Friendship breakdown

I am bereft. I am very deeply upset. I have said or done something to a friend and now she is completely ignoring me. Phone messages, texts, emails all go unanswered. I have grovelled as much as it's possible to grovel, without knowing exactly what I have done.

She and I have been friends for 36 years. In our twenties, we shared riotous holidays in Spain. In our thirties, we comforted each other through failing marriages. We have always had laughs. A phone call from her is a tonic as she can see the funny side in everything. Last week, I had an appointment to take a second look at a couple of tiny cottages near where she lives. It takes me two hours to get there on a variety of tubes, buses and trains. I asked if she would be in and she said yes, and mentioned it would be nice to have lunch.

Well, the weather was rotten and the night before, I rang her and told her I may cancel the viewings as plodding around in the pouring rain wasn't high on my list of favourites. I also quizzed her at length about transport links in the area (no handy tube station) and in the end, I came to the decision that perhaps it wouldn't be the best place for me. She asked me to let her know in the morning if I wasn't going to some, as then she would go to her daughter's.

I knew she had guests staying in the living room who were leaving that day so, rather than ring the landline at 9 am, I texted her mobile. Since then, there has been a complete icy silence that nothing can break. I even checked my mobile but the text is sitting firmly in the 'sent' box so I know it went off. I feel so sad and sorry that I keep bursting into tears. She has been like sister to me all these years. I can only hope that she will relent in time.

If only I knew what she had taken offence at. Could it be that she thinks, in rejecting her small area of Hertfordshire, I am rejecting her along with it? Nothing could be further from my thoughts. It's just that, as a non-driver, I'm trying to find a home where travelling back late in the evening entails only a short walk from station or bus stop. I don't think a lifelong driver can put herself in the shoes of a non-driver. What she sees as convenient, I don't. But maybe there is more to it than that. All my friends are fed up with the amount of times I cancel arrangements because of my dodgy stomach. Perhaps, for her, this was the last straw. I am so upset that I keep bursting into tears. Breaking up with a friend is like breaking up with a lover. It's complex, painful and there is grieving to be done.