Fragile Like Us

by Sara Barnard

  “How did you do that?”

  “A little charm, a lot of style,” she replied, then laughed, giddy and happy. She handed the ticket back to me. “Come on.”

  We sat down just as the train began to move away from the station. Suzanne sat back in her seat, lifting her feet up to rest on the chair opposite. I did the same, nudging her thigh with my left foot. She grinned at me as my phone buzzed and I glanced down to see a text from Rosie: “You didn’t go with her, did you?”

  “So where are we going?” I asked. I hadn’t bothered looking at the departures board, or even the ticket she’d given me. “It better be good.”

  “The best,” she replied.

  I waited. “So? Where?” At this point I was still thinking Lewes or Eastbourne or somewhere within the same county. I glanced casually at the ticket and my heart lurched. “Cardiff?”

  “Nope, Reading,” she said. She rested her head contentedly against the back of her seat. “We’re going to Reading.”

  11:21: Yep, I’m with her right now!

  11:28: You’re an idiot.

  11:32: I’m having an adventure :)

  11:35: No you’re not, you’re tagging along on someone else’s fuckup.

  I didn’t know what to think. Reading wasn’t as far from Brighton as Cardiff, and it could conceivably be a day trip, but I was still starting to regret going along with Suzanne quite so merrily. Especially when the “stupid” part of her original suggestion became clear.

  “I’m meant to be going to Brian’s,” she said. “Sarah’s packed me off there because she thinks he’s the only one who can get through to me or something. But I realized I don’t really want to go to Cardiff. And Reading’s, like, right there on the same journey. It’s basically halfway. So why not?”

  There seemed to be quite a few reasons why not, just off the top of my head. But I couldn’t face hearing her responses to any of them, so I said, “Why am I here then?”

  She looked surprised. “For company, of course. And it’ll be cool to show you Reading. I’d hoped Roz would come too, but whatever. She can just have a boring weekend by herself.”

  “Weekend?” I repeated, a shot of anxiety piercing my chest. My exact words to my mother on leaving my house had been, “Just going out for a bit.” A bit. Oh, God.

  “I mean, day,” Suzanne amended quickly. “A boring day.”

  I looked at her. She smiled, all innocence.

  11:37: God, relax! What’s wrong with you?

  11:39: YOU. I want my best friend back. Tell Suzanne you’re on loan and I want you back in one piece.

  11:51: Yeah, I’m really gonna tell her that. Chill out, will you? Hey, remember who wanted us all to be friends in the first place?

  11:55: That was before.

  11:57: Before what?

  11:59: Before it actually happened.

  At some point on that train journey I made the conscious decision to relax. It was too late to turn back now, I still had several hours before anyone would begin to wonder where I was and, most importantly, this could actually be fun. Suzanne was at her most lovable, all bounce and humor, trying to teach me “The Clapping Song” with bright eyes and quick hands.

  “What’s happening with you and Tariq?” she asked me.

  “Nothing,” I said.

  She looked as disappointed as if she was the one who’d been rejected. “Really? How come?”

  “He said he’d add me on Facebook, and then he didn’t.”

  For a second she just looked at me, then started to laugh. “Caddy, you know you can add him, right?”

  I shrugged. “I’m not that bothered.”

  “Oh, go on,” Suzanne urged, tapping her Vans against my shin. “He’s really sweet. Will you just add him and see what happens? Please?”

  I hesitated, looking at her open, clueless, unfairly beautiful face. She’d never understand. How could she?

  “What is it?” she asked, her smile fading a little. “He didn’t upset you, did he? If he did, tell me so I can kill him.”

  I couldn’t help smiling. “No, of course not. I haven’t even spoken to him since Levina’s party. It’s just . . . I don’t want to start something I’m not sure about.”

  She looked blank. “Why would you be starting anything? It’s just Facebook. Then you can chat. Then maybe meet him at the beach or something, if you like each other.”

  Just the words were making my heart rate jack up. “Yeah, maybe.”

