The Opposite of Lonely

by Hilde Hinton

Genres: General Fiction; Friendship

Synopsis

From the bestselling author of THE LOUDNESS OF UNSAID THINGS comes a compelling new novel that illuminates the joys and sorrows of an ordinary life and delivers profound insights into human nature.

'She glanced back at the sleeping boy on the back seat and flashing blue and red lights caught her eye in the rear vision mirror. A police car pulled up behind her. There was nowhere to go. What had she done?'

Rose knows that she should be happy. She has a thoughtful son, a kind boss and a dream box full of savings for a rainy day. But sometimes the brick in her chest gets so heavy that it's all she can do to simply watch the minutes tick by on the oven clock.

Things change when a stranger arrives. Rose can't believe that someone like Ellie would want to be her friend. Ellie always knows what to do. She is bright and shiny and seems so caring. With Ellie by her side, things feel possible again, and Rose starts to remember who she is. Soon, she can't imagine how it was without Ellie there.

Sometimes, all you need is one friend to change your life. Because the best things in life are free. Aren't they?

A novel about discovering that what you need is often right in front of you. And that friendship can hide many truths.

Release date: April 30, 2025

Publisher: Hachette Australia

Print pages: 352

Sample

‘Can I help you with that?’

Rose looked up at the voice, but she was so fraught she barely registered the woman standing in front of her. Her keys were missing and she was trying desperately to find them. Three shopping bags sat in disarray at her feet; cans and apples were rolling away, but she couldn’t focus. She patted herself down repeatedly while her mind listed all the places she’d been. If her keys weren’t on her, or in her shopping bags, then she must have left them somewhere.

Meanwhile, the other woman had retrieved the errant shopping items and had placed them back into Rose’s bags with care. Rose stared into the neatly arranged bags. The toothpaste was sticking proudly out of a non-food bag, the rolling apples had been reunited with other fresh foods, the cans were put with the processed foods and each bag looked evenly weighted. The bags were lined up against the wall, and the other woman was just standing there waiting for Rose to pull herself together.

‘My keys,’ Rose managed to say as she patted her pockets again.

‘Let’s check your handbag first,’ the helpful woman said as she pointed her chin at the overloaded black bag across Rose’s forearm. It was a tattered tote bag, rather than a handbag, a fact that made Rose smile briefly. She slowed herself, knelt forward and emptied its contents onto the ground.

‘Oh dear. You really should consider a new bag,’ the woman said kindly.

Rose put everything back in her tote one item at a time. It was amazing how often something was right in front of her face, yet she couldn’t see it.

‘Now stand up and check all your pockets. One at a time.’ The woman had taken control, much to Rose’s relief. It had been nearly two years since her relationship had broken down, but it wasn’t until she stood there patting her pockets for her missing keys that she realised it wasn’t Steven himself that she missed, it was having someone to bounce off, to vent to, to share small frustrations with, to help her get on top of things.

‘No keys,’ Rose said with a despondent shrug.

‘Where have you been today?’ the stranger asked. Rose noticed the woman had taken a pen and a small lime green notebook out of her own bag. ‘It’s always important to carry a pen and notebook around,’ the woman said. Rose glanced at the woman’s earnest face and began to giggle.

‘I’m sorry,’ Rose managed to say, but by then the other woman had joined in. ‘God, I feel like I haven’t laughed like that in years,’ Rose added as the laughter abated and her exhaustion set in. She leaned against the wall.

‘I find that hard to believe – you have a wicked laugh.’ The woman resumed her attentive position with the notebook.

Rose listed the coffee shop, the post office and the supermarket.

‘Have you been anywhere else?’ the woman asked. ‘The problem with lost things is we get ourselves in a spin and don’t think straight. I spent hours looking for a remote control once until I realised I should look in places I wouldn’t normally look. I found it in the fridge in the end.’

Rose smiled and nodded then closed her eyes and tried to retrace her steps.

