by Sara Barnard
Wasn’t this what I’d been afraid of the whole time? Discovering that the Rosie I knew and loved had the capacity to be a stranger to me? And that Suzanne, seeing both versions of her, would in the end know her better than I did?
‘Anyway, will you forgive me?’ Suzanne fixed me with her most beseeching look. ‘If I promise to try my best not to take my fucked-up-life’s frustrations out on you?’
What else could I say? She’d brought me cookies and waited in my garden in the freezing cold just to apologize to me. She was crazy, and she was unpredictable, but she was also generous and open-hearted and like no friend I’d ever had before. ‘I forgive you,’ I said magnanimously. I nudged her back with my elbow. ‘Hey. Maybe some of your Suze-ness will rub off on me, make me more exciting.’
‘You don’t need to be more exciting,’ Suzanne said. ‘People trust you. That’s worth way more. I’m the troublemaker, right?’ She made a face. ‘That’s not a good thing to be.’
‘I don’t think you are. You’re fun. You make things fun. I’d like to be like that,’ I said cautiously, wondering as I spoke if I was revealing too much. ‘You know, just a little more.’
She smiled with one corner of her mouth. ‘Ah. Like, something significant?’
For a moment I thought she’d read my mind, then laughed, realizing Rosie had mentioned my significant-life-event theory several months earlier. ‘Yeah, exactly.’
‘Well –’ Suzanne broke off a piece of cookie and bit into it – ‘I’ll do my best.’
We ate the rest of the cookies and then took the long route back to my house, tripling the time it would normally take to make the journey. She told me a little more about Dylan, but still only the barest details. He was sixteen. He smoked. He was a good kisser. Yes, Rosie liked him too, but not enough for it to be a big deal.
‘So am I going to meet him?’ I asked.
She hesitated, moving her hand lightly along the stone wall we were walking past. ‘I don’t think I want you to.’
‘Why not?’ I asked, surprised and a little hurt.
‘Because you probably won’t like him, and then you might think less of me.’ She glanced at me quickly, a flash of vulnerability across her features. ‘Besides, it’s not like he’s important or anything.’
I tried to think of a way to tell her that there probably wasn’t anything she could do that would make me think less of her, but I couldn’t think of a way that wouldn’t sound like I was trying to tell her I loved her.
‘What do you mean, not important?’ I asked instead.
She shrugged. ‘He’s just some idiot guy. I mean, really. He’s just a guy.’
Then why are you sleeping with him? I wanted to ask.
And then, because there was nothing else I could say, and because she’d told me I could say anything to her, I said it out loud.
‘Because . . .’ The word started off confident, but then she trailed off. She looked unsure of herself, a rare thing. ‘Because he can be so sweet to me. And, sometimes, the way he looks at me – he looks at me like I’m worth looking at.’
‘Your view of yourself is completely fucked up,’ I said bluntly, surprising myself.
She looked surprised too. ‘Fucked up?’
‘Yeah.’ I decided to go with it. We’d almost reached my driveway. ‘You’re so wrong. It’s so ridiculous that you could think for even a second that you’re not working looking at. I mean, God, have you seen yourself?’
Suzanne said nothing. She looked away from me, chewing on her bottom lip, her fingers clutching the outer rims of her sleeves. I was just starting to wonder if I’d overstepped the mark when she turned back to me, a bright smile on her face. ‘I’m really, really glad you don’t hate me.’ She reached over and gave me a sudden hug, squeezing tightly for just a second and then letting go. Before I could say anything, she stepped back, as if to start walking away. ‘I’ll message you tomorrow?’
‘Wait,’ I said, confused. ‘Are you going to be OK, walking back by yourself?’ I glanced at my house, which was reassuringly still dark and asleep as I’d left it.
‘Oh, sure, it’s barely ten minutes.’ She backed away a few more steps, lifting her hand in a wave. ‘Buonanotte, my friend.’ Her hand lifted further into a mock salute. Her shoulders were slightly hunched, a grin was on her face and she looked as far away from a troublemaker as it was possible to be.
‘Buonanotte,’ I replied. I saluted back. ‘You fucking nutcase.’
‘Hey, watch your fucking mouth.’ She was still backing away. ‘What do they teach you in that school?’
