Beautiful Broken Things

by Sara Barnard

  I wasn’t sure I liked the idea of this. ‘So she’s told you stuff about Suzanne?’ I wondered if it was anything I didn’t know.

  ‘Some things, yes,’ Mum said, giving nothing away. ‘Now, let me say this.’ My heart sank and I let out an involuntary sigh, which she ignored. ‘I think it’s wonderful that you want to be a friend to Suzanne. Really. It makes me proud that you’re able to be that kind of a friend to someone who needs it.’ As if Suzanne was some kind of charity case and my friendship was a gift instead of something we shared. ‘But I do hope that you’re going to be sensible with this. Don’t get involved with this kind of behaviour. And, if you really want to be a friend, you should discourage it.’

  ‘OK,’ I said, hoping she’d leave.

  ‘I’m not going to punish you for this,’ Mum continued, and I bit my tongue to stop myself saying something sarcastic, ‘but if anything like this happens again, it will make me rethink whether it’s a good idea for the two of you to be friends.’

  ‘It’s not like I need your permission to be friends with someone,’ I said without thinking.

  Her eyebrows moved upward and stayed there, like a warning. ‘I just hope you are as sensible as I think you are, and know better than to be swept along with a troublemaker, however charming she is.’

  Not long after Mum had finally left me alone, my phone screen lit up with a message from Suzanne. ‘BUSTED! But thanks for trying! You’re the best xx’

  I tried to call Rosie that same evening, but it wasn’t until the next day that I managed to get a hold of her.

  ‘Look at you, calling to give a heads-up,’ was the first thing she said. She sounded impressed. ‘Way to be on the ball.’

  ‘An ineffectual heads-up,’ I replied.

  ‘Yeah, but still. Suze loved that you tried.’

  ‘She told you all about it then?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Did she happen to tell you where she actually was?’ This was still bothering me. If she wasn’t with me or Rosie, where else did she have to go?

  ‘She was with Dylan.’

  A pause. ‘Who?’

  ‘Dylan. Dylan Evers.’

  ‘Who the hell is Dylan?’

  ‘Calm down. He’s the guy from our form that Suzanne’s been . . . what’s the nice word? Seeing? Hanging out with? You know, whatever.’

  Despite the cold I felt a strange heat at the back of my neck. How could I not know about this? ‘How long has that been going on?’

  ‘Oh, since before Christmas?’

  ‘Before Christmas?’ I repeated, my voice coming out high-pitched.

  ‘Well, yeah. Didn’t she tell you?’ Rosie’s upbeat tone had changed to one of slight concern.

  ‘No, she did not.’

  ‘I guess she thought it wasn’t important enough to say anything. She does talk about it like it’s nothing. Don’t be upset or anything.’ There was an anxious thread in her voice now. ‘You’re not upset, right, Cads? I shouldn’t have mentioned it. Have I messed up?’

  ‘No, of course not.’ I was the idiot who went to a different school. I was the moron who called to tell her to get home without even bothering to ask where she was. I was the one who thought I’d made myself matter.

  ‘They aren’t boyfriend and girlfriend,’ Rosie offered, like this made a difference. ‘They don’t even see each other much, outside of school.’

  I tried to think of the times Suzanne and I had seen each other since before Christmas, and the number of opportunities she’d had to tell me about this Dylan, boyfriend or otherwise. There were plenty.

  ‘What’s he like?’

  ‘Dylan?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Obviously.

  ‘He’s OK,’ she said off-handedly.

  ‘Well, that was informative, thanks.’

  She laughed. ‘Sorry. I don’t really know what to say about him. I mean . . . I kind of liked him.’

  ‘What do you mean? Before Suzanne did?’

  ‘Not before. More at the same time.’

  ‘Did she know?’

  ‘Oh yeah. But he liked her, so . . .’ She let the sentence die. ‘She’s welcome to him anyway. I’m not sure he’s that nice. I think he talks about her with his friends, and it gets around.’

  I’d phoned Rosie feeling relaxed and happy, ready to share my story of attempted rescue, but the conversation hadn’t gone how I’d expected, and now I felt lost in it. The image of Suzanne I’d had in my mind felt suddenly distorted. Had I got her all wrong?