‘I got ham from the deli,’ she said excitedly as she opened her eyes.

The woman looked like she wanted to pin a medal on Rose’s chest. Rose noticed her eyes were closer to green than blue, and her smile was kind and in full swing as she distributed the shopping bags between them.

‘Time to backtrack,’ she said as she led the way back inside the shopping centre.

Rose thought she was going to cry again, but not in frustration. Small random acts of kindness, like an ‘Are you alright, dear?’ from a stranger, always did her in. The keys weren’t at the deli, so they headed to the other places Rose had mentioned. At each stop, the woman asked the staff if any keys had been left behind and they hit paydirt at the post office. The woman clapped and did a victory jig as the man behind the counter handed the keys over. Rose was so relieved to have them back she bent over, leaned her hands on her knees and indulged in some deep breaths.

For as long as she could remember, Rose had always been looking for something. When she was young, she could never find her bus pass, her school jumper or the pen she had in her hand only seconds beforehand. As she grew up, it became keys, wallets, even her phone. But in the last year or so, she had put strategies in place. She now had a spot for everything and took the time to double and triple check her belongings before moving to the next place. And it had worked – until now. As she took in her third breath, she felt the tension in her shoulders ease.

‘Where’s your car?’ the woman asked. Rose led the way, and they loaded her shopping into the back seat.

‘Well, after all that I could use a coffee,’ the woman said. ‘Would you like to go halvies in a cake?’

Rose felt the least she could do was shout the woman a coffee.

‘I’m Ellie,’ the helpful woman said as they sat in a nearby cafe.

‘I’m Rose. And I’m not normally a blubbering mess.’ Rose felt her cheeks go pink, exposing her lie. ‘Not all the time, anyway,’ she added with a laugh.

‘I wish I could be a blubbering mess sometimes,’ Ellie said. ‘Instead of being so …’ She took a moment to find the right word. ‘Tightly coiled.’ She whirled her hands around in circles as she spoke. They grinned at each other and relaxed into their chairs.

They spoke of their jobs (Rose a barista, Ellie a medical receptionist) and their love-lives (or lack thereof as both were currently single). Rose had one child; Ellie none. Rose loved books, puzzles and gardening; Ellie, Netflix and Stan. No, Rose hadn’t seen Madam Secretary, but she’d check it out.

‘New friends are hard to find,’ Ellie said as they drained their cups.

‘Especially calm and helpful ones,’ Rose said with a warm smile.

‘Oh, don’t be fooled. I would have been a mess if it had been my keys,’ Ellie said. ‘You would have been just as helpful if the shoe was on the other foot.’

Rose wasn’t so sure but agreed anyway, then looked at her watch. ‘Max,’ she said loudly. ‘I’m going to be late picking him up.’

Ellie touched Rose’s shoulder and said that one extra minute was not going to change anything – except the state of mind she’d be in when she arrived at her son’s school. Rose took a moment to breathe, and Ellie suggested they catch up for another coffee sometime.

‘That would be great,’ Rose said genuinely. ‘But I’ve got to run now.’ She turned towards the exit.

‘How do I find you?’ Ellie called out after her.

‘I’m Rosie Rose underscore Rose on socials,’ Rose said over her shoulder. Before she raced off, she saw Ellie writing the details down in her green notebook and smiled to herself. New friends really were hard to find.

Max was taking his time choosing a bedtime book, and Rose was getting irritated. She knew that if she rushed the process, it would only take longer, so she gritted her teeth.

‘Having trouble choosing?’ she asked gently. As the words came out, she could hear the extra pleasant on top – the extra pleasant that disguises annoyance. The extra pleasant her mother had used on her; the extra pleasant people use in the coffee shop when they say, ‘I ordered extra hot,’ or ‘I said latte not flat white’. On top of her frustration, she now had a dollop of self-loathing.

‘Well,’ Max said with trepidation as he climbed into bed with The 130-Storey Treehouse. Rose waited for him to hand her the book, but it was tucked safely in beside him.

