Chess moves

I'm playing chess, without my queen, against my youngest daughter who intends to compete in next terms Chess club at school. When she has beaten me three times in a row I'll reintroduce the most powerful piece on my team. Strange isn't it, that in such an ancient game, the King is weak and needs protecting and the true power lies with the queen.

If life is like chess then today I sacrificed a pawn. Those are the small guys, the cannon fodder if you like. A mum I chat to sometimes and whose daughter is friends with my youngest is no longer speaking to me and therefore preventing her daughter from associating with mine. I find this sad, and rather immature of the lady, but luckily my daughter does not seem overly concerned. My crime is to be related to a garage owner. The lady in the story, I cannot really call her a heroine, has recently become unhappy with service at another garage, one whose owners we know rather well. She organised for her vehicle to be towed from them to my brother's garage and lied to the first owner about the price my brother would charge her as she and I were friends. Naturally the owner rang my brother who knew nothing about this lady or her vehicle nor had he given a quote for the work involved.

Now this would not necessarily have been a problem, however the work was done and the lady turned up to collect the repaired vehicle and asked how much she could pay off the debt weekly. The bill was over £500. I was not there but my brother, having been warned this lady still owed money to the first garage refused her credit as 1) he does not know her and 2) he is not a bank, so he refused to let her drive off without paying in full. She did so but is now saying she has been totally humiliated and does not want me or my daughter in her life. As I also know both she and her husband work, have only one child and like to spend heavily on drink, fast food restaurants and good times I think she is being unfair. Her daughter came with us to Harry Potter World, (I bought the tickets and paid for everything as my daughter's birthday treat) and this child had brought £50 to spend in the gift shop which I thought was unbelievably extortionate and she still tried to ask me to buy things for her on top of this.

So a pawn has gone out of our lives. I told the lady, life is too short for grudges and I thought we should show our girls how relationships can work through difficulties and how the important thing was the possible impact on the girls' happiness. She was having none of it and so my daughter knows she is excluded from this particular friendship. Oh dear. What would you have done?