Fierce Fragile Hearts

by Sara Barnard

  ‘Real beds are so overrated.’

  ‘I’ve heard that,’ Rosie says. ‘Also, tables.’

  ‘And chairs. I mean, you can just sit on the floor, right?’

  ‘We might have some spare furniture,’ Caddy says thoughtfully. Thoughtlessly. ‘I’ll ask my parents.’

  ‘No,’ I say, with more edge than I’d intended. I am not your charity case. ‘I’ll get it sorted. Can we drop it?’

  She looks hurt. ‘OK, fine.’

  Oh God, this is going well. ‘Listen,’ I say, because sometimes you just have to say it. ‘If this is too weird for you, I’d rather you just left, because it’s hard enough as it is.’

  ‘Don’t be stupid,’ Rosie says lightly. ‘We came here to see you. We don’t give a shit about how much furniture you have. Ignore Caddy, she can’t help being a fixer.’

  ‘I’d rather you didn’t ignore me,’ Caddy says. ‘If that’s OK.’

  ‘Actually,’ Rosie says, staring straight into my face. ‘You know what you need to do?’

  When she doesn’t answer her own question, I prompt, ‘What?’

  ‘Cry.’

  Not what I’d expected her to say. ‘What?’

  ‘That’s what you need. You need to cry, and we need to comfort you, and then we’ll all feel better.’ She nods, satisfied. ‘So can you get right on that?’

  I try really hard not to laugh, but it escapes anyway.

  ‘What we all need,’ Caddy says in a surprisingly firm voice, ‘is wine.’ She reaches into her rucksack and pulls out a bottle.

  ‘Oh yeah,’ I say.

  ‘Oh yeah,’ Rosie echoes. ‘I forgot we were adults now.’

  ‘Weird, right?’ I say.

  She nods. ‘So weird.’

  ‘Come on,’ Caddy says, waving the bottle a little and nudging the box with her foot. ‘See what we brought you, Suze.’

  ‘Is it furniture?’ I ask, and Rosie laughs.

  ‘No,’ Caddy says. ‘There are fairy lights in there, though.’

  I feel my face break out into a genuine smile, and it’s such a relief. ‘I love you.’

  She throws me a grin; earnest, full of affection. Total Caddy. ‘I know.’

  We use the blankets and cushions Sarah had left me to make a fort in the middle of the room, just big enough for three, and it’s perfect. We’re sitting so close our knees are almost touching, the box they’d brought in the middle.

  ‘OK, are you ready?’ Caddy’s eyes are bright and happy again, her voice light, back on steady ground. ‘Cos there’s an order to this presentation.’

  ‘So ready,’ I say, grinning back.

  It takes a long time to go through the contents of my welcome box because they insist on explaining every item, taking longer and longer the more wine they drink. There’s a Tupperware carton of crumbly and cracked macarons, garishly pink and stuffed with jam. A ‘Welcome Home’ playlist that Caddy insists we put on immediately. A fabric doorstop shaped like a bulldog. A recipe book for students. A bag of mint imperials. A box of condoms. A single mango. A thin silver bracelet with a wishbone charm holding it together. The last item Rosie produces is a framed photograph of the three of us, taken at Caddy’s eighteenth. It’s a candid picture; the three of us caught mid-laughter, Rosie’s hand pressing teasingly against my face, Caddy hanging off my back.

  Nothing is useful (except the condoms). Everything is perfect.

  ‘This is amazing,’ I say, clutching the photo frame and trying not to cry. ‘You guys are just …’

  ‘We know,’ Rosie says cheerfully.

  ‘We are so just,’ Caddy agrees. They both laugh.

  ‘So very just,’ Rosie says, lifting her glass. ‘To being just!’

  We order pizza – they insist on paying – and drink the second bottle of wine they’d brought until we’re full and happy. All of my doubt and hesitation is gone. Of course I should be here – how could I ever have thought I belonged anywhere else but here, with my best friends, these people who love me? This was the right decision. Everything is going to be better now. This is the fresh start that will stick.