  “I thought you wanted a boyfriend?” She nudged me again with her foot. “Wasn’t that one of your goals or something?”

  Those stupid goals. I wished I’d never mentioned them to anyone. “I guess.”

  She bounced up out of her seat and sat next to me instead. “He’d be seriously lucky to have a chance with you.”

  “Okay, stop it now.”

  “What can I do to help? Want me to talk to him?”

  “No,” I said. “Just leave it, it’s fine.” I could tell that she was about to speak again, so I quickly asked, “What are we going to do when we get to Reading?”

  “Not make plans,” Suzanne replied, arching an eyebrow pointedly. She grinned. “Think you can handle that?”

  12:01: What is your actual problem? Are you saying I can’t be friends with both of you?

  12:06: Would that work?

  12:15: No.

  12:18: Fine. I’m saying when this fuckup catches up with you don’t come crying to me.

  12:19: NOTED.

  We got to Reading sometime after lunch, Suzanne as happy as I’d ever seen her, spinning round to face me as we walked out of the station. “Welcome to Reading! Birthplace of Kate Winslet, dontcha know.” She beamed at me. “Okay, so there’s no palace. But who really needs a palace?”

  For the next couple of hours I let her play tour guide, the two of us meandering around the streets together. She told me stories about the seven years she’d spent living there, careful to leave out references to her parents but full of anecdotes about her friends and her brother. The confidence that came with being in a place you’d grown up in sat comfortably on her shoulders.

  “This is my old street,” she said, turning a corner.

  “Oh,” I said, surprised. I’d assumed we’d steer clear of her parents’ house.

  “It’s okay,” she said, reading my mind. “They’re not here. It’s their anniversary weekend, and they always go away for it.”

  “What a lucky coincidence,” I said.

  She looked at me. “Sarcasm?”

  “Never.” At least the timing of her “spontaneous” trip made more sense.

  Suzanne guided me around the back of the house into the garden, heading straight for a row of tomato plants along the right side fencing. I watched her kneel down and lift one of the pots, scrabbling with her fingers until she found what she was looking for. She sat back on her ankles, grinning at me, holding a key into the air.

  “It’s good you knew that was there,” I said, even though I wasn’t actually sure whether it was good or not.

  “I lived here for seven years,” she replied, heading for the back door. “Some things don’t change.”

  The house was quiet and still. I paused by the back door, watching Suzanne walk into the kitchen and put her bag on the table like she still called this place home.

  “Um. We’re just stopping by, right?” I asked.

  “Sure,” she said, her back to me. “I’ll show you around first though, right?” She walked around the kitchen, running her fingers along the counters. Her expression was unreadable. “It’s weird,” she said suddenly. “I thought it might look different. But it’s just the same as when I lived here. I guess it didn’t all revolve around me after all.” She attempted an ironic smile, but it was a little shaky. She glanced at me. “And you here—it’s like two worlds colliding.”

  “In a good way?”

  I expected her to break into a proper smile, but she paused thoughtfully, her eyes falling on a calendar pinned to a c
ork board by the door. “Look,” she said, even though I was on the other side of the room. “They’re in Edinburgh.”

  “Do you have family there?”

  “No. It’s where they went to uni. That’s how they met.”

  A new tidbit. “What’s your mum like?” I asked.

  Suzanne paused, considering. This was one of my favorite things about her, I realized. How she always thought about my questions before answering, like they mattered to her. “Sad,” she said finally. “Kind of . . . small.”

  “Oh.” It seemed like a strange way to describe your mother.

  “She stopped working a long time ago, and she spends most of her time in the house,” Suzanne explained. “It always felt a bit like she didn’t really know what to do with us. Me and Brian, I mean. My dad was the only person who could really bring her to life.”

  “Did she ever try to stop him hurting you?” It seemed safe, somehow, to ask the question in this house.

  Suzanne shook her head. “It’s hard to explain, but it was always just something that happened. Like part of our family.”

  “That’s horrible.”

