When I think of my old friend and the gulf between us, I realise these relationships are about more than our beliefs
I have a friend – let’s call her Zoe, although it’s not her name – with whom I increasingly disagree about most things.
We are at odds over lockdown, over Brexit, and I daren’t even ask about more incendiary matters. But I like her, all the same. We have known each other for almost 30 years, had children at the same exhausted time, and soldiered through similar professional trenches with hideous bosses and groping colleagues and all the obstacles that litter women’s careers, propping each other up along the way. We were always chalk and cheese, but she’s funny and clever and I still constantly remind myself of one characteristically blunt but useful piece of advice she gave me. Yet striving to remain friends can sometimes feel like yearning for something that isn’t going to come back.
