Fierce Fragile Hearts

by Sara Barnard

  ‘Coming or going?’ a voice asks.

  I jolt, turning to see where the voice has come from. The door to Flat 1, the ground-floor flat, is open, and an old woman is standing there, watching me.

  ‘Er …’ I say.

  ‘You’re letting the rain in,’ she says. ‘Are you coming or going?’ How did she even know I was here? Was she watching me through the little peephole in her door? Weird.

  ‘Going?’ I say, but it comes out like a question.

  ‘Do you want an umbrella?’ I genuinely can’t tell if she’s making fun of me or not. There’s a sort-of smile on her face, but it’s so dry it might be in judgement rather than reassurance.

  That’s another thing I don’t have, actually. An umbrella.

  ‘I might just leave it,’ I say. ‘For now.’

  The old woman’s smile widens, just a little, like she finds me amusing. ‘Maybe you should shut the door, then?’

  When I do, the hall is suddenly silent. I hadn’t even realized how loud the wind and rain was until it was gone. It’s just me and this old woman, staring at each other.

  ‘Are you the girl from the bedsit upstairs?’ she asks. ‘You’re new?’

  ‘Ish,’ I say. ‘A couple of weeks.’

  She smiles that smile again. ‘Very new, then.’

  It doesn’t feel new. ‘I guess.’

  Her eyes travel over my face, and I know what she’s thinking. The same thing everyone thinks. You’re too young to be living on your own like this. What happened to you? I wait for her to ask, but she doesn’t. ‘Where were you intending to go, before you found yourself thwarted by the rain?’

  Her voice is refined – not posh but cultured. The kind of broad English accent that belongs to nowhere specific.

  ‘The launderette,’ I say, and then add, unnecessarily, ‘I’ve run out of clothes.’

  ‘I see,’ she says. ‘Where’s your washing powder?’

  I look down at myself, as if a box of Persil is just going to appear at my feet. I consider lying and telling her that it’s in my suitcase, but what’s the point? ‘I was going to get some when I got there?’

  The woman steps back into her flat, gesturing to me to follow. ‘Come on in,’ she says, as if this whole conversation has been leading to an invitation.

  ‘Oh, I’m fine …’

  ‘Come on,’ she says again, more briskly this time. ‘Let’s get you sorted out.’

  Oh God. I open my mouth, trying to think of a way to politely refuse, when a small, scruffy Border terrier appears at the woman’s feet and I forget literally everything. ‘Hi!’ I say brightly, leaning down, feeling a beam stretching across my face. There is a dog in this building! A dog!

  ‘You like dogs?’ There’s a smile in the woman’s voice. ‘This is Clarence.’

  ‘Hello, Clarence,’ I say. I hold out my hand and he sniffs, then growls. ‘I know,’ I say. ‘That’s the appropriate response. Very savvy.’

  The woman laughs, low and soft. ‘It takes him a while to warm to people. He’s not a very friendly dog.’

  ‘That means he’s smart,’ I say, straightening. I can’t wipe the smile from my face. ‘I’m Suzanne.’

  ‘Well, it’s very nice to meet you, Suzanne,’ she says. ‘I’m Dilys. Welcome to the building, two weeks ago.’

  I follow her and Clarence inside, dragging the suitcase behind me. The flat I walk into is much, much bigger than mine; you could basically fit my entire bedsit into the living room. The ceilings are high and I can see at least three doors leading off into other rooms. Palatial, I think, ridiculously. There are two sofas.

  ‘Would you like some tea?’ Dilys asks, already heading towards the kitchen, her movements stiff and slow. Clarence has settled himself into what is obviously his dog bed, his eyes on me.

  ‘I can make it,’ I say quickly, following Dilys. ‘If you show me where the stuff is. I won’t stay long, just until the rain stops.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ she says. She opens one of the cupboards and takes out two cups. ‘Now, the washing machine is here.’ She points. ‘Go and get your clothes and I’ll show you how to use it.’

  I open my mouth to say that I actually know how to use washing machines, but she’s already bustling past me, pouring water into the kettle, telling me about washing tabs and fabric softener.

  ‘That’s really nice of you,’ I say, loudly enough to stop her talking. ‘But I really can just take my stuff to the launderette.’

