My old school pal’s driving me mad!

DEAR BEL

SIXTY years ago, Kit and I became friends at convent school. After four years, she left and I heard nothing for decades. We both married men from other countries. I lived abroad, had three children, then came back to England as a widow.

Over the years, I moved from lapsed Catholic to agnostic and now I’m an active Humanist. Kit found me on Friends Reunited and we’ve been exchanging emails for ten years. We’re both 72. She’s become a born-again Christian, but her husband doesn’t share her faith.

Her calls always fall into complaints about her husband and their financial woes. She also goes on about religion, although I have told her I’m not religious. Then suddenly, last week, she called to announce she was on her way to stay.

She’s been here for more than a week and I’m increasingly concerned. Her driving is erratic and sometimes alarming, she takes sleeping pills, drinks wine every evening (I don’t), prays aloud and sings along to religious songs on her phone.

Ten years ago, she survived cancer, but no thanks to the NHS, it was God and his angels who got her through. I despair.

The other day she took ‘spiritual guidance’ from some telephone advisor (religious scammer?) and paid him £200 (she asked me to write the cheque in return for cash). I thought this outrageous when she’s pleading poverty.

Yesterday she was looking at a map, so I asked: ‘Are you planning your next journey?’

She replied: ‘Oh, no, I’m happy here and want to stay longer if I’m still welcome.’

Of course I assured her. But what can I do with my old friend? How can I help her to think and act more reasonably?

FREDA

WhAT a pity I had to edit your intriguing letter, because you paint an attractive picture of your creative and intellectual life, in which you also enjoy regular visits from a younger male friend of three years’ standing.

You sound fulfilled, and it’s clear you’re being as kind and tolerant as possible, but that Kit’s uninvited presence is driving you mad.

In other words, she is actively circumscribing the freedom you cherish. And to be honest, I am not persuaded that you have any obligation to put up with it.

You call her ‘my old friend’, and yet the schoolgirl friendship died and you went separate ways.

had she not traced you I wonder if you’d have thought of her again? Now she’s inveigled her way back into your settled life because (it seems) she is discontented with her own and, like all people with a religious or political obsession, has no sensitivity to your feelings. Yet you ask me how you can help her, even though you must know that asking her to shift her beliefs is like asking rain not to fall.

Yes, concern matters, but why are you making her your responsibility? It’s admirable, but what makes you think you can change her life?

her religion must make her very happy, after all, and to her, singing along to hymns and talking to a religious advisor will represent perfectly ‘reasonable’ behaviour.

If she believes God saved her from cancer, so be it. Even if you think she shouldn’t drink and take sleeping pills, you are not her keeper.

There comes a point in relationships when displaying a kindness that is not actually felt can be called ‘bad faith’.

You tell me your daughter disapproved of this visit because Kit is careless about Covid. If I were you, I would regretfully tell Kit that her visit must end because your daughter is returning to stay in her old room and help you with your craft business.

Then the email relationship can continue, but you will be free to live the life you love and which, at 72, you surely deserve.