The Best of Friends by Joanna Trollope

eyes had no tears.” Author Unknown.’
    Beside it was another, on a blue mount wreathed in painted almond blossom.
    â€˜â€œA bird does not sing because he has an answer, he sings because he has a song.” Chinese Proverb.’
    The counsellor’s offices were in small rooms at the back of a tall, bleak Georgian house behind Whittingbourne Hospital. The windows of the waiting room were curtained with blue-striped, tweed-like material and looked out on to the back of Whittingbourne’s largest supermarket, designed to resemble, in roofline at least, some architect’s Disneyland notion of a medieval manor house.
    The windows were very clean. So was the waiting room, which had an atmosphere very much like a medical waiting room except for the texts on the walls and a blown-up photograph of a calm seascape in a copper-coloured sunset.
    On the table in front of her, a low table veneered in plastic grain to resemble wood, was a pot plant – an out-of-season forced russet chrysanthemum that Fergus would have described, with curled lip, as ‘serviceable’ – and a series of booklets arranged in fans.
Healing and Growing Through Grief
, announced one.
Change and Loss. Helping Yourself
.
    â€˜That’s what you must do now,’ Laurence had said,kindly but with the edge of impatient firmness felt by someone very busy and preoccupied by other things. ‘We can’t help you any more, you see. Because what we do isn’t helping, it’s just keeping you where you are. You need outside help. The kind that shows you how to help yourself.’
    â€˜I don’t want help,’ Gina had said loudly, shoving away a glass of wine he had offered her. ‘I want
love
.’
    Laurence had looked at the kitchen ceiling, then at the fridge door on which Hilary had left a notice attached by a hippopotamus magnet saying, ‘The unsalted butter is only for DISCERNING ADULTS,’ then at the unsteady stack of mugs in the draining rack and had finally said, ‘But you aren’t lovable. Not like this. You might be pitiable. But lovable, no.’
    Gina had been as shocked as if he had struck her.
    â€˜You
bastard
.’
    â€˜No.’
    â€˜Yes! Yes! What do you know about it?’
    â€˜A lot,’ he said wearily. ‘By now.’
    â€˜Do you?
Do
you?’
    â€˜You’re in love with it all,’ Laurence said, getting up from the kitchen table and emptying his glass. ‘You’re in love with your situation. You think it’s glamorous to be so distraught.’
    Gina had never thrown anything at anyone in her life. Living with Fergus, even at the height, or depth of their worst rows, they had known that most of their possessions were too cherished to throw. Now, she attempted to pick up her wine glass to hurl at Laurence, missed it and knocked the wine instead in a dark-red pool across the table and the local telephone book which was lying on it. Laurence began to laugh.
    â€˜Gina—’
    She flung a tea-towel into the wine puddle. Laurence reached out and took her by the nearest wrist.
    â€˜Stop it. You’re being an ass.’
    â€˜It’s real!’ Gina insisted, wrenching herself free. ‘Can’t you see? I’m not inventing anything! It’s
real
!’
    â€˜I know,’ he said. ‘I know. But so are all our lives too, this hotel, Hilary, me, poor old George in a state about having made a mistake about college, breakfast for nineteen people tomorrow, a kitchen inspection next Tuesday – it’s all real, it’s all got to be lived. We can support you, Gina, but we can’t carry you.’
    She had bent her head then, and began to wipe the phone book very slowly and carefully, smoothing the damp-puckered cover out under her fingers.
    â€˜OK,’ she said.
    â€˜Good. Good girl.’
    Don’t ask me, he prayed silently, don’t ask me now if you’re more lovable if obedient.