The Best of Friends by Joanna Trollope Page A

Don’t ask. Gina picked up the fallen wine glass and took it to the sink.
    â€˜Sorry,’ she said in a prim voice. ‘So sorry to have been a trouble.’
    â€˜You’re not—’
    â€˜I’ll do something. Next week. I’ll definitely make an appointment. You’ll see.’
    And then she had walked past him, out of the kitchen with her head up, the way she used to at school when got at, as she often was, for not having a father.
    â€˜I suppose,’ Laurence said a bit later, slumping against Hilary in bed, ‘that Fergus has done just what her father did. Walk out on her.’
    But Hilary wasn’t listening. She had just spent an hour talking to George during which George had said, over and over, that, although he knew he didn’t want to do what he was doing, he didn’t on the other hand know what he wanted to do instead, and she felt absolutely drained by the day and then by his unhappiness and inertia.
    â€˜Yes,’ Hilary said. ‘No.’
    Laurence put his face against her back, between her shoulder-blades, and inhaled.
    â€˜At least she said she’d go.’
    â€˜Yes.’
    â€˜This week.’
    â€˜Yes.’
    â€˜She tried to throw a glass of wine at me. At one point.’
    Hilary pulled herself free of Laurence’s breathing face. George had knocked some coffee over during their talk. Black coffee on a corn-coloured carpet. He had been close to tears. He’d said, ‘Am I a failure?’ At only eighteen, he’d asked that.
    â€˜Go to sleep,’ Hilary said. ‘Let’s just sleep.’
    â€˜But I thought you’d be pleased. I thought—’
    He stopped. Why should she be? Why should he feel she ought to congratulate him on doing something that normal considerate adults just do in normal considerate adult friendships, especially ones that last for a quarter of a century?
    â€˜Don’t expect thanks and pats on the back from
me
,’ Hilary said, shoving her pillow about, ‘if that’s what you’re thinking. She’s your friend.’
    â€˜Ours.’
    Silence.
    â€˜Ours,’ Laurence said again, a little more loudly.
    Hilary reared up briefly and looked at him.
    â€˜I didn’t choose her. You did. I took her on, for you. Just don’t forget that.’ She paused. ‘Please,’ she added with emphasis, and lay down again, closing her eyes.
    On Monday morning, Gina had appeared quite early, dressed in leggings and a blue denim overshirt, and announced that she was going home. Hilary, checking laundry in a huge canvas hamper, stopped ticking items off a list and said, ‘Just as you wish.’
    Gina had looked at her hard. This was Hilary, after all, the Hilary who had been her greatest ally and sympathizer for all those years of Sophy’s childhood and all those years – even longer – of mounting warfare with Fergus, yet who now, thinking about pillowcases and handtowels, seemed about as sympathetic as a barbed-wire fence. She remembered going to a play in London once, with Fergus, a comedy at the National Theatre, which opened to reveal a man lying groaning in bed with a bad back. His wife was standing over him. ‘Why,’ he said piteously. ‘Oh, why can’t you be sorry for me?’ ‘I’ll tell you why,’ the wife said sharply. ‘It’s because I was born with a very small supply of sympathy in the first place, and you have now used it all up.’ Perhaps Hilary was like that.
    â€˜You’ve been so kind. All of you.’
    â€˜No,’ Hilary said, ‘not at all. It’s what we’re here for.’
    â€˜I hope you don’t think,’ Gina said, striving to imitate Hilary’s tone of forbearing politeness, ‘that I’ve exploited you.’
    Hilary paused. She stooped and shook a sheet out of the heap in the hamper.
    â€˜Maybe I’m not the best person to help