Victoria Line, Central Line by Maeve Binchy

give me a list of all the things you buy on a Saturday?’ Elizabeth asked humbly.
    ‘Could you explain what exactly you do in the garden?’ she begged.
    ‘How are the clothes always clean when you are here?’ she implored.
    Dara always answered helpfully. She never implied that Elizabeth was an incompetent.
    The day before she left Elizabeth said, ‘I don’t think I’m as right as rain.’
    ‘You’re nearly as right as rain,’ said Dara as they sat in the sparkling kitchen and had a cup of tea. The children were gurgling happily in their bedroom-cum-playroom, and Derek was having a shower before his evening sherry and chat before dinner.
    ‘What’ll I do, Dara?’ she asked.
    ‘You
could
quit work, take a lodger to make up some of the dough.’
    ‘No, no.’
    ‘You could do extra hours for the agency and employ a home help.’
    ‘No, no,’ said Elizabeth.
    ‘Well, just keep sort of going I suppose,’ said Dara. ‘I mean it’s not anyone’s fault that you’re not as rightas rain. It’s not Derek’s fault, he’s smashing, and the kids are lovely, and the work’s fine, and that neighbour of yours is a real pal, if you take her kids on a Sunday she’ll do anything for you. She loves her Sundays.’
    ‘Don’t go,’ Elizabeth begged.
    ‘Aw, come on Eliza,’ Dara always called her that. For over twenty years it has been ‘Come on Eliza’.
    Eliza looked at her, hoping for a solution.
    ‘Of course I’ve got to go. Take it easy, take it nice and easy. There aren’t any problems at all you know.’
    Elizabeth looked at her friend carefully. Dara had said that about Mother and Father. ‘Aw, come on Eliza they’re only having a bit of a barney with each other . . .’ then they had got divorced.
    ‘Aw, come on Eliza, it’s not the end of the world, they’re both nice happy people, don’t make them into old miseries by your own attitude. Enjoy both of them.’ Fine until Father had committed suicide and Mother had joined that funny religion of nutters leaving a small legacy to Elizabeth as a gesture towards sanity and family life.
    ‘Aw, come on Eliza, everyone works and runs a home these days – why do you think you’re going to be the one who won’t manage?’ she had said when Elizabeth had first complained of finding it all a little too much.
    ‘Eliza, you’ll be as right as rain,’ she had said only four weeks ago. And Eliza wasn’t.
    It had always been the same, when Dara had left, Mother and Father had looked at her and each other, expecting something that Elizabeth wasn’t able to give, and being disappointed with her, unreasonably disappointed, because she couldn’t. She realised that everyone – Derek, Benny, Nell, that tiresome neighbour, the people at the agency – would all look expectantly at Elizabeth and wish that there was something there, something that Dara’s presence had led them to believe was there.
    She looked at her friend, and wondered for the first time why she hadn’t had a duller friend, one against whom she could be measured and come out winning. Someone dull who would make her shine. Someone messy who would make her seem organised by comparison.
    It had been a bad thing to have had Dara to stay. It had been a bad thing for twenty-six years, but she only realised it now, when she was as far as she ever was from being as right as rain.

WARREN STREET
    Nan had had another god-awful day. Nobody seemed to use any under-arm deodorant any more. She had been wincing from whiffs of sweat all day, as people flung off their garments to try on her designs.
    That maddening Mrs Fine had, of course, noticed the seam that wasn’t exactly right; while that stupid, stupid woman – who apparently worked in some important position in an estate agents – had forgotten again what she wanted made out of the woollen material but was absolutely certain that it wasn’t the poncho that Nan had cut out for her.
    ‘Why would I have said a poncho, when I have one already?’