Jo and I were room-mates in our first year at university. As Mary Jo from Word Wenches will attest, she was the easiest person in the world to share a room with, good-humoured and generous, with the lovely smile so many of you have mentioned, and always full of interesting conversation. After university, we lost touch and many years went by. Then, about ten years ago, I found her website and wrote to her. It was the Winter Solstice "the darkest night of all the year", and I'd been thinking about the poem those words come from, a poem she loved, Robert Frost's "On Stopping By the Woods on a Winter Evening". I wrote to her, quoting it, and she replied. It has given me such pleasure to be back in contact with her again.
Dear Jo, I have so many happy memories of those months we shared. You were such a fascinating mixture of down-to-earth practicality and wild romantic imagination. If anyone had told me at the time that one of my friends would be an author of historical romance, I'd have known straight away they meant you. You were a voracious reader, too, and recommended some wonderful books: thank you for that.
You had all the Beatles' albums up to "Revolver" on tape and that was the background to that wonderful year.
I remember you, in one of those enormous Keele thunderstorms, leaning out of the window to wash your long, brown hair in the rainwater.
Dear Jo, knowing you was a privilege and a joy. Thank you.