  “Yeah. Lots of things are horrible.” She shrugged, like this was a normal thing to say, then turned away from me. Her fingers closed around the handle of the fridge, pulling it open to look inside. “Now I’m older, I think I get it. I think she felt guilty. About cheating on my dad, you know.” She closed the door, holding what looked like a mini Scotch egg.

  “She cheated on your dad?”

  Suzanne pushed the Scotch egg into her mouth, whole, then chewed slowly. Swallowing, she said, “Yeah. Didn’t I tell you that he’s actually my stepdad?”

  “Well, yeah, but I guess I didn’t—”

  “It was just once,” Suzanne said, interrupting me. “Apparently.”

  I had absolutely no idea what to say to this.

  “Hence—” Suzanne spread her arms, gesturing to herself, then posing momentarily like a blond, female Freddie Mercury—“my existence.”

  “Did you always know?” I asked stupidly.

  She returned her arms to her sides. “Nope. Found out when I was fourteen. That was a fun revelation.” She rolled her eyes, determinedly unbothered. “My dad had known for years. I mean, my stepdad.” Seeing my face, she shrugged again. “My family is ten levels of fucked up.”

  I thought of my parents, boring and ordinary, bickering about loading the dishwasher. “How did you find out?”

  A shadow passed over her face. “I don’t really want to talk about this.” As if someone else had brought it up. “Come on,” she said, chancing a small smile. “Want to see my room?”

  I got the sense that she wanted to show me more than I actually wanted to see it, so I followed her despite my reluctance when she headed up the stairs, tapping the banister as she went. She turned to walk down a hallway, pointing at a closed door to her right. “That’s Brian’s room,” she said as we passed. “And that’s my parents’. And . . . here’s mine.” She pushed the door and walked in.

  For an awful moment I thought we’d enter to find the room stripped of any trace of her, but it was unmistakably the room of a teenage girl, albeit one who didn’t live there anymore. The bed was made, there were still books on the shelves. But there was one glaring difference.

  “It’s so bare,” I said, surprised by how thrown I felt by it. “No posters or anything?” I thought of her jumbled walls in Brighton, overflowing with life.

  “My dad hates clutter,” Suzanne said, standing in the middle of the room and gazing up at the walls. “Like, really. He’s a neat freak.”

  “A poster or two is hardly clutter,” I said.

  “In this house,” Suzanne said, “it’s not worth it.” Her phone started ringing in her pocket and she pulled it out, her face lighting up when she saw the name on screen. She answered, turning slightly away from me. “Hi!” Her voice was suddenly bright and animated. “Oh my God. You’ll never guess where I am! Reading!” She paused, and I heard the excited babble, tinny through the phone. “Yeah! I’m literally standing in my bedroom.” She let out a laugh. “I know! They’re not here. I’m here with my friend.” She glanced back to beam at me.

  I grinned back at her, proud to be there, proud to be her friend. I let her carry on talking as I wandered over to a shelf in the corner of the room that housed a collection of ornaments, similar to one I’d had when I was younger, though mine had been mainly woodland animals, and hers seemed to be fairies and other faintly ethereal winged creatures. The light had cast an odd shadow on what could have been an angel, and I tilted my head to get a closer look. A slight but defined line separated the folded hands of the angel from its arms. I frowned, taking in more of the figurines, seeing that at least half of the collection had their own markings. Some were cracked, others were missing wingtips, a few showed scars where they had been stuck back together.

  “Cool, huh?” Suzanne said, suddenly at my side. “I loved collecting this kind of thing when I was, like, ten or something.”

  “They’re all broken.” I said.

  She grinned at me, like she’d expected me to say that. “What? Are they?”

  “I don’t get it.” I said.

  “They’re fixed,” she corrected me. “They were broken, but now they’re repaired. And it didn’t seem right to only keep the still-pretty ones, so I had to keep the broken ones too. They keep each other company.” She looked pleased. “Besides, you can only tell if you look properly close.”

  “How did they get broken in the first place?”

  “Dad. Of course.” She didn’t elaborate, to my guilty relief.