  Because they are good people and they love me, they don’t even complain when they realize that the airbed definitely won’t fit three people on it. Rosie refuses to share it with either of us, so she goes to sleep in the fort, leaving enough room on the airbed for Caddy and me. The warmth of Caddy beside me and the sound of the two of them breathing sends me into an immediate, easy sleep.

  3

  ‘Flying Solo’

  Keri Noble

  In the morning, Rosie leaves early to get changed at home before going to work. At 10 a.m., Caddy’s boyfriend, Kellan, comes to pick her up.

  ‘Hey, you,’ he says to me, beaming, opening his arms for a hug. Because of my self-imposed, almost total exile from Brighton, Kel and I don’t know each other that well, but still he greets me like a friend. That’s the kind of guy he is. ‘Welcome …’ He hesitates, glancing at Caddy, then back at me. ‘… home?’

  ‘Thanks,’ I say, accepting the hug. ‘What are you guys doing today?’

  ‘We were just going to chill together,’ Kel says, like this is the most natural thing in the world. I assume he means sex, though this is still not something I can quite equate with my friend Caddy, who once asked me, in a tipsy whisper, eyes wide, to tell her what a penis felt like to touch.

  Kel is twenty and will be starting his final year of university, where he’s studying Engineering, in September. He and Caddy met, improbably enough, on a bus, a few months after I left Brighton. When she first told me this story, I flat-out didn’t believe her, because Caddy’s not the kind of person to chat with a stranger on a bus, let alone flirt with them. ‘Maybe I was channelling my inner you,’ she said when I pointed this out, and then she laughed, adding, ‘Or maybe it was meant to be.’

  ‘How about you?’ Kel asks now. ‘Big plans?’

  ‘I’m meeting my personal adviser,’ I say, even though I know that by saying this I’m opening up the kind of conversation that I find so enragingly tedious. Usually I’d just lie, but I don’t want to start my new, adult, Brighton life by lying to people I like.

  ‘What’s that?’ Kel asks, on cue.

  ‘Sort of like a social worker,’ I say. ‘For care leavers.’ It’s the easiest way to describe what basically amounts to practical help with living when you don’t have parents looking out for you. My personal adviser, Miriam, taught me how to budget, explained what funding I’m entitled to, helped me apply for jobs.

  ‘Oh, cool,’ he says easily, as if ‘cool’ is the right word for this. ‘It’s good they don’t just, like, set you adrift.’

  My jaw clenches, my teeth grinding down hard, but somehow I still smile and nod, because I’ve been able to fake a smile since I was about six. It’s not Kel’s fault he’s so clueless. Why should he know what to say?

  They stick around for a little longer, which is sweet of them, before I promise that I’m fine and tell them to go and have their day together. I watch them walk off down the street, hand in hand, both of them smiling the thoughtless smiles of the casually happy.

  I spend the next couple of hours tacking photos up on to the bare walls and playing with my phone until Miriam arrives with deli sandwiches, two bottles of orange juice and a stack of paperwork.

  ‘Hello, Suzanne,’ she says, cheerful.

  ‘Hi,’ I say.

  ‘Welcome home,’ she says, which is so kind I feel instantly terrible for judging her for wearing Converse even though she’s in her forties.

  She spends the whole afternoon with me – I’m imagining it written into her work diary: S. Watts, 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. – and we go through the moving-in checklist she’s brought, talking through what I need, what my home allowance covers. We go into town so I can get boring things like kitchen supplies. She asks me how I’m feeling so many times I lose track of what the real answer is.

  We stop off at Madeline’s, the coffee shop where I’ll be working ful
l time from Friday, so I can pick up my uniform and sign my contract. Miriam buys us both a coffee and sits in the corner to wait for me. Before I follow Tracey, my new manager, round the back, I see Miriam pull out her notebook and start writing. A checklist of her own, probably. One I’m not allowed to see.

  I’d found the job at Madeline’s by myself, in the end, despite all the options Miriam and I had talked through when we were working on my pathway plan. So much of the conversation about my upcoming post-care life had been focused around my ‘future’, which meant ‘a career’; ‘where’ I was going, that kind of thing. I could go back to education, she said. I could get my qualifications for … something. She expected me to know what that something was, but I didn’t. I still don’t. As far as I’m concerned, I’ve got a job, and that’s enough.