  ‘Are you two OK, though?’

  ‘Oh, completely. We didn’t fight about it or anything. I mean, it was kind of a surprise when she first went off with him, but that’s just her. I love her, but she’s a bit of a slag.’

  ‘Roz!’

  ‘What? She is! I don’t even know how many boys from our year and above she’s got off with since she been here. And it’s only been, what, five months, if that.’

  ‘You can’t go calling her a slag though.’

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t say it to her face. But it’s you. I can talk to you, right?’

  This usually went without saying, and for some reason it bothered me that she’d voiced it this time. ‘Of course you can talk to me. About anything.’

  Rosie abruptly changed the subject, as she tended to do when the conversation veered towards the sentimental. She started telling me about two guys in her form who’d been caught smoking weed behind the science block – ‘I mean, the science block, Caddy, what morons’ – and then launched into a rant about Animal Farm, which she was trying to write about for English. This started with complaining about her essay topic – something I didn’t catch about propaganda and parody – but she soon lost track of literary criticism and instead gave me a longer-than-Cliff-notes version of the story. Around the time she said, with impassioned outrage, ‘and then they killed the horse!’ I stopped trying to follow what she was saying and just listened to her voice, her familiar cadences, the lilts and jolts of a friend in full conversational flow, talking about anything.

  It was closing in on 10 p.m. when I forced myself to click on Suzanne’s chat icon on Facebook.

  Caddy Oliver Hey

  Suzanne Watts Hey! :)

  Suzanne Watts What’s up?

  Caddy Oliver I have to ask you something

  Suzanne Watts I’m all ears

  Suzanne Watts Or hands.

  Suzanne Watts All eyes?

  Caddy Oliver Why didn’t you tell me about Dylan?

  Suzanne Watts Oh.

  There was an agonizingly long pause. The text kept switching from blank to the tell-tale ‘. . .’ that meant she was typing a message. My stomach was starting to knot.

  Suzanne Watts There’s not much to tell?

  Caddy Oliver Really?

  Suzanne Watts It’s not like I actively didn’t tell you. He just never came up.

  I wrote, ‘It’s not like I can bring him up if I don’t know about him’, and then deleted it.

  Caddy Oliver Don’t friends tell each other stuff like this?

  Suzanne Watts Don’t make it into a big deal. It’s not a big deal. That’s why I didn’t tell you.

  Caddy Oliver So there is a reason?

  Suzanne Watts God

  Suzanne Watts This isn’t the best way to talk about this.

  Caddy Oliver ?

  Suzanne Watts This is stressing me out. Can’t we just talk about it when we see each other?

  Caddy Oliver Fine

  Suzanne Watts Are you pissed off with me?

  I wanted to tell her that, yes, I was kind of pissed off with her. That friends told each other everything, even (especially?) things that weren’t a big deal. That thinking that I’d called her while she was with a guy I didn’t even know about to do her a favour made me feel like an idiot. I wrote, ‘No.’

  Suzanne Watts Are you sure?

  Caddy Oliver Yes.

  Suzanne Watts If you are, I’d rather you just told me.

  Caddy Oliver OK
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  Suzanne Watts Wouldn’t you want me to tell you if I was pissed off?

  Caddy Oliver I guess

  Suzanne Watts I’m pissed off.

  Caddy Oliver What? Why? With me?

  My stomach, previously knotted, had clenched painfully and my heart was pounding. My palms felt cold and clammy. I was absolutely useless at confrontation of any kind, digital or otherwise. The fact that Suzanne was in a different street made no difference to the effect the conversation was already having on me.

  Suzanne Watts Why are you talking to Rosie about me behind my back?

  Caddy Oliver We weren’t talking about you.

  Suzanne Watts Seriously??

  Caddy Oliver That’s not what I mean. Wait.

  Suzanne Watts Waiting.

  My throat had tightened. I flexed my fingers over the keys, wondering if she’d believe me if I disconnected my Internet and told her it had just gone down.

  Caddy Oliver We were talking about last night and I just asked her if she knew where you were when I rang you.

  Suzanne Watts Couldn’t you just ask me?

  Caddy Oliver Would you have told me?

