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grateful for having your own health. She looked at me and saw my hurt and unhappiness; they were so clear for her to see that she had spoken of them.
    I thought it was only the sharp, cold wind that stung my eyes as it whistled around the high walls of the hospital, but it was her sympathy that made my eyes sting. No stranger had ever reached out and spoken to me like that before. Not even back home, where they often spoke almost too directly and came too far into your life. But in England of all places. In the manicured leafy lanes of the Home Counties outside the well-pointed walls of a private mental hospital, a complete stranger had said that she could see my upset. I felt like a fool as the tears rolled down. She put out her arm and I thought she was going to embrace me so I flinched a little. But no, it was just that the bus was coming.
    “It’s a request stop,” she said gently. “You have to ask it nicely otherwise it will just pass by.”
    She was trying to make me smile, I think, to look less like someone who had escaped from behind those high walls.
    She paid my fare on the bus and came into my life.
    In the town she knew a place where they served homemade soup and lovely whole-wheat rolls. It was comfort food and the tables were far apart. Nobody, except Fenella, had heard my tale of John and Maria, and how it had all been her fault, how she had a perfectly happy life until she took off in hot pursuit of Carlos, how it had unhinged her. I told her of the lonely days and nights and how John and I had consoled each other in the only way great and good friends could do, by loving and giving. And how I had hoped she would find happiness with her Carlos and her mad quests. But John wanted things tidied up, so he broke it off with her—he hated loose ends. And now they were tidy all right. John a workaholic, Maria mad as birds in a place she would never leave, and as for me…It’s odd, but I never remember telling anyone as much as I told Fenella, not only that afternoon in the warm restaurant with its crackling fire and its crusty rolls and its deep, warming, reviving, steaming bowls of good things.
    Later that evening, on the train back to London, and that night, when she said it didn’t seem wise to leave me alone, she came back to my flat. She sat in a chair and her hair was like a halo. I thought she was indeed some kind of saint, ready to listen, and listen. Always wanting to hear more. Never a word of blame.
    And what was so wonderful was that she never once tried to cheer me up. There was no point where she said I would get over him and find someone else. She never warned me that all men were some variety of louse and that time spent weeping over them was time wasted. She didn’t offer me hope that Maria would die, that John would come to his senses and beg me to return to his side, she just accepted that things were utterly terrible and shared the burden with me.
    Soon I felt a great, great tiredness, I welcomed it like you’d welcome rain when it has been a close day. It had been so long since my shoulders and eyes had been tired. Normally I sat, awake and tense, smoking for most of the night. In the staff room at school I knew they must have noticed how short-tempered and irritable I had become. A wave of resentment towards them all came over me. These were my colleagues and indeed friends for nearly a decade. How had none of
them
spotted my grief and been able to listen, to understand, to be such a great friend? I smiled sleepily at Fenella, who said she must leave. She refused the offer of the spare room. She said she would ring me tomorrow. It would be Saturday, known to be a very low time when people were unhappy.
    As I drifted off into the first proper sleep I had known for months, I remembered that she didn’t have my telephone number. Well, maybe I could find her again, I thought. Fenella can’t be a very usual name. I couldn’t think what her last name was, or what she did for a living, or