My friend Stella Margaret Heath doesn’t suffer fools gladly – it’s what she’s known for, and she won’t mind my saying so. When I first met her, in the 80s, we were new undergraduates. I picked her to pair with for a philosophy assignment because she looked easy-going and enlightened (perm, jeans, thin white belt); it turned out she was neither. I discovered straight away that she’d read none of the summer reading list (and therefore cogito, ergo sum meant nothing to her) and only wanted to talk about timetabling restrictions at the polytechnic. We became good friends, best friends – me not minding her cynicism and untidiness; her ignoring my joie de vivre and shoplifting.
Over the years, I’ve watched her become a brilliant, principled human being, and less and less tolerant of other human beings. I noticed just how much one rainy Christmas in the 2000s when, trapped at my house, with husbands and babies, my mother-in-law approached her with a paper wallet. “Would you like to see my holiday snaps, dear?” she said. “No, thank you,” said Stella, firmly, without looking up from her Anthony Trollope.
