Broken Heart Club

by Cathy Cassidy

  The two of them wander off to a table across the courtyard, out of earshot, and I sigh.

  ‘I hated that,’ I say. ‘When Hasmita kept vanishing off to induction mornings and we started to realize that she wasn’t going to be around any more.’

  ‘I know,’ Ryan says. ‘The beginning of the end.’

  My eyes follow the little girl and her mum.

  ‘Do you ever see Hasmita?’ I ask. ‘It seems crazy that she’s here, in the very same town as us, and yet we never speak. At least, I don’t …’

  ‘Me neither,’ Ryan admits. ‘Nor Tasha. I tried emailing her, just after they went, but I never got a reply.’

  ‘Snap,’ I say. ‘I saw Hasmita in town not long ago, and she cut me dead.’

  ‘Ouch,’ Ryan says.

  ‘I know. This probably sounds mad, but … well, I was thinking maybe I might try again. Write a letter to Tasha, perhaps. Call and see Hasmita. Try to make contact. Is that a crazy idea?’

  Ryan smiles. ‘Not crazy,’ he says. ‘It’s a good idea. But … be careful, Eden. Some broken things can’t be put back together, no matter how hard you try.’

  37

  Ryan

  I’ve spent so much time trying to forget that summer – the one between Year Six and Year Seven, but suddenly it’s there in my mind as clearly as if it happened yesterday. How we started to fall apart.

  Tasha’s parents had sold their house and they threw a big farewell party. Everybody went. The adults drank too much wine and everyone promised to keep in touch, visit often, book the holiday cottage for summer forays to France. Those promises weren’t kept in the end, obviously. The camp-out sleepover had been our last chance to be together as the Heart Club, but of course, that was where everything went into meltdown.

  Things could have been so different. If it hadn’t been raining, if Eden hadn’t twisted her ankle dancing on the muddy grass, if I hadn’t helped her back to the tent and kissed her ear. And even then – even then – it could still have been OK if only Andie hadn’t seen us.

  I’d been shell-shocked, horrified. I don’t think I’d really understood until that moment that Andie hadn’t been practising her flirting on me at all; she’d been deadly serious.

  ‘How could you?’ she said to us, her voice like ice. ‘How could you do that to me?’

  Eden’s face was a pale mask of hurt in the moonlight, tears running down her cheeks like rain.

  ‘Please, Andie,’ she said. ‘It didn’t mean anything, I swear. I don’t want anything to come between us, not ever – please!’

  None of us had ever seen Andie act this way. She was usually easy-going, happy, fun. Sure, she liked to be the centre of attention, but none of us had seen this mean streak before.

  ‘Blame me,’ I cut in. ‘Eden slipped and I was trying to help her, and I just thought it would be funny to –’

  ‘Funny?’ Andie yelled. ‘You thought it would be funny? To kiss Eden? Yeah, I can see how kissing her must be a bit of a joke.’

  ‘That’s not what I meant,’ I argued, but nobody was listening to me by then. Hasmita was wiping Eden’s tears and Tasha was trying to calm Andie down, but neither of them were getting very far.

  ‘Shh, shh,’ Tash whispered. ‘You don’t mean it, Andie, you know you don’t.’

  ‘Of course I mean it!’ Andie raged. ‘Don’t you even get it? This is my birthday! My special day, and you’ve ruined it, all of you. I can’t believe you could do this to me, today of all days. You’re supposed to be my friends! Did you plan it? Were you laughing behind my back all this time? Were you in on the joke too, Tasha? Hasmita? Oh, God, you must hate me so much.’

  ‘No way!’ Hasmita protested. ‘We didn’t know a thing!’

  ‘There wasn’t anything to know,’ I argued. ‘You’re out of order, Andie! Get a grip!’

  But like I said, nobody was listening to me by then.

  ‘We didn’t plan anything!’ Eden said, stricken. ‘You’ve got this all wrong, Andie! I am your friend. I could never hate you, never!’

