Author(s): Anita Brookner

Literature

They shared the same Christian name and they started school together on the same day. One girl stayed as plain Elizabeth, while it was decreed that the other would be Betsy. Naturally, they became friends of a sort. Many years later they still meet - different lives and loves, different choices have marked them. Elizabeth is safely married to a man many years her senior, whilst Betsy has allied herself with someone she barely knows. Yet the consequences of those choices, spelled out so long ago, have still to haunt them.