By now she was too far away to hear any response, so I just waved until she turned the corner and disappeared. I made my way over to the garage, panicking for a moment that I wouldn’t be able to get back inside. But hoisting myself up turned out to be surprisingly easy, and I was through my window and into my bed in a matter of minutes.
The house was silent. My night-time exertions, which no doubt would have given my mother some kind of coronary, had gone undetected. I felt suddenly exhilarated, triumphant.
I fell asleep grinning.
Nothing strengthens a friendship like an argument survived. And nothing made me so sure of my friendship with Suzanne than the way she handled our first.
As soon as the very next day, our brief falling-out had become canonized, with Suzanne texting me after lunch with, ‘Remember when I called you boring? GOD. What a BITCH! Xxxxx’ and me replying ‘Careful. I haven’t forgiven you yet. (love you xxx)’. Her response – ‘Oh please. I brought midnight cookies for you, I’m basically the Goddess of all friends’ – made me laugh out loud on my way to art and almost got my phone confiscated.
The second time she turned up at my window, five days later at 1 a.m, she brought baklava and we sat together on my garage roof, huddled under my fleece blanket, talking about nothing. When she left she squeezed me into a hug and said, ‘It’s so great that you’re here,’ and I felt as if I’d won a contest I didn’t even know I’d entered.
The third time she was angsty, agitated after an argument with Sarah about the increasing number of detentions she was getting at school. That time we left my house to wander around Seven Dials together while she ranted. The fourth time, close to 5 a.m on a Wednesday, she turned up dishevelled and happy, saying that she was on her way back from Dylan’s house and just wanted to say hi.
‘Do you ever actually sleep?’ I asked, leaning out of my window, still half asleep myself. She’d plonked herself down on the roof and was sat hugging her knees to her chest.
She laughed, dismissive. ‘Sometimes.’
I knew it was stupid. I knew it was reckless. I knew that walking around Brighton in the middle of the night was even a little bit dangerous. And I didn’t care. Against all laws of circumstance and personality, I had somehow been chosen as the go-to friend by someone a little bit wild, a little bit crazy, a whole lot of fun. I was just grateful to be invited along for the ride.
I kept these midnight walkabouts a secret from Rosie, partly because I knew she wouldn’t understand but mostly because I liked having something that belonged to Suzanne and me. To me, it felt like a fair exchange. Rosie got Suzanne in the daytime, and I got her at night. Our imperfect trio had, finally, found its balance.
‘I feel like a tourist,’ Suzanne said, lifting herself up on to her tiptoes and peering over the heads of the people in the queue in front of us. ‘Isn’t this a really touristy thing to do?’
‘Yes,’ Rosie said, taking a long sip of bubble tea through a thick orange straw. ‘But actually, how many times you’ve been dragged around the Pavilion is a sign of a true Brightonian.’
‘It’s a rite of passage,’ I agreed.
‘I’ve been here four times,’ Rosie continued. She was grinning. ‘As a Brighton resident and a Pavilion virgin, Suze, you’re way overdue.’
February had bled into March and the sun had finally started to feel warm against my skin. We’d taken the opportunity to spend a Sunda
y together in town, and the Royal Pavilion trip had been Rosie’s idea. Suzanne had spent the previous night with Dylan and his friends drinking on the beach, and her eyes had the slightly red-rimmed smudgedness of the morning after. Despite the occasional twinge of hangover, she was her usual self: bouncy, chatty and excitable.
‘It’s so weird that there’s, like, a palace here,’ she said, her eyes scanning the domed rotunda of the Pavilion. ‘Right in the middle of town.’
‘You mean Reading doesn’t have a palace?’ Rosie asked, deadpan.
‘How conventional,’ I added, smiling. ‘No wonder you left.’
I saw a grin break out over Suzanne’s face as she looked back at us to screw up her nose playfully.
We paid our entry fee and headed in together, sticking close among the crowds of tourists. Rosie curved her arm companionably through mine. ‘Remember the first time we came here?’ she asked me as we headed down the first corridor, neither of us paying much attention to the displays. Suzanne was just ahead of us, the audio guide pressed to her ear.