  Andie’s eyes blazed. ‘Too bad,’ she snarled. ‘Because I hate you! Get away from me, Eden Banks – I never want to see you again!’

  I didn’t know how to stop the meltdown. When boys fight, it’s much simpler; someone gets upset, and you fight about it until one person wins, and then you put it all behind you. This was way more complicated, and I was out of my depth.

  ‘Your mum’s coming to get you,’ I said to Eden. ‘I’ll wait with you. This will all blow over, you’ll see, and Andie will calm down.’

  ‘I will not calm down!’ Andie snapped. ‘Just go away, Ryan!’

  ‘Eden?’ I said, and she turned on me, eyes dark with anger.

  ‘Go away, Ryan,’ she spat. ‘Like Andie said, haven’t you done enough damage? This is all your fault!’

  Andie vented her anger on Eden and Eden turned on me, pushing me away, blaming me for everything.

  Seriously, it was bad. World War Three erupted, and the rest is history.

  The camp-out sleepover; that was when the cracks in our friendship had finally grown too big. We fell apart, and nobody even tried to put us together again.

  38

  Eden

  The new pond looks amazing. We spent all day at Miss Smith’s, pulling the old one apart, digging a deeper hole and lowering in the pond liner. We edged the pond with big stones and boulders and used the hosepipe to fill it up before planting water irises along the edges. We let the little plastic basket containing the water lily sink slowly down to the bottom of the pond. Finally, once the sun had warmed the water, we lowered the bucket with Fish and Chips and watched them swim free.

  ‘Let’s show Miss Smith!’ I said, splashing out of the pond and across the grass. The old lady was sitting in her deckchair beneath the sunshade, the moth-eaten pale-blue shawl wrapped round her shoulders, a glass of orange squash and some broken Rich Tea biscuits on her lap. Rocket was curled at her feet, enjoying the shade, the strokes and a plentiful supply of biscuit crumbs.

  It took ages to lead Miss Smith to the pond, with me and Ryan on either side of her. Her eyes misted with tears as she watched the fish streak through the water.

  ‘We’ve called them Fish and Chips,’ Ryan said. ‘D’you like them? D’you like the pond?’

  ‘Oh, yes … I do love Fish and Chips,’ she said, but I think she was having a confused day and thinking of her dinner. ‘Thank you Peter; thank you, Edie! I will so miss seeing you!’

  ‘We’ll keep on visiting,’ Ryan promised rashly. ‘Feed the fish. Cut the grass. Fill up the bird feeder. Don’t worry!’

  Underneath the bad-boy exterior, Ryan is still the coolest, kindest boy I know.

  Now I am home and sitting cross-legged on my bed making paper cranes. My mobile buzzes with an incoming message; I expect it to be Ryan suggesting a fence-painting expedition, but when I swipe my mobile to see the message, my mouth goes dry.

  Not Ryan. Andie.

  Thinking about you lots just now. So sad you lost touch with Tasha and Hasmita. I bet they miss you just as much as I do. I’d love to see the old gang together again and if anyone can make that happen, you can, Eden. Please? For old times’ sake? Love you loads oxox

  My fingers shake as I let the phone drop on to the duvet, into a flock of perfectly folded paper cranes, rainbow bright.

  Why me? Andie is the only one who could pull us all back together, surely? She knows I’ve tried and failed.

  But she also seems to know that it’s been on my mind all week.


  What if they don’t want to know me? I text back, and the reply is there almost instantly.

  Oh, Eden, how could you ever think that? Please try. Please? For me.

  After we fell apart, did I try hard enough to stay in touch with the others? Maybe not. The silence from Tasha knocked my confidence, and Hasmita distanced herself just as clearly. She started at St Bernadette’s and that was that; our friendship was over. I waited for her to text, to call, to come round to the house, but none of those things happened. Instead I sent her a text, bright and brave and not too needy, asking if she wanted to meet up one weekend.

  I’m a bit tied up for the next few weeks, she texted back. School’s really full-on. I have to work hard just to keep up – I can’t let Mum and Dad down, not after they’ve paid out all that money for me.