‘What’s up?’ she asked. It almost sounded as casual as she’d hoped.

‘You haven’t told me a tree story for ages.’ He looked up at her with big hopeful eyes.

‘No, I haven’t,’ she said. She took his book back to the shelf, sat back down on the bed and pulled up the doona so she had some too. ‘Once upon a time,’ she said, her tone full of mystery, ‘there was a biiig, ooooold, tree.’ She paused for effect. ‘It was the oldest tree that ever there was in the whole … wide … world.’

‘Older than one hundred and six years?’ Max asked.

‘Older than the Great Wall of China.’

‘How old is the Great Wall of China?’ he asked excitedly. She wanted to say ‘how the fuck should I know’ but chose an alternative. ‘Not as old as the pyramids of Egypt.’ She hoped that was true. ‘Anyway,’ she went on quickly to stymie any further questions, ‘this was the biggest, oldest, most beautiful tree in any land, in any country, in all of the world. It was the oldest tree on any planet in the universe.’

‘I don’t think trees grow on the other planets, Mum, but Saturn has many moons, and the biggest one is called Titan, or Titus, I can’t remember, but Dad told me,’ he said, looking at her proudly.

‘Well, it must be true if Dad told you,’ Rose said. The extra pleasant had returned with a bang. She had forgotten where she was up to, so she took a sip of water to buy some time for both her memory and composure to return. ‘Once upon a time, there was the biggest, oldest, fattest and most beautiful tree in all the world.’ She hoped the recap would remind them both of how well the story had been shaping up.

‘What country is it in?’ Max asked with enthusiasm. She was racing full speed towards annoyance, but the genuine curiosity on his face stopped her in her tracks.

‘Laos,’ she said definitively. As good a choice as any.

‘Where’s that?’ He was already bounding out of bed and heading to the world map on his desk. Rose had seen the old desk in an op shop a few months ago and couldn’t resist it. The foam-backed world map came free.

She and her dad had spent hours poring over an atlas when she had been little, and she had loved tracing the countries with her fingers and calling out the capital cities. Her dad had used her as a party trick at barbecues. ‘Name any country, and she’ll say the capital,’ he would tell people. The grown-ups would call out the most obscure countries they could think of, and young Rose would call out the capitals without pause.

Once, Mr Bennett, who owned a Mercedes, called out Constantinople. ‘That’s a city, not a country,’ she had said. ‘The country is Turkey, and the city is now called Istanbul.’ Mr Bennett had gone red in the face, and instead of a round of applause, Rose had watched the whole crowd turn away and start talking about the football. She had run to her room, where she climbed under her blankets and cried out loud. She had waited and waited for someone to notice she was missing, but no one did, and she had gone to sleep without any dinner.

Rose walked over to the map and pointed to Laos.

‘Vientiane is the capital,’ she said. She placed her palms on her son’s shoulders and ushered him back to bed. He dove feet first under the doona and wiggled down until his face was the only bit of him showing. Rose pushed the doona down around his neck and he grinned at her. She felt a pang of inadequacy bounce around her ribs. He deserved more. Better. But she did love him – dearly. In that moment she found some forgiveness for her own mother. Some kindred understanding. Like her mother, Rose was just a person who happened to be a mother. Most mothers, she noticed, looked like they were mothers who happened to be people. As opposed to people who happened to be mothers; like her.

‘The tree, Mum, what about the big, old tree in Laos?’ Max asked, trying to keep the desperation out of his tone. She appreciated that.

‘Well,’ she began in her most serious voice, ‘the biggest and oldest tree that the world had ever seen started creaking on its four thousand, two hundred and second birthday.’

‘Can trees even be that old?’ Max sat up in awe.

‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘There’s a pine tree that can live for five thousand years – it’s called a Bristlecone pine tree … and this story might take five thousand years to tell, the way we’re going.’ She was in good humour now and soldiered on. ‘Soooo,’ she said in a mock warning tone, ‘the biggest,’ she stretched her arms out, ‘the fattest,’ she blew out her cheeks, ‘the oldest,’ she hunched in her shoulders and crinkled her face.

Max was laughing, and Rose joined in. It was freeing and she told herself she should laugh more often. She took a tissue from his bedside table and wiped her eyes.

‘Anyway,’ she continued, ‘the biggest, most beautiful tree that ever there was in the whole world stood tall and proud above all the trees in the forest. It was a periscope to the sky, to the horizon, to the future.’ She hopped under the doona and Max scooted over to the wall so she had enough room. He reached out just enough to put his hand in hers. Not all the way. Just a little. His gentleness made her smile as she continued to conjure a world of trees for her son.

‘When the bad weather came, the tree would whisper a warning so the animals had time to bunker down in their holes, their nests, their burrows, their homes. The trees could then take a deep breath and bring all their leaves in super-duper tight so they could weather the storm.’ Rose glanced at Max and realised he had fallen asleep.

In the silence, she took a moment to remember her dad. The tree story was one that he had told her when she was little. She used to feel such anticipation and excitement when her dad told her of the biggest, oldest, fattest, most beautiful tree in all the world and the memory of that feeling fluttered in her stomach for a moment before she pushed back the doona and snuck out of the room to face the evening.

Rose knew something was bothering Max. He usually seemed to enjoy playing in his room, and Rose sure enjoyed her alone time, but it wasn’t without guilt. She made daily resolutions to spend more time with Max, to be present, and today, she decided it was time to act. Playing a game often brought out his feelings if she waited long enough and didn’t pry, so she cajoled him out of his room and suggested a game of snap.

After they had swirled the cards around the table together, the game began. Rose let Max get every second pile of cards with appropriate visible disappointment. It wasn’t easy to let him win and have him believe it. Sure enough, he began to talk about his wish to swap the weekends he went to his dad’s because his best mate did the same thing on opposite weekends, which meant they couldn’t have sleepovers.

‘I can ask Dad if he’ll have you two weekends in a row to bring the weekends into line,’ she said. ‘Snap!’ Rose took the seven cards and added them to her meagre pile. She was letting him win the big piles now, otherwise the game would never end.

‘Or I can stay here for two in a row,’ he said. He crinkled up his nose and looked to the ceiling while he checked his maths. Rose’s heart sank. The guilt she now felt at her earlier excitement for two weekends off in a row made her mouth taste like metal. She mustered a smile.

‘I think Dad would miss you too much,’ she said as Max got the next snap.

‘I could ring him?’ Max asked with practised nonchalance. Rose nodded and handed him her phone. It would sound more genuine coming from him. She went to the bench and poured herself a wine.

‘Dad was at a work thing,’ Max said when he’d finished the call, ‘but he can pick me up at nine o’clock tonight and I can stay with him this weekend, and then I can be home next weekend and maybe I can have a sleepover with Darcy?’ Max shifted from foot to foot like he was busting. Rose thought how terrible it would be to be so powerless. So reliant on adult consent.

‘That’s fine,’ she said, knowing he wouldn’t have expected a ‘yes’. She was a stickler for bedtimes and parenting plans, and they both knew it.

‘I’ll go and pack my bag,’ he said quickly, before she changed her mind. When he raced to his room, he slid on his socks as he neared the hallway to the bedrooms.

‘Sorry, sorry, Mum,’ he said with big eyes. He knew she hated him sliding on his socks and he didn’t want to jeopardise the ‘yes’. So many hurdles. She waggled a finger in front of her warning face, and he disappeared into his room. Rose had another wine in preparation for Steven’s arrival.

As she sat and stared at the wall, her mind went back to before. Rose and Steven had stumbled across each other by a pool in Bangkok, even though they lived within five kilometres of each other back home. It was the first time she’d ever left the country a. . .