A school mum asked how I was and I gave her the easiest lie available

Dear Delyara, The truth was less tidy. I was tired, emotionally scratchy, carrying one financial worry in the background, slightly hurt by something stupid from the day before, and already dreading the evening logistics waiting for me. None of that fit the pavement, the school gate, or the kind of social exchange that can survive there without becoming awkward. So I gave her the sentence most women give each other when life is too full for honesty in public: “Busy, but good.” I don’t think it was a harmful lie. I do think it says something about how rarely ordinary female strain gets a room big enough to arrive in properly.