  It might do you good to have some downtime, I’d texted back. Please?

  My phone was silent, and then a reply buzzed in.

  I’m busy this weekend. One of the girls from school is having a sleepover, and I have to go. I have to fit in, make new friends. You understand, don’t you, Eden? I’ll give you a call, OK?

  It wasn’t OK. It felt like nothing would ever be OK again, and I didn’t understand. How could Hasmita draw a line under the past and start all over again? How could she do it when I couldn’t?

  She didn’t give me a call. She didn’t text or email or contact me at all.

  If I ever saw her in town, in her new bottle-green uniform with her new friends, I’d feel my own face freeze, my heart sink to the bottom of my Converse trainers. After a while, we stopped even pretending to say hello, until that painfully embarrassing encounter the other week, of course.

  I’d like to see Hasmita again, tell her I am not a nobody.

  As for Ryan, I’ve spent a whole two years pretending he didn’t exist.

  Crossed wires, clumsy mistakes; a catalogue of errors only now being put right. What if I got things wrong with Tasha and Hasmita, too?

  I have my friendship with Ryan back – could I reach out to the others as well?

  I emailed Tash a few times, two years ago; she didn’t answer, and those emails are lost now. We changed our provider eighteen months ago, got new addresses. What if Tash had tried to answer since then? I pick my old address book off the shelf; it’s a spiral bound book with a Hello Kitty motif. Inside, under T for Tasha, I find my old friend’s childhood address, a line scored through it, and her new address in France, written in her childish, curling handwriting, the night of the garden sleepover.

  I emailed Tasha, sure, but I didn’t actually write a letter. Maybe it’s time to try?

  I find some typing paper and a fineliner pen, take a deep breath. The letter starts off awkward and stilted, but after a while I get into it. I ask about life in France, about school and friends and boys, about how she is coping with the language. I tell her I am hopeless at French.

  Maybe, I write, I could write to you in French, and you can write back, and we can help each other?

  Maybe.

  I give Tasha my email address, my Instagram, my mobile, my phone number. I tell her I miss her, need her, think of her every day. And then I fold the pages up and slide them into an envelope, copy out the address and find some stamps. It costs more to post a letter overseas, but I’m not sure how much more, so I stick on three stamps to be on the safe side.

  I walk to the pillar box on the corner and post the letter before I can change my mind.

  After that, there’s nothing left to do but hope.

  39

  Ryan

  I learned all my coolest stuff from Andie. She was the girl next door, the girl everyone loved, the girl who was always at the centre of everything. She used to lean over the fence and yell my name, ask if I wanted to invent a new language or draw a map of the woods or hire a boat to go out on the park lake, pretending we were visiting Acapulco, Mexico City, the Galapagos Islands.

  Pond digging? Trips to the garden centre? Andie would not have been impressed with that. I decide to raise the stakes.

  I arrange to meet Eden at the park at one, down by the lake, and by the time she arrives I’ve set out a picnic rug and unpacked cold pizza, sandwiches, apples and iced buns from the bakery. A bottle of lemonade is wedged into the shallows of the boating lake, blocked in with a couple of boulders.

  Eden turns up in frayed shorts and a stripy top, her arms and legs brown from our pond-digging project; the minute she sees the picnic she starts to laugh, and I can’t help thinking that she looks worlds away from the pale, sad-faced girl who mooched along the school corridors wearing her pain on her sleeve like a badge of honour.

  ‘No Rocket today?’ she asks.

  ‘He’d have stolen the picnic,’ I say. ‘He’d have chewed the rug, chased the squirrels, jumped in the lake and then shaken himself dry all over us. Nope, no Rocket today. He can have the leftovers, maybe!’

  ‘It’s so cool, Ryan,’ she says. ‘I love it!’

  We flop down on the rug and start to eat, chatting idly about Miss Smith and the new goldfish.

