Perfect Happiness by Penelope Lively

ill?’
    ‘No,’ said Ruth briskly, ‘I'd say you weren't. I think you just kind of collapsed briefly through being overtired and overstrained and generally het up. I'd say you were all better now. Maybe you should check up with your doctor when you get home, but I don't think you're ill.’
    She wore, this morning, yet another pastel trouser suit and a peaked cap pulled tightly down over her grey hair, the fringe sticking out below it. This is a good woman, Frances thought, you expect goodness to go around with some sort of distinguishing mark – uniforms and robes and discreet medals – but when it turns up it is decked with apricot crimplene and an ugly jockey cap and gilt-framed sun-glasses. Nothing is ever as it seems to be. She said, ‘After my husband – Steven – died I was determined to get through it all on my own. The doctor kept trying to give me some sort of tranquillizer but I wouldn't take them.’
    ‘Good for you. Stay that way.’
    ‘But this is a bit… well, a bit unnerving. Suppose it happens again?’
    ‘Why should it? Listen, Frances, I guess some people would say you should see a shrink. And I'd say don't. I'm not very typical. Most of my friends have been in therapy at one time or another and you know what puzzles me about it? It's the idea that there's any kind of tidy answer to things. Life doesn't seem to me like that – it's a mess. But most people – or at least most people back home – go at it like they were after the secret of the universe. Just find the right formula and you'll get happy. You'll hit on the answer like you might hit on the right colour-scheme for the living-room and the sun will come out and shine for ever after. Coming to terms with life, that's what it's called. But personally I don't see how you come to terms with something that's basically fouled-up in a lot of ways. And I don't call that pessimism, I call it common sense. You know what I think? I think it's a misplaced faith in science. This is a scientific age and by heavens it ought to come up with a scientific answer to everything. Even how to get through life without trouble. Excuse me, Frances, I talk too much. How's your boy doing?’
    ‘Very well, apparently. We can go home early tomorrow’
    ‘I see they caught one of the guys that did it. But the guy was a girl.’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Twenty-one years old. Jesus! I mean, when I was twenty-one years old I was worrying about whether my lipstick was the right shade.’
    They sat on the terrace of a café, in the shade of a pergola. Morning glory flowers drooped and turned purple, their brief moment already gone. Pigeons milled around the tables. Frances, earlier, had worked out that she must have been in Venice for a week. She had telephoned Zoe and eventually reached her at her office. I'm all right, she had said, quite all right. I wasn't for a while but I am now, and I'm sorry I got you worried, it seems I left some stupid message. Blow that, said Zoe, forget it, skip it, just talk now I've got you. Did Morris Corfield look you up? He paid for your dinner. Good for him, then. And now when do we see you?
    Ruth Bowers was leaving the next day to meet up with her friend in Rome. Frances said, ‘Could we keep in touch?’
    ‘Sure we'll keep in touch. I'm the type that keeps in touch. I show up, uninvited.’ She grinned, with the glimmer of a gold-capped tooth.
    Frances examined herself. She examined her state of mind and found it not too bad. She was not agitated any more, the sense of panic had gone, it was possible calmly to see to things like plane reservations and the cashing of travellers' cheques. She was trudging once more that level grey plain of sorrow. But there were one or two curiosities, to be inspected and considered. The flow of warmth she had felt for Ruth Bowers, a stranger, and the faint but inescapable satisfaction that she was alone in this encounter. Steven would not have cared for Ruth Bowers. Steven would have found Ruth Bowers