‘Yes,’ I said. We’d been seven years old and under the supervision of Tarin who, at fifteen, had used the trip as a cover to meet her then-boyfriend, Jamie, who’d dumped her at the entrance. Tarin had spent the entire circuit of the Pavilion sobbing. It was one of my most vivid childhood memories. ‘Wow, that was nearly ten years ago.’
‘Shut up, don’t say that,’ Rosie shrieked, then laughed. ‘God, Tarin did used to get landed with us, didn’t she? I don’t think I’d want to look after a couple of seven-year-olds on my weekends.’
‘She loved us,’ I said, which was true. ‘I don’t think she minded really.’
‘I bet she – oof.’ Rosie had walked straight into Suzanne, who had stopped abruptly in the middle of the Banqueting Hall and was staring upward. ‘Suze!’
‘Is that a dragon?’ Suzanne asked, oblivious. She pointed up at the gigantic chandelier, which was hanging from the claws of – yes – a dragon. ‘This place is so weird.’ Her eyes were bright. ‘I love it.’
‘Wait till you see the music room,’ Rosie said, an affectionate grin on her face. ‘The wallpaper is ridiculous and there’s a massive organ. I think you’ll actually cry.’
I saw a familiar mischievous grin light up on Suzanne’s face and she opened her mouth to make what I was sure was going to be a terrible massive-organ joke, but before she could speak her expression dropped and her mouth snapped shut.
Rosie and I glanced up just in time to see a woman with a mane of thick, coppery curls see Suzanne and do a very obvious double take. For an odd moment I thought she was going to just turn and walk away, but then she caught sight of me and Rosie watching. She looked again at Suzanne, who let out an audible sigh and then smiled, but it was tight and fixed. ‘Hi.’
‘Hello, Suzanne,’ the woman said. She was friendly, her face open and kind. ‘Nice to see you.’
‘Yeah,’ Suzanne said, not looking like she thought it was at all nice. She turned to Rosie and me. ‘Um, this is Becca –’ she waved a reluctant hand at the woman – ‘and these are my friends Rosie and Caddy.’
‘Lovely to meet you both,’ Becca said, then added to Suzanne, ‘I’ll see you on Wednesday?’ She was still smiling, but there was something in her face I couldn’t read.
Suzanne nodded wordlessly, her expression tense. It was unsettling to see her red-faced and speechless, untethered from her usual poise. When Becca walked away I watched Suzanne’s shoulders loosen, her face relax. She let out a breath and then smiled at us. ‘Sorry about that.’
‘Who was she?’ Rosie asked.
‘A friend of Sarah’s,’ Suzanne replied vaguely. ‘Sometimes I babysit her kid.’
I frowned, the explanation jarring in my head like a Tetris block dropped too far to the left. Something about it didn’t fit quite right. I had opened my mouth to say something when I felt Suzanne’s fingers close tight around my wrist, just for a second. I closed my mouth.
‘Come on,’ Suzanne said, the familiar grin back on her face. ‘Weren’t you saying something about a music room?’
I didn’t quiz Suzanne about Becca for the rest of the day, restraining myself even when the distinctive copper curls appeared around a corner and Suzanne ducked behind me, out of view. I knew her well enough by then to know that pushing her for answers to anything was a useless exercise, likely only to bring out the stubborn, sullen side of her that she usually kept hidden. Not questioning her was the best way of getting her to talk.
Sure enough, I was woken just after 2 a.m by my phone buzzing on my bedside table. I opened my eyes, not moving for a second, just listening to the vibration. When it stopped, I threw on my joggers and a hoodie and climbed out of the window and over the garage roof, a manoeuvre I’d mastered after four tries. By this stage I could make it all the way out and down without making a sound.
Suzanne was waiting for me at the end of my driveway, slouched on the wall bordering my front garden. She was smoking, the cigarette already half burned down in her fidgety fingers. The smoking was just one thing that was different about Suzanne at night, a glimpse of the side of her I was only starting to get to know. At night she was quieter and more contained, the vulnerability she kept a careful lid on most of the time closer to the surface, peeking out.
When I came to stand beside her, she glanced up, attempting a smile. ‘Good morning,’ she said. ‘Beach?’
