October 2025

Six friends. One city. The time of their lives. The Private Side of Friendship is the brand new stand-alone novel from Alexander McCall Smith, which sees four university flatmates reunite after graduation in 1988. They lived together in a gorgeous flat in idyllic Edinburgh, navigating friendships, love, and the unspoken rules of flatsharing, while the Miners’ Strike brings about huge political shifts all around them.

The Private Side of Friendship

I’m staring into space, Julie thought. It’s my twenty-fourth birthday; I’m single; I have a job; I’m sitting at a desk and staring into space. The problem was the music. Andrew, who was her employer and who ran the gallery, liked to have music playing in the background, whatever was happening. It was not obtrusive – he always kept the volume low – but when, as now, she stopped to think about it, it distracted her from whatever she was doing. Andrew said the clients appreciated it; he said there were studies that showed that people felt more comfortable spending money if there was music in the background. Julie had been doubtful.

“What studies?” she asked. People were always invoking the support of studies, many of which, she was convinced, were apocryphal.

He grinned. “Don’t you believe me?”

“I’m not saying that I don’t believe you, it’s just that there seem to be studies for everything. There are studies that say eggs are bad for you, and then there are studies that say we should eat at least one egg a day.”

“That’s for the iron,” he said. “You need to keep up your iron levels, Julie.”

She persisted. “But these music studies?”

He waved a hand airily. “I read about them. They exist. Apparently, music makes you feel less anxious, and if you’re less anxious, you’re more inclined to spend money.”

She sighed. “Even if you know you shouldn’t?”

He became serious. “Julie, we’re a business – remember. We sell paintings. That’s why we’re here. Paintings are often a real impulse purchase. That’s just the way it is.”

She said that she understood. She told him that she did not mind the music too much. It was always discreet. She had no argument with his taste, which was light classical. But on days when Andrew did not come into the gallery – when he was at an auction, or visiting his girlfriend in Edinburgh – she was tempted to turn off the music. It was only her innate honesty that stopped her from opting for silence.

That day she was on her own. Andrew, who was conducting an affair with a woman ten years his senior, had gone off to Edinburgh to meet his lover for lunch, leaving Julie in sole charge of the gallery. She was undaunted by this, even if she found that days spent by herself in the gallery tended to drag, especially when it came to late afternoon. On this occasion, there were a couple of appointments that would break up the day and give her something to do, other than prepare copy for future catalogues.

The first appointment was with an artist. These were meetings that Andrew was keen to delegate to her – at least in the first instance. “You can be the gatekeeper, Julie,” he said. “If you find anything remotely interesting in their work, then I’ll see them. But in most cases . . .” He sighed. There were too many would-be artists who were convinced that they had talent but who in reality had none – or none that would interest the public, let alone persuade them to make an impulse buy. And it was getting worse, he said. The art schools had signalled their unwillingness to teach traditional drawing and painting skills, and the results were only too evident.

“Conceptual art is all very well,” Andrew had said to her. “But it’s bad news for galleries. You can’t hang a concept on a wall.”

They had worked out a system. Julie would respond to the artists’ first approach. She would ask them to submit photographs of their work. If she thought they were worth a closer look, she would invite them to bring a portfolio to the gallery. If she liked what she saw, she would arrange for the artist to meet Andrew. In most cases, that led to a serious conversation about a future show. It was slow, painfully so at times, and she felt sorry for the artists.

She looked at the diary. Ralph Macauley. Glasgow School of Art. 11 a.m.

And now he was there, appearing on the other side of the gallery’s glass front door, a young man of about her age, possibly a year or two older. He was neatly dressed – for an artist – and she noted his corduroy trousers, which lent an old-fashioned look to his appearance. That boded well for his ability to paint. Painting was an old-fashioned skill – especially figurative painting of the sort she had seen in the photographs he had sent.

He entered hesitantly. “Am I early?” he asked. There was a note of anxiety in his tone.

She made an effort to put him at his ease. “You’re exactly on time.”

“I’m Ralph,” he said, offering his hand.

They shook hands, and she invited him to sit down.

“I’ve brought my portfolio.” He gestured to the flat black case he had with him. “And photographs of other works.”

She smiled encouragingly. “I’m looking forward to seeing them.”

He looked at her as if he was trying to work out whether she meant it. He had shown his work to more than twelve galleries, and none had bitten. Now, he opened the portfolio and took out a few sheets of watercolours and a handful of photographs. He passed these over the desk.

She looked at the watercolours. She nodded. “These are nice.”

“Nice?”

He was right to remark on the overused word, she thought and tried to correct herself.

“I mean good. These are good.”

She picked up one of the photographs. Her gaze moved away and then returned. It dwelt on the picture.

“And this one,” she said, “is lovely.”

He caught his breath. “You think so?”

She nodded. “Look at it. Look at the faces . . . Well, you did, didn’t you? I take it you know James Cowie’s A Portrait Group.”

He hesitated. “This is different.”

She was quick to reassure him that she was not accusing him of plagiarism. “I’m not saying this is based on that. It’s just that looking at this picture, your picture, makes me think of Cowie. That painting of his in the National Gallery in Edinburgh. The four young people.”

He was still suspicious. “I know it. But I didn’t—”

“No, I wasn’t saying that. It’s just . . . just reminiscent of Cowie . . . that haunting painting of his.”

He relaxed. “I agree. Haunting’s the right word.

“Haunting, yes.” She gestured to the photograph. “As is yours.”

He looked pleased. “I knew them,” he said.

“The subjects?”

“Yes.” He pointed to the young woman on the left of the group of figures sitting round a kitchen table. “Her. She was Maggie. She was one of my flatmates. As were the other three. We shared a flat for three years. The same place. The same people. We were all at the Art College together – in the same year. Two of us shared a birthday.”

She looked up. “It’s my birthday today.”

He smiled. “Congratulations.”

She stared at the picture in silence. “It’s like one of those interiors by Vuillard,” she said. “You know, the ones with pots and pans in the background.”

He agreed. “I love those. Intimisme. Yes, I suppose it is a bit like that.” And then he added, “How can one not like Vuillard?”

He said this with the air of one establishing a shared passion.

Of course, there would be nobody to whom Vuillard did not appeal.

She said that she could not conceive of how anyone might be indifferent to Vuillard. “But it’s not the background that interests me here,” she said. “It’s what’s going on between the people.”

He looked at her with sudden interest. “That’s what you see?”

She said that it was. “What I see here is four people on the cusp of something. Four people beginning.”

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The Private Side of Friendship is available from Polygon now (£17.99, hardback)