  Miriam comes back to Ventrella Road with me for another cup of tea before she leaves at almost exactly 5 p.m. She says, ‘Is there anything else you’d like to talk about?’ and I shake my head. She hesitates, her eyes flicking from the airbed in the corner to my face. ‘Remember that I’m here if it starts to feel hard,’ she says. I’m not sure what she means, really. Life is hard, all the time. ‘Call or text, or even email, if that’s easier for you. OK?’

  I nod. I know I won’t. I’m not going to contact Miriam outside our mandated eight-weekly meet-ups unless it’s completely unavoidable. It’s nice to know she’s there, I guess, whatever ‘there’ means, but I’m never going to forget that ultimately I’m just another part of her job, one of many care leavers on her list.

  ‘I’m here to help you, so you don’t have to do things by yourself,’ she adds when I don’t speak.

  ‘I’m meant to be learning to be independent,’ I say.

  ‘Being independent doesn’t mean not accepting help,’ she says. ‘Quite the opposite, in fact.’ She inclines her head a little to force me to meet her eye, and I shrug, trying to smile. ‘I’d really like to hear from you before our next meeting in August,’ she says. ‘Just to check in.’

  Her list is probably alphabetical by surname. I’ll be at the bottom – W for Watts – in an inbox divided neatly into folders, one for each of us. When she gets home, her wife, whose name I know is Caroline, will say, ‘How was work?’ And she’ll say, ‘Oh, fine. Another one moving in.’ And Caroline will smile and say, ‘Ah, the checklist?’ And Miriam will laugh and nod.

  I sound bitter, don’t I?

  ‘Good luck,’ Miriam says, filling the silence because I haven’t spoken. ‘Bye, Suzanne.’

  When she’s gone, I put away the stuff I bought and then sit on the airbed, alone in my four walls for the first real time. I look around, listening to the silence. It’s so quiet. So? This is what you wanted. This is what independence looks like.

  Independence looks lonely.

  I pull out my phone to text Caddy or Rosie, then hesitate, my thumb paused over the screen. It’s only half past five on my first day on my own in this flat. I don’t want to be the kind of person who sees her friends just because she doesn’t want to be alone. I don’t want to lean on them. They’re my friends, not my crutch.

  But it’s so quiet.

  I open my laptop and find an old playlist my brother Brian made me – ‘Cheerful Songs for Sadful Days’, one of my favourites – and turn it up. I dance around until I’m out of breath. I raid the fridge to see what Sarah’s left me – lots of vegetables, a carton of soup, toffee yogurts, butter, eggs, cheese – and make a frittata for dinner. It’s not satisfying, cooking for one. I sit on the windowsill to eat, the plate on my knees.

  When it’s dark, I spiral. I pace the length of the floor, back and forth, trying to settle. What do people who live alone do in the evenings? I should have asked Sarah. I could still ask Sarah. I could call her. I should call her. I take out my phone, bring her number up on screen, change my mind. I think about breaking into the stash of weed I was saving for when things got tough, but they’ll get tougher than this.

  I call my brother. We talk for half an hour. He asks how I’m doing and I tell him about Caddy and Rosie, the coffee shop, the frittata. I don’t say, ‘I am so much better with other people.’ I don’t say, ‘Will I ever be OK?’

  At midnight, I try to go to bed, but I just lie there in the dark getting worse and worse until I get back up again, put some clothes on and leave the flat. It’s a calm night, cool and quiet. I go to the beach and it helps.

  I sit on the pebbles, my arms wrapped around my knees, listening to the sound of the waves. Just over two years ago, I sat on this beach, armed with pills and vodka, ready for the end of everything. It’s thanks to Rosie and Caddy that it didn’t work, but we’ve never – ever – talked about that. What’s there to say, anyway? ‘Thank you’ is both completely inadequate and also at least half a lie. What I feel is a lot more complicated than that, but they’d never understand. I don’t even really understand.

  It’s not that I don’t want to live. I just wish I was living a life that … isn’t this.