‘Sure,’ I said. I’d already begun to understand what the different destinations meant on our midnight walkabouts. If she just wanted company, she was happy to sit on my garage roof and share chilly whispers for half an hour or so before heading home. If she was feeling restless, we’d wander Brighton’s streets for a while, talking. The beach meant she needed to see the sea, in a way that wasn’t usually good.
Brighton was quiet and still, like the whole city was taking a breather before the week started up again. We made it down to the seafront without seeing a single person. I went to walk down the steps to the beach, but Suzanne had stopped at the railings, leaning with her back to the sea. She’d pulled out a fresh cigarette and was flicking ineffectually at her lighter.
‘Are you OK?’ I asked. ‘You seem tense.’
‘I’m tense because I can’t light this stupid thing,’ Suzanne said between gritted teeth. A flame finally appeared and she touched the cigarette end to it. She closed her eyes and inhaled slowly, but the tension on her face didn’t dissipate.
‘You are such a cliché right now,’ I said, because it was what Rosie would have said and Rosie wasn’t there.
I watched in relief as an involuntary smile spread across Suzanne’s face. She flicked her eyes towards me, her smile sliding into a smirk. ‘The tortured soul, smoking away her blues?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘The rebel teenager sneaking out in the middle of the night and – gasp! – chain-smoking in the dark.’
Suzanne laughed. ‘The horror.’ She rolled her eyes, but her shoulders had relaxed and she was still smiling. She looked at me, breathed in slowly and then sighed out a puff of smoke. ‘OK. I wanted to talk to you about earlier, at the Pavilion.’
I nodded, not sure what to say. When she didn’t continue, I prompted, ‘The friend of Sarah’s?’
I saw Suzanne bite down on her lip before moving her head in assent. ‘That wasn’t really the truth.’
‘Right,’ I said slowly. ‘So who is she?’
‘She’s my social worker.’ Suzanne had dropped her eyes to the ground so I couldn’t make out her expression.
‘Oh,’ I said, surprised despite myself. ‘I didn’t know you had a social worker.’
‘Well, no, that’s the point.’ There was a slight edge of irritation in her voice. ‘I didn’t want you to know. I wasn’t exactly expecting her to turn up when I was with my friends.’
‘So you lied?’ I felt a delayed reaction of hurt creep up on me, tinged with anxiety. She’d lied to me. And it wasn’t the first time. ‘Why?’
‘Because
it was easier.’ Suzanne crossed her straightened arms at the elbows, pressing the side of her chin into her upper arm. It didn’t look comfortable.
‘Easier?’ I repeated. I thought about how she hadn’t told me about Dylan for so long. What else was she lying about or hiding? How could I know?
‘Don’t be pissed off,’ Suzanne said quickly. She sounded worried. ‘That’s why I wanted to talk to you, to try and explain, you know? I’m sorry. I just . . . didn’t want to get into it there. I hate all of it, having a social worker, having to talk to people about stuff I don’t want to talk about, and how they’re all so professional about it. I hate it.’ Her voice was picking up, agitated and tense. ‘And they won’t leave me alone; it’s just the worst thing. Especially Becca. She tries to be like a friend, and I just hate it.’
‘Yeah, but I’m your friend,’ I said, trying to figure out why I felt so thrown by something that should have been so obvious. Of course she’d have a social worker. Wouldn’t it be more weird if she didn’t? ‘Why can’t you talk to me about that? Complain to me, that’s what friends are for.’
‘I can’t,’ Suzanne said, sounding on the verge of tears. ‘I can’t talk to you about her, because then I’ll have to tell you why I don’t like talking to her, and if I do that, I have to tell you what I tell her.’ Her words were starting to get difficult to follow. ‘And then I’ll have to tell you about getting hit and the stuff I used to do to try and get it all to just stop and trying to kill myself and how my dad used to just lose control sometimes and there was nowhere I could go because where could I go but there and no one stopped him, they just never did, and I don’t—’
‘Oh God, stop!’ I managed to break in, panicked. She’d stood up, the cigarette crushed in her fingers, her eyes wild and wet, her breath coming in frightening short gasps. She turned away from me, raising her arms to her head. I could still hear her trying to breathe and I felt as lost and useless as a child. ‘I’m sorry,’ I tried. ‘I was being stupid. I totally understand why you didn’t explain earlier.’