  ‘You could,’ she says. ‘But there’s a perfectly functioning washing machine right here, for free, in this nice, warm, dry flat. And there’s tea. And my grumpy dog. Why would anyone say no? That would be very odd behaviour.’

  I dither, glancing back towards my suitcase and then at Dilys, who is dropping a tea bag into each cup. Isn’t it a bit of a weird imposition to turn up at this woman’s flat and just wash my clothes? Who does that?

  ‘It’s nice to have some company,’ she says then, turning to smile at me as the kettle clicks. I’ve smiled at people like that before. It’s the hopeful smile of the lonely.

  I go and get my clothes.

  By the time I leave the flat, it’s two hours later and the rain has long stopped. Dilys insisted that I ‘might as well’ use the dryer setting after the washing cycle was done, as there was ‘no point’ in going upstairs with a suitcase full of wet clothes. We got through three cups of tea each while the machine spun. I tried to ask questions about her but she was more interested in me, wanting to know what had brought me to Ventrella Road, why I was living in ‘one of those horrible bedsits’.

  I tried to be vague but I ended up telling her, when she’d made her slow way over to the kitchen and back again to get us our second round of teas, that I’d been in care. ‘Just a little bit,’ I added, which made no sense. ‘Like, not for very long.’

  ‘And now you’re on your own?’ she asked.

  ‘Uh-huh,’ I said.

  She nodded and we were both quiet for a while, but not in a weird way. I wanted to ask about her family, but I wasn’t sure if it would be rude. Instead, I asked about Clarence, who’d climbed up on to her lap and was watching me across the table. I learned that he was six years old, that she’d adopted him from a rescue centre. It had taken over a year for him to settle, she said. ‘Something traumatized him. I don’t know what, but something did. I tried to put him in a kennel once, when I was going on holiday, but I couldn’t leave him behind. He was shaking so much, you’d have thought he was about to be murdered, the poor love. I’ve never tried since.’

  ‘So you just never leave him?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh yes, but I don’t institutionalize him. None of this kennel business. He goes to stay with my nephew, whose daughters are only too happy to spoil him in my absence.’ She smiled fondly, rubbing her fingers into the top of his head.

  Later, when I was loading up my warm, dry clothes into my suitcase, she’d said, ‘So what is it you plan to do next time you have clothes to wash?’ When I’d looked over at her, she’d been smiling.

  ‘The launderette?’

  ‘That’s an option, certainly.’ She’d nodded. ‘Or … you could come here once a week and use my machine and my washing powder, and we can have a chat. We can agree on a time that suits us both. That would be much easier for you, yes? And cheaper?’

  ‘That’s really nice of you,’ I said, flushing. ‘But I can’t just use you like a launderette.’

  She laughed. ‘My dear.’ We’d known each other for two hours and I was already ‘dear’. ‘Let me be frank. I would very much like the company. You seem like you’d be lovely company. And you know, Clarence may even let you stroke him after a few weeks.’

  I’d said yes, of course. Spending time with an old woman and her dog seemed like a more than fair trade for all the money I’d save, and anyway I’d take any excuse to spend time outside my miserable flat and with another person. I wasn’t sure exactly what we’d talk about, but I figured that she was old, and so she’d probab
ly have lots of stories.

  The next day, when I stop in to see Sarah on my way home from work as promised and tell her about this arrangement, she doesn’t look thrilled. ‘That’s very kind of her,’ she says. ‘But it does sound quite a bit like taking advantage.’

  ‘It honestly felt like it would’ve been more rude to say no,’ I say. ‘She’s lonely. Plus, did I mention the dog?’

  ‘Maybe you could offer to walk the dog?’ Sarah suggests. ‘And you could take biscuits or something. I always feel better in that kind of situation if I’m not empty-handed.’

  ‘Feeder,’ I tease, and she smiles. ‘OK. Shortbread’s easy, right?’

  ‘Yes, relatively speaking. You could add some lavender, if you wanted to make them a little less standard. That’s nice in shortbread. Or rosewater!’ She’s getting more animated, like she does when she starts talking about baking, her eyes glazing over slightly as she retreats into the cookbook of her own head. ‘I once tried adding amaretto but the consistency was all wrong. They tasted good, though.’ She looks at me, her eyes focusing. ‘What were we talking about?’