  By the time I haul myself up and go home it’s after 2 a.m. and I’m finally tired enough to sleep. I curl myself up into a ball under the covers and try to think about good things so I might have nice dreams. Sunflowers. Macarons. Puppies. Dresses that fit just right. The way Caddy smiles when she sees me. The look on Rosie’s face when I make her laugh. Thunderstorms when you’re safe inside. The playlists my brother makes me. Sunrises. Sunsets. Bus drivers waving at each other. Koala bears. Baymax from Big Hero 6.

  I dream about dinosaurs.

  Over the next few days, I get myself settled into my new Brighton life and home, like a nesting bird. I use Freecycle to find a wardrobe and a table (more of a coffee table than an actual table, but whatever, there’s only one of me) and trawl the charity shops and flea markets for small things to make the bedsit seem just a little bit more like mine. By the end of the week, I have basically all the furniture I need, except a bed. It turns out that getting a bed when you’re poor is a pain in the neck. I can find bedframes for free – or at least as cheap as I can afford – but I’m not about to take a second-hand mattress. Buying them new is out of my price range for now, so I just sleep on the airbed as the days begin to pass, and it’s fine. I hang the fairy lights that Caddy and Rosie gave me, but I get paranoid about my electricity bill, so I only turn them on when they visit.

  It surprises me how much I like working at Madeline’s. It’s not just the fact that the shop itself is cheerful and cosy, with art prints of everything even remotely coffee-related all over the walls, and my workmates are friendly. It’s the routine of it all. I love being part of the rota, knowing exactly how my shift works. I like knowing what I have to do and doing it. Some of the customers are annoying, but most of them aren’t. I like that I’m already getting to know the regulars, learning their orders and having them ready for when they appear in the mornings. Plus, I get paid. That’s pretty great, too.

  The evenings and the days when I’m not working I mostly spend with Caddy and Rosie, usually with Kel too, the four of us on the beach or in my flat or Kel’s house, drinking, talking, laughing. When I’m with them I feel like a person worth being with. I feel flickers of who I can be.

  Still, there are the nights, too many of them, when I have no choice but to curl up on the airbed and try to sleep in the empty silence of my bedsit. Just me, my head and my breath in the dark. Sometimes I lie awake until orange light begins to seep through the blinds and I manage a couple of hours of restless, dozing sleep.

  It’s enough. It’s all enough. If this is my life now, it’s liveable. No one is hurting me and I’m not disappointing anyone. And this bit, this crushing loneliness of an empty flat, won’t be forever. This is still the transition. In three years, Caddy and Rosie will graduate and, most likely, come back to Brighton permanently. Maybe one of them will want to move out of home by then, and we can live together. Maybe even all three of us, I think, in one of my more hopeful daydreams. But even in that best-case scenario, three years is
a long time. When I look around my four walls there’s a familiar, sinking hollowness in my chest. Loneliness does funny things to time. It gives it width as well as length; makes it cavernous.

  4

  ‘Hoping’

  X Ambassadors

  It takes me about two weeks to realize that I don’t have a washing machine.

  By the time the penny finally drops, I’ve already run out of clothes. I’m standing in the kitchen area in leggings and a ratty old T-shirt, looking around, and that’s the moment the blindingly obvious fact hits me. No washing machine. No way to clean all my clothes. Great.

  I briefly consider taking everything over to Sarah’s and asking to use her washing machine, but that seems too much like giving in, so I dismiss the idea. The nearest launderette, Google tells me, is a ten-minute walk away. I’ve never used a launderette before, and my only point of reference is a vague memory of a really old episode of that TV show Friends that I must have watched once, years ago.

  The other thing I don’t have is a laundry bag, which means there’s no way to transport my huge pile of clothes across Brighton to the launderette. ‘For God’s sake,’ I mutter to myself, kicking at a stray sock. I’m already bored by this. It’s so tedious. But I still have to go through all the boring motions, because no one else is going to do it for me, and if I ignore it today, I’ll still need a clean bra tomorrow. So I throw all the clothes I can fit into my suitcase, shove my feet into my Vans and leave my bedsit.

  When I open the main door to the building, I groan out loud. It’s raining. And not just drizzle, either; proper sheets of it. I look back at my suitcase and down at my Vans, my bare ankles. Maybe I should wait until tomorrow. I could just go back upstairs, shut the door, crawl into bed and forget the whole stupid world exists.