  I had a sudden vision of a younger Suzanne bent over a pile of broken china, gluing the pieces back together. My heart ached in sympathy. “So you put them all back together again?”

  “No, it wasn’t me.” Suzanne hesitated, then sighed. “Dad did it. I was staying at a friend’s house one night, and when I came back he’d done it. I went to my room and . . . well, there they were. That might be more why I never threw them out.”

  I felt a confused sadness crinkle my forehead. “Why would he do that?”

  “Because sometimes he felt bad.” Her face had lost its sparkle. “Sometimes.”

  There was so much I would never know, let alone understand. A violent dad who repaired damaged fairy ornaments. A broken girl who kept them on display.

  “How come you didn’t bring them to Brighton?” I asked.

  The grin reappeared, sudden and bright. “Oh, God, I don’t like them that much.” She reached out impulsively and tugged on my sleeve. “Come on,” she said. “Want to meet my friends?”

  * * *

  We met up with her friends in town just as it started to get dark. They were excitable, loud and far more ordinary than I’d built them up to be in my head. I had imagined, given they’d been friends with Suzanne during her most formative adolescent years, that they would all be larger than life and intimidating, like her. But they were just people, with the same variations and similarities as any group of friends.

  “Oh my fucking God.” This was practically shouted at us as we first approached the group by a tall, curly haired boy who broke apart from the crowd to rush Suzanne with a hug. “I wouldn’t believe it till I saw you.” He was called Toby, Suzanne told me when they broke apart, flushed and happy.

  In the confusion of introductions—which were themselves swallowed up by shrieks, hugs, and greetings to Suzanne—I gave up trying to keep track of everyone’s name. I decided to just keep a smile on my face and nod along if and when anyone spoke to me.

  We headed as a group to McDonald’s, spreading ourselves over one of the tables and sharing portions of fries and chicken nuggets. I stuck close to Suzanne, who sat crosslegged on top of the table, ignoring the food, and talking about Brighton. Every now and then she’d reach out a hand, tug playfully on my hair, throw me a huge grin and then return to her story. She talked about getting suspended, but she told the story with a
slant, as if the whole thing had just been one big joke.

  “I can’t believe you got suspended.” One of the girls, Liz, whom I’d established was Toby’s girlfriend, was laughing, but she looked a little concerned.

  “This wasn’t my fault,” Suzanne said. “Was it, Cads?”

  They all looked at me and I wished, not for the first time, that humans had some kind of control over their blushing reflex. “Well,” I said, trying to make my voice as light as hers, “you did throw a chair.”

  She grinned at me and shrugged. “True. But he deserved it.”

  “Oh, totally,” I said, then hated myself as I caught an amused smile pass between two girls whose names I’d forgotten. Tow-tar-lee. My stupid private-school diction.

  By the time it got dark we’d moved from McDonald’s to a shabby-looking liquor store, which was staffed by an equally shabby-looking man, who barely glanced at us, even as we heaped bottles of vodka onto the counter. “Do you want to share with me?” Suzanne asked, prodding me with a two-liter bottle of Coke and gesturing to a cheap bottle of vodka. “We can mix.”

  “Sure,” I said quickly, happy to follow her lead.

  We ended up in a park that had absolutely nothing to distinguish it from any park in the country. I sat on my jacket, trying to tell myself I wasn’t cold, listening to the happy shrieks of laughter around me. Suzanne had opened the Coke and was pouring some of it on the grass, her head tilted slightly, judging how much should be left. She set it upright, balanced between her knees, and poured the vodka straight into it. She screwed the lid back on, gave the bottle a careful shake, then passed it to me. “All right?” she said.

  It was so strong I almost choked. “Great!” I said, my eyes tearing, and she laughed.

  “It’s just because it hasn’t mixed properly,” she promised. “It’ll get better.”

  Regardless, I took a couple of sickening gulps, hoping the vodka would go straight to my head and make this whole thing a little easier. Suzanne’s friends were friendly enough, but this kind of situation would never be one I’d feel comfortable in.