  ‘Shortbread,’ I say. ‘Specifically, me making shortbread. Me, who has no lavender or rosewater or amaretto to bake with.’

  I’m sitting up on the kitchen counter while she cooks dinner, which was my favourite place to sit when I lived here and was in a good enough mood to chat. Today, Sarah is making Normandy chicken, one of my favourites. She once told me that cooking for other people is her very favourite thing. ‘Especially you,’ she’d added, offhandedly, as if this was so obviously true it didn’t need emphasis.

  We’ve come a long, long way from how we used to be when I lived here. We had so many fights then. Tense, snappy arguments, but big, loud, screaming matches too. I’d never been able to fight like that at home before and it must have all been stored up inside me because she got it all. I was awful to her, even as I knew she was trying to help me. I’d wind her up, then cry when she snapped and said something that hurt. I was the queen of emotional manipulation, driving her to the edge and then blaming her when I was the one who went over. I wanted her to say things that hurt, because that was what I knew. More than once, Jill, who lived above us, had to come down and tell us to shut up. That’s how bad it was. How bad I was.

  It all seems so long ago, now I’m sitting here again talking about shortbread. Somehow, Sarah hasn’t held any of what happened against me.

  ‘So tell me,’ Sarah says, sinking to her knees and peering through the oven door at the casserole dish. ‘How’s it all going? Shortbread aside.’

  ‘Fine,’ I say.

  She stands up and looks at me. ‘Fine? Oh, Henry, get down.’ She pushes a hand towards the cat, who has sneaked up on to the counter beside me, unnoticed, and is trying to get a good look into the saucepan.

  ‘Yeah. Not amazing, but not shit, either. Fine.’

  ‘Down!’ Sarah scoops up the cat and drops him on to the floor, where he stays, indignant, swishing his tail at her. Sarah got the cat, a chocolate point Siamese she named Henry Gale, not long after I moved out. ‘I’m lonely,’ she’d said, when she first told me about him on one of her visits to Gwillim House, the in-patient unit I lived in for five months. ‘The flat feels so empty. It never felt empty before.’

  ‘Is he a good substitute?’ I’d asked.

  ‘Less entertaining,’ she’d said, exaggeratedly thoughtful.

  Now, Henry Gale turns his penetrating gaze to me, tail still flicking from side to side. ‘Your cat is upset that I’m allowed on the counter and he’s not,’ I say.

  ‘Human privilege,’ Sarah says, smiling. ‘How’s the job?’

  ‘Also fine.’

  ‘Bit of a placeholder,’ she says. ‘But OK. I’m glad it’s fine.’ She lifts her fingers in scare quotes and I roll my eyes at her. ‘And how’s Ventrella Road?’

  I bite my tongue to stop myself saying, ‘It’s fine.’ But I actually don’t have any other word for it, so I shrug instead.

  ‘You’d tell me if there were any problems?’ she asks, raising a hopeful eyebrow at me.

  I doubt it. ‘Sure,’ I say.

  ‘OK, good,’ she says. ‘You know I’m here if you need me.’

  I’d thought, once, that me moving out of her flat would be the excuse Sarah needed to be free of me, but it wasn’t, not at all. She came to visit me in Southampton every two weeks without fail, talking comfortably and confidently about my future, entwining herself in it, making sure I knew. She’s my family, she’s here for me, wherever I’m living. That’s a nice thing, even if I’m still not sure I completely trust it. We get along so well now, but in the back of my head, where I try to keep secrets even from myself, I know that this is all going so well because we aren’t living together. I’m easier from a distance, even (especially?) for people who love me. This is why I said no when she asked me to come and live with her instead of by myself. I want to be independent, I’d said. Half a truth, half a lie.

  ‘I know,’ I say. When she smiles at me, I smile back.

  I spend the next day with Caddy and Rosie, the three of us sharing a blanket on the beach. I feel happy and free, looking out at the world through the tint of my sunglasses. There’s something about Brighton on a summer’s day, and I’m not just a visitor; I’m part of it, once again. I belong.

  Rosie’s talking about the accommodation at the University of East Anglia, which is where she’ll be going if she gets her predicted A-level results. She’s worried that she might not get her first choice, which is apparently a lot cheaper than the alternatives.

