Free When Good Friends Go Bad by Ellie Campbell Page A

sprang up, their chairs skidding backwards.
    'People just don't do that over here,' Georgina said hastily, casting an anxious glance around her at the other diners whose peaceful evening they were now interrupting.
    'I ain't people.' Meg tossed her red locks, impersonating the dumb blonde from Singing in the Rain. Jen grabbed her arm, pinning her to her place. 'How about neither of us will ever speak to you again if you do?'
    'Oh well in that case . . .' Meg lurched a little, 'what's to stop me?' To their relief, however, she sat down. 'Who's that little squirt she's with?'
    'Search me,' Georgina said a bit too quickly. Jen glanced over but couldn't place him. He was small, middle-aged, with a bulbous nose, sand-coloured wispy hair and a pot belly straining at the belt of his too-tight jeans.
    'Bet your life he's some big-shot billionaire.' Meg made as if to rise again. 'Shall I check him out?'
    'Sit down you silly moo,' Jen tugged at her arm again.
    Meg grinned. 'Gotcha. You totally thought I was going to do it, didn't you?' She started laughing and after a second the others joined in.
    A little fuzzy from the wine herself, Jen was comforted to know that yes, they were all very much the same. Maybe Georgina was slightly snobbish, maybe Meg was still an instigator, but all that was part of their distinctive personalities. None of her current acquaintances – except Helen, perhaps – had the history she shared with these two, and she'd missed this easy familiarity.
    Just as Helen had taken her under her wing in her adult life, the women beside her had seen her through her first teen bra to her first period, had explained to her the mysteries of tampons and French braids, had watched her back through the pits and troughs of adolescence more times than she could remember. Since Jen was only four when her mother died in a car crash, she'd depended on them for all those things a mother might have provided, beginning with sex education (some wildly misleading information there). 'Well, first the boy takes his thingy . . .' 'No, really, you can't get pregnant if you keep your clothes on.' Then there was fashion advice, mostly disastrous, as the merits of frilly pirate shirts over tight leggings, headbands, and legwarmers were earnestly discussed. Social niceties were also included (well, Georgina at least helped her out on basic etiquette). 'If my mother burps/falls over/starts crying pretend you don't notice.' One of them even gave her the recipe for Rice Krispies chocolate squares.
    All right, maybe there'd been clashes in the past, maybe there'd be conflicts in the future, but wasn't that always the case once you explored what lay behind people's social masks? Only someone so close could drive you incandescent with rage and yet be forgiven. And only with your best friends could you drop all barriers and truly be yourself, your faults revealed and accepted.
    It was the reason their occasional spats sometimes ended in tears and hurt feelings, why there'd even been times when one wasn't speaking to the rest, but for so many years come hell or high water they'd always gravitated back to the friendship that was so much more important than any petty squabbles. And it also made it all the more sad that they'd ever allowed anything to split them up.
    Meg was right. It was 'wild' meeting up with them. Now she and Meg were both in London, they could start seeing each other, and Georgina too, when she was up in town. They'd get to meet Ollie and Helen . . . whoa, all right, maybe not the best idea. Georgina wasn't too keen on bossy people – didn't someone say the faults you hate most in other people are the ones you possess yourself? Helen would probably slag off Meg the minute she left and Christ knew what Meg would say to Ollie.
    But minor complications aside, they'd all be friends again.
    It was only when Georgina had handed over her American Express to pay the bill, to Jen's half-hearted protests and Meg's barely concealed relief,