  ‘She has probably forgotten they’re even there,’ Eden says, frowning. ‘Or that we’ve actually done anything. I reckon she slips back and forward in time – lives in the past, y’know? And I’d still love to know who she thinks we actually are. She kept calling you a good boy; clearly a case of mistaken identity!’

  ‘Oi, you! But yes, we’ll have to keep an eye on the pond,’ I say, unwilling to accept that the project is at an end. ‘We can go every few days to feed Fish and Chips, check they’re OK.’

  ‘Every day might be better,’ she replies. ‘To start with, at least. Until we’re sure they’ve settled.’

  I grin. How do you tell if a fish has ‘settled’? It could take a while.

  ‘We could paint the fence next week,’ I suggest. ‘While we’re there.’

  Suddenly, a football lands smack in the middle of our picnic, splattering everything, and I look up to see Buzz and Chris running across the grass towards us. I groan, mortified.

  ‘Hey, lovebirds!’ Buzz snorts, skidding to a halt beside us. ‘What’s this? Romantic picnics in the park, Ryan? Blowing out your mates to get mushy with some mystery chick?’

  ‘This is Eden Banks,’ I say, because my mates clearly haven’t made the connection. ‘From school.’

  ‘Charmed, I’m sure,’ Buzz says, holding out a hand to shake and then making a loud burping noise the minute Eden is foolish enough to take it. ‘Oops!’

  ‘You didn’t show at the shopping mall,’ Chris says. ‘Better things to do, huh? You missed a right laugh! Although we did get caught and cautioned by the security guards.’

  ‘Got any cute friends?’ Buzz is asking Eden. ‘You could fix us up with a couple of cool chicks.’

  She just rolls her eyes.

  ‘Look, Ryan, how about you ditch all this slushy stuff and come play footy?’ Chris says. ‘You’ve been really boring this holidays. You should hang out with your mates sometimes, or you might find they’ve moved on without you!’

  ‘Is that a promise?’ I say.

  Buzz grabs a handful of pizza slices and takes a bite from three of them at once. ‘You’re making a big mistake, mate,’ he says. ‘Just don’t come crawling to me when she leaves you high and dry! See you around!’

  The two of them amble away, scanning round for more mischief as they go.

  ‘They’re not happy with you,’ Eden comments.

  ‘Do I look like I care?’ I say. ‘I’m not sure what I ever saw in those idiots.’


  ‘Trouble,’ she says. ‘Looks like we’ve both made some mistakes, Ryan, but I’m glad we’re friends again, I really am. I’ve got a confession. I wrote a letter to Tasha last night. I don’t know if she’ll answer – she might just ignore it, like she did my emails – but still, I’m glad I did it. Has to be worth another try, right?’

  I raise an eyebrow. ‘Sure; that’s brilliant!’ I say. ‘Maybe I’ll try again, too.’

  She flashes me a smile. ‘Cool. Next I’m going to get really brave and call to see Hasmita. What’s the worst that can happen? She might blank me again, but at least I’ll know I’ve tried.’

  ‘Want me to come with you?’ I offer.

  Eden leans back on the picnic rug, thoughtful. ‘No, I think it’s something I need to do alone; something I should have done ages ago. Clear the air. But thanks, Ryan. I’ll tell you know how it goes!’

  40

  Eden

  I used to know Hasmita’s house inside out, but it looks different now, the small front lawn paved over and the old front door with its slightly peeling paint replaced with one of those modern things made of fancy plastic and double-glazed glass. It seems colder, less welcoming than I remember.

  I take a deep breath and walk along the path, push the doorbell.

  Hasmita’s mum opens the door, her eyes opening wide at the sight of me.

  ‘Oh! Hello, Eden,’ she says. ‘What a lovely surprise!’

  Hasmita appears in the hallway. Half a dozen different expressions flit across her face, all in the space of a few seconds. Shock, guilt, sadness, panic … those are just some of them. Is she glad to see me, underneath? I can’t even begin to tell.

  ‘Hey,’ I say. ‘Long time no see.’

  ‘Too right,’ she replies. ‘Look … you’d better come in.’