I shudder at the thought of Kenneth looking down the options and selecting ‘one star’ for me. That would hurt more than the date-and-dash thing he pulled, honestly. He doesn’t even know me. Even though – Lucy takes care to remind me over our post-pub-quiz hot chocolates – I was also, technically, prepared to make a run for it as well. So I suppose I’m just as bad.
‘Except I was honest about things,’ I say, wanting to believe I’m a better person.
‘How’d you mean?’ she says, curling her legs under her on the sofa while the fire crackles.
We’re warm in the light from the burning logs and a tree which Lucy’s decorated with the help of Fern and Shell as a surprise while I was on my way to meet Kenneth. It’s got Fern’s signature foresty touch all over it with its pine cones and threaded cranberries and popped corn. It’s beautiful, actually.
‘You didn’tlet’s be friendshim? Did you?’ Lucy says, grinning.
‘Of course I did. That’s what you do, to be polite.’
‘They’re not on the apps to make friends, though.’
‘Did I make a fool of myself?’
‘You don’t have to be so nice.’
‘It’s nice to be nice.’
But then I’m reminded of all the stupid scrapes I got myself in when I was younger, trying not to hurt men’s feelings. Laughing at jokes I didn’t find funny, agreeing to a drink with a persistent guy because I couldn’t think of a way to put them off asking a second or third time, as if the words ‘No thanks, I’m not interested’ weren’t allowed somehow.
For a while, in my forties, I’d lie and say I had a boyfriend if someone I didn’t fancy asked me out, but that didn’t serve me all that well. Sometimes blokes would come over all hurt or offended, as though I’d led them on just by chatting with them, or like I owed them something because I’d listened to them boring on about themselves at some party or other.
‘Lucy,’ I say. ‘Promise me you won’t ever pretend to be interested in some fella just to be polite, OK?’
‘I wouldn’t.’
‘Good. Life’s too short.’ Look at me, passing on relationship wisdom. ‘I wish I hadn’t said to Kenneth we could be friends.’
‘I wouldn’t worry,’ Lucy says over her mug. ‘He won’t have thought too much about it. And he won’t message or anything. He’s long gone.’
‘All right, all right, I get your point. It’s just that friends is such a precious thing, isn’t it? I don’t go offering it to just anyone, or at least, I don’t and mean it.’
Lucy’s just listening now, clutching her mug to her chest, looking through the door of the log burner. I join her, watching the flames dancing.
‘When you’re young, you have loads of friends,’ I say. ‘At school and college, at work, that kind of thing, but as you get older you get more… selective and you trim off the ones you realise maybe aren’t all that great. Fair-weather friends, the ones that bring you down or aren’t pleased for you when things are going well, the ones that pick at you or make you feel like you’re walking on eggshells? Ever had that?’
Lucy shrugs, non-committal and quiet. I wonder if she’s thinking of Craig.
‘Some you lose and you never know why. Some don’t have the good fortune to grow old with you and you have to go on with your life, just missing them. And by the time you’re my age, if you’re very,verylucky, you’ll maybe only have one or two real friends left who you can rely on. Lots of people don’t have anyone like that.’
‘Like Izz, for you?’ Lucy says sleepily.
‘Yeah, and Patrick too. I’m lucky enough to have two good friends and I don’t know what I’d do without them. I’d be all alone.’
‘You’ve got me,’ she says.
‘I do, thank goodness.’
‘And a whole village of familiar faces. That counts for something?’
I think about that for a moment. She’s right. Here in Wheaton, I do have the comforting familiarity of our generations’ long history. What people might call roots. Only it’s not as comfy-cosy as Lucy imagines. People can know too much about a person.
Not for the first time, I brood over where all my neighbours got to when Don left me in the lurch. They were hardly lining up to offer me a conciliatory cuppa. Errol Burford from number nine practically jumped into a hedge to avoid talking to me the first time he spotted me after Don had done a runner. My sticky situation made people feel awkward instead of provoking the community spirit everyone thinks you find in a small place like this.
You can be in each other’s pockets in a small village, what with all the curtain-twitching and passing on news that isn’t yours to pass on, but are we really looking after one another? I’m not so sure any more.
If I go ahead with the big move and ship out of here for Birmingham, I’ll be leaving all of it behind, a whole lifetime of familiarity, knowing every little detail about people, all spread in whispers behind their backs. Will I miss it when I’m gone? Will they miss me?
