Chapters (28)
‘What happened with Mr. Hapgood?’ she asked, looking at me in that sideways way she had.
‘Oh,’ I said carelessly. ‘He finished it in the end. I’ve heard since that his wife went off with someone else.’
‘What goes around comes around. Do you still see him?’ she asked.
‘God, no. I’ve not seen him for nearly ten years.’
She turned to look at me. ‘Are you still in touch?’
‘No.’
‘Not at all?’
‘New Year’s Eve text maybe. Birthday email.’
‘But you still think about him.’ She was so insistent and probing.
I sighed. ‘Occasionally.’
She was drinking from the water bottle as we began to head onwards. ‘Like when?’
I felt guilty, disloyal, but also strangely free. I had never spoken of these things. ‘I don’t know. Actually I thought of him earlier, looking at this,’ I said, gesturing to the hills, the lake, the majesty of the place. ‘Or sometimes if I hear particular music . . . the usual corny old tosh. Anyway, it’s your turn now.’ I wanted to stop talking about me. I felt unnecessarily exposed, like I was having one of those naked dreams. I had said too much, made a bigger deal out of something than it was. Perhaps I needed to explain myself. ‘Sometimes, Ness, I think it’s because I’m not very good at letting go; I’m a fiercely loyal person. If I love someone I never stop loving them. Men, girlfriends . . . I have never fallen out with anyone . . .’ (I realize that I was self-aggrandizing, making myself sound a bit special, that my loyalty was to blame, not my fickleness.)
We were walking side by side now and she laughed and took my arm in her hands. ‘Constance – that is your name, after all. Don’t worry! You’re not being disloyal. I think you could be the most honest person I’ve ever met.’
It gave me a thrill to hear her say that and to see her looking at me in that particular way, although I have always believed that honesty is vastly overrated. (Loyalty, on the other hand . . .) Her hand was soft against my skin and she let her fingers stroke my inner arm all the way down to my hand, which she squeezed. ‘Besides,’ she said, ‘there are lots of different kinds of love.’
Men will never understand the beautiful intimacies of female friendship.