  ‘Most people will want the nice ones,’ Caddy says, trying, I’m sure, to be reassuring. ‘So I wouldn’t worry.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Rosie says. ‘I think more people worry about money than how nice their room is.’

  I let their voices drift over me, mixed in with the usual seagull/waves/tourist cacophony that is the soundtrack of Brighton beach. The first time I ever came to this beach, I’d only just moved here and I didn’t know a single person. I’d loved it immediately, even then. I think it might be my favourite place in the world, though I love it best at night, when it’s quiet.

  ‘Suze,’ Caddy says, ‘if you were going to uni, where would you go?’

  ‘I’m not,’ I say.

  ‘I said if,’ she says patiently. ‘Like, where in the country?’

  ‘Right here,’ I say.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘I don’t want to move anywhere else,’ I say. ‘No more new postcodes. This is it now.’

  Caddy beams at me, as happy as if I’d just complimented her personally, and I think, for the millionth time, how much I don’t deserve her. No one’s ever believed in me like she does, and she kept on doing it, even when I gave her no reason to. She emailed me every single week for the entire time I lived in Southampton, even when I didn’t reply. (And, to be honest, I usually didn’t.) I knew every heartbeat of her life. Those first tentative weeks of her relationship with Kel; kissing him, touching him and, later, sex. (These were the emails where I called her immediately, and we stayed on the phone, talking and laughing, and I’d hang up wondering why I was keeping myself so distant from her.) Every now and then a sunflower would turn up on my doorstep addressed to me, with a note – Sending you sunshine xx – and I never told her that the sunflowers hurt, that they made me cry, that the bright yellow was too much when I was feeling low, because then she’d stop sending them. And having a friend who sent me surprise sunflowers was the best thing about my entire life.

  ‘But you’re not exactly a home-bird, are you?’ Rosie says.

  I want to be, though. I want to have somewhere that I can return to, that calls me in. I don’t want to be as rootless as I am. ‘I’m a seagull,’ I say, making a face at her. ‘I return to the sea.’

  We all laugh, and Caddy lifts up her arm so I can lean in for a hug. She lifts her other arm for Rosie, who looks appalled, which makes us laugh harder. I think about how we must look from th
e outside, to anyone who doesn’t know us. Best friends, uncomplicated and happy. Everything I’d ever wanted, from those earliest Brighton days.

  I’d hoped, then, that I might be able to choose who I wanted to be, that there was some way to escape the parts of myself that scared me. A fresh start, like everyone said. A fresh me. And then there was Rosie, on my first day of school, her wary smile, her sharp eyes. The way her face softened when she told me about her best friend, Caddy-who-goes-to-another-school, a sort of pride in her voice. How she’d said casually, offhandedly, that we couldn’t be friends if Caddy and me didn’t get along. And then Caddy, her pristine uniform all sharp lines and privilege, her big house, her perfect family. The way Rosie relaxed around her, the two of them fitting together as comfortably and naturally, unthinkingly, as a pair of old socks.

  It’s not just that I wanted them to be my friends, though I did, desperately. What I really wanted was to be the kind of person who had friends like that. I wanted it more than I’d ever wanted anything.

  And now, here we are. If everything else that could go wrong has gone wrong in my life, at least I have them, against all the odds. I was a bad friend when I lived here before. I was an even worse one when I was away. And now I’m back, and they’re happy. They are so much more than I could ever deserve, and I know that. But this time around, I’m going to be so much better. I’m going to prove to them that it was worth waiting on me.

  5

  ‘Berlin Song’

  Ludovico Einaudi

  Here’s something I realize: it’s expensive, being poor. I thought I knew, but I didn’t. I hadn’t realized how much invisible money gets spent in the basic act of living, and how much more it all costs when you’ve got none spare. I’d expected to spend money on food, but what I didn’t think about was how much more it costs to buy food for one person instead of in bulk. (I can’t afford to buy in bulk.) The fact that having water coming out of your taps and lights that come on when you flick a switch isn’t free.

  ‘Can you really afford to live alone?’ Brian had asked, dubious, when we’d first talked about my possible living arrangements. I’d thought he’d meant rent. But it turns out rent is just one part of it. Bills, which had only ever seemed abstract, are the killer.