  Suzanne Watts Of course!

  Caddy Oliver I didn’t get a chance to ask you anyway

  Suzanne Watts Phone? Text? Facebook?

  Caddy Oliver I’m sorry

  Suzanne Watts That’s all you needed to say.

  Suzanne Watts And just be honest. I know you’re mad I didnt tell you about Dylan. Just say so.

  Caddy Oliver I’m not mad

  Suzanne Watts Caddy! Ffs, we’re friends, you can say anything to me. If I know you’re mad I can say sorry and we can get over it. If you don’t say it, I’m just like . . . is Caddy mad at me?

  Caddy Oliver I know.

  Caddy Oliver Next time can you just tell me when it happens? So I don’t hear it from Roz? And then make you mad?

  Suzanne Watts Yes.

  Caddy Oliver And don’t be upset that Rosie and I talked about you a bit on the phone. That happens, right? I’m sure you and Roz talk about me when I’m not around.

  Suzanne Watts Well, maybe we would if there was anything to say.

  It was like she’d reached out a hand through my laptop screen and slapped me around the face. The shock of her words froze my fingers over my keyboard, a hot flush working its way up my neck and across my face. Ridiculous tears sprang to my eyes and I blinked to keep them at bay.

  And at the same time I was thinking, You’re overreacting, chill out, why are you crying, people say this stuff all the time. Don’t cry.

  Below her name, the ‘. . .’ appeared. I panicked, not wanting to read another insult or even an apology, and closed the browser. For a few seconds I just stared at my desktop screen, the words she’d written on a loop in my head.

  There’s something uniquely upsetting about having your deepest insecurities not just laid bare by a friend but thrown in your face. I knew I was not in any way exciting, that there was nothing going on in my life that could be remotely confused with interesting. I’d always worried that this made me boring and that that was what people thought of me: Caddy Oliver – nice, but dull. And now, clearly, that was true.

  What’s more, I’d thought we’d reached the conclusion of our mini-fight and were in the conciliatory stage. I’d been even more unprepared than I would have been earlier. And, worst of all, I’d never thought that Suzanne would be so suddenly and unexpectedly mean. Not just bitchy or sarcastic with me, which was completely normal, but outright mean. I’d never say anything like that to her. What did it say about her that she would to me?

  My phone buzzed. I glanced at it, hesitated, then clicked on the message.

  ‘Shit. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. I didn’t mean it. Call me please? Suze x’

  Four messages, six missed calls and an appeal to Rosie (‘Suze said to tell you to call her. Love Roz x’) later, around the time I started getting ready for bed, Suzanne gave up. My phone finally went quiet, the battery depleted. I plugged it in to charge on top of my bedside table and went to sleep.

  I was startled awake a couple of hours later by the phone springing to life, buzzing in increments across the table towards my head. Blearily I reached for it, blinking against the sudden light. Suzanne. At 1.37 a.m.

  I was half asleep and not entirely convinced I was really awake, so I answered it. ‘Uh, hello?’

  ‘Oh my God, I’m so glad you woke up. I thought – literally just now, and it would have been too late – that maybe your phone was on silent.’

  ‘What are you talking about? Why are you phoning me?’ My voice was croaky with sleep. Hers, in contrast, was bright and perky, like it was the middle of the day.

  ‘I’m outside, come to the window, I’m by your window.’ She said all this in a rush.

  ‘You’re outside?’ I repeated dumbly. I sat up in bed but made no move towards the window.

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Why are you outside?’

  ‘You wouldn’t answer your phone.’

  ‘Do you know what time it is?’

  ‘Of course. I would have come earlier, but I had to wait, to make sure Sarah was asleep. So she wouldn’t hear me leave. Are you at the window? I can’t see you.’

  I went to the window. When she saw me, Suzanne, who was standing in the garden like it was completely normal, waved. Over the phone she said, ‘Hi! Can you come out?’

  ‘Are you being serious right now? Is this actually happening?’

  ‘Yes, come out so we can talk.’

  ‘You are an actual headcase. Did you know that? It’s nearly 2 a.m. I am not coming out to talk to you.’

  ‘Wow, you’re much more assertive at this time of night. Come on, please? I really need to talk to you. And I brought you cookies.’ She held up a box and waggled it in the air.

