to her too.”
When the band split up in 1995, the girls needed a new shared passion - and, aged 14, they found it in football. “I loved Liverpool and Rachael was a Bradford fan because she loved Lee Sharpe,” Amy recalls. “We’d go to matches together.”
But in 2001, when the girls were 16, they drifted apart. Amy went off to college and with no social media, they had no way to keep in touch. Years later, when Amy was living in Australia, Rachael sent her a friend request on Facebook.
“We got so excited, and the next thing I knew, Rachael had found us a flat. We moved in together in March 2010. It was exactly how you’d imagine living with your best mate to be,” Amy says. “Lots of wine and gossip!”
Four years later, when they had to move out, Amy was devastated. But fate had one more surprise in store for the two childhood friends. When Amy got married in Las Vegas in 2015, Rachael was there - and years later, Amy returned the favour and organised Rachael’s hen do.
Now, even with Rachael living in Portugal, the pair are closer than ever. “We’ve swapped writing letters for sending voice notes. We have very different lives, but every time we see each other, nothing has changed,” Amy says. “I love how easy and comfortable our relationship is. We don’t have big expectations of each other, we’re just easy going. It’s lovely having a friend that’s known you since childhood. There’s a stability and safety in knowing that someone will always be there.”
Of course, the pair still love Take That - the band that brought them together all those years ago. Amy laughs: “While there’s now more than Take That that binds us, we love that they’re the reason we met!”
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