  ‘I am hanging up on you now.’

  ‘OK, fine, but only if that means you’re coming out. I’ll wait.’ She hung up immediately, before I could, and then sat right down on the grass, clearly indicating her commitment to hunkering down and waiting for me.

  I lay back down and tried to forget about her, but it was a wasted exercise. Less than three minutes after she hung up, I’d thrown a coat over my pyjamas and was crawling out of my bedroom window, heart pounding, trying to remember how she’d climbed up and over the garage last time she’d visited.

  When she saw me coming, Suzanne leaped up and came over to the garage, leaving the box on the grass.

  ‘There’s a ledge here,’ she said, her voice low, pointing. ‘And the drainpipe is just to the left of where you are now. Climb down facing forward and try and get one foot on the ledge and your hand on the drainpipe.’

  Needless to say, I missed the ledge entirely, and ended up in an ungraceful heap on the concrete.

  ‘You OK?’ She reached out an arm to help me up.

  ‘I need a cookie,’ I said, rubbing my scraped arm.

  ‘You can have all the cookies,’ Suzanne said, half laughing with what sounded like nervous relief. ‘I thought you wouldn’t come down.’

  ‘I don’t know why I have,’ I replied honestly.

  ‘Because you’re a good person and a good friend and you’re giving me a chance to apologize in person?’ Suzanne suggested hopefully. Before I could respond, she darted away from me, collecting the box of cookies from where she’d left them on the grass. ‘Where shall we go?’ she asked in a half-whisper over her shoulder. ‘Beach?’

  ‘Go?’ I repeated, watching her return to me, tiptoeing over the grass in what looked like ballet pumps. She was wearing leggings and an oversized shirt, a woolly grey hat the only sign that she’d considered the February temperature. She had to be freezing, but you’d never have known.

  ‘If we talk here, your parents might hear us,’ Suzanne explained patiently. ‘We should go somewhere else.’ She raised both her eyebrows expectantly at me and, when I didn’t speak, turned on the spot and began walking towards the road. Despite
myself, I followed.

  We walked for a few minutes in silence, her hugging her chest and me trying to convince myself I was really awake. This was not the kind of thing that happened to me.

  Eventually Suzanne came to a stop at the end of the road running parallel to mine. She sat down on a stone wall and, after a moment’s hesitation, I did the same. She opened the lid of the box and offered it to me. I took a cookie and bit into it: soft, chocolatey goodness. It almost made up for everything.

  ‘I’m sorry for what I said,’ Suzanne said as I chewed. She was looking down at the floor, playing with the sleeves of her shirt.

  I swallowed. ‘You came all the way here just to say that?’

  She looked at me. ‘Of course.’

  ‘But it’s the middle of the night,’ I said slowly, as if speaking to a child. ‘Couldn’t it wait?’

  ‘No.’ Suzanne picked up a cookie and nibbled at the edges. ‘I was so worried you’d had it with me and that you’d never speak to me again. That you’d given up on me.’

  ‘Obviously I haven’t given up on you. Don’t be stupid.’

  ‘But people have.’ Her voice was quiet. ‘They do do that. Sometimes.’

  I didn’t say anything, torn between reassuring her that I wasn’t about to desert her and pointing out that she’d acted like a bitch.

  ‘I know I’m hard work,’ Suzanne said softly.

  ‘You are hard work,’ I agreed, rolling my eyes. ‘I never thought I’d have a friend who’d wake me up in the middle of the night and take me for a midnight Brighton stroll.’

  ‘Don’t forget the cookies.’ Suzanne nudged me with her elbow. ‘Bonus, right?’

  ‘Yeah, you can have that one. Definite bonus.’ I took another cookie. ‘I get that you’re sorry, and I’m glad you came to say sorry, even if you did it in a kind of crazy way. But I still don’t really get why you said it.’

  She was quiet for a while. ‘I don’t know why.’

  ‘I’d never say anything like that to you.’

  ‘I know you wouldn’t.’

  ‘And neither would Rosie.’

  At this she laughed. ‘Oh, Rosie can get her claws out with the best of them. She’s different at school than she is with you, you know.’