Beautiful Broken Things(Beautiful Broken Things #1)(16)

I put my hand on my chest. ‘Told.’

A brief, reluctant smile flickered across her face. ‘I’ll see you later, OK?’

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘I’m—’

‘Don’t apologize again. Bye, Cads.’

Before I could say anything else, she’d raised her window again and was waving through the glass as the car pulled away. I waved back, a little awkwardly, until it rounded the corner and disappeared.

When I got home hours later, there was a notification and a message waiting for me on Facebook. I knew what it was before I clicked, and sure enough: Suzanne Watts has sent you a friend request. Before I accepted, I clicked on the message.

I hereby endorse all stalking under the name of Friendship. The Friend (CADNAM OLIVER) may at any time assert her right to:

a) View the page of Me (SUZANNE WATTS)

b) Send messages to Me, including i) life updates ii) article links (only good ones) iii) videos and/or pictures of dogs (no cats)

c) View the information of my Other Friends, insofar as this information is publically available.

Confirmation of the Friend Request will be taken as an extremely legally binding agreement to these terms.



I was grinning like an idiot.

I, The Friend (CADNAM OLIVER), do hereby accept these terms. The Friend would also like to reaffirm her earlier apology for previous misdeeds.



Barely a minute later, my laptop pinged.

These terms are predicated on a clean slate basis.



I felt light with relief and happiness. I clicked ‘Confirm’ by her name, and then refreshed my news feed to double-check. It was official.

Caddy Oliver and Suzanne Watts are now friends.





The next time I saw Suzanne, four days later, with Rosie in tow, it seemed like nothing had changed. She was just the same as she’d been before the diner, chatty and friendly, peppering the two of us with questions about the days she’d missed. She’d spent the time in Cardiff, visiting her brother, Brian. I had no idea if the timing of the trip was a coincidence, or if she’d panicked after telling Rosie the truth and taken the opportunity to leave.

Suzanne had chosen to tell Rosie the morning after the diner incident and had done so, in Rosie’s words, ‘like she was talking about someone else’. For her part, Rosie seemed both unsurprised and unbothered. ‘Well,’ she said to me over the phone that same day, ‘I’d guessed it must be something like that. If someone doesn’t want to talk about something, it’s obviously going to be something completely shit. So I wasn’t going to push her to tell me or anything. But I’m glad she has, and off her own back, you know?’ Which made me feel even worse.

‘There’s five of them that live there,’ Suzanne was saying, talking about her brother’s student house. She was holding two corners of a blanket in her hands and shaking it out. ‘Can you believe that? Five? Wouldn’t it be so much fun to live with your friends?’

We’d gone to the beach with the vague, optimistic hope of catching the last remnants of sunshine and had been rewarded with grey clouds and a definite chill in the air. Suzanne and Rosie seemed undeterred by this, and I’d been vehemently vetoed when I’d suggested giving up and going to my house. Even taking shelter in the Palace Pier arcade was out.

‘Imagine if you fell out though,’ Rosie said, wrinkling her nose. ‘And what if you ended up with a housemate who pissed you off?’

‘By the time you’re twenty, you’re like a grown-up,’ Suzanne said. ‘Maybe you don’t fall out as much.’ She settled the blanket on to the pebbles and then sat on it, pulling over a picnic bag. ‘Sarah made us picnic stuff,’ she announced, waving a Tupperware container at us. ‘And Welsh cakes!’

‘What are Welsh cakes?’ Rosie asked, dubious.

‘Kind of like scones. Squashed scones.’ Suzanne reached back into the bag and pulled out a wad of paper plates.

‘Oh wow, you came prepared,’ I said, unable to keep the smile off my face and out of my voice.

She hesitated momentarily, her eyes sliding towards me, scanning for sarcasm. Then the smile returned to her face and she gave her hair a slight toss. ‘Always come prepared for a picnic.’

The picnic had been entirely her idea. She’d messaged both me and Rosie late the previous evening, announcing her return and suggesting a day at the beach. I’d been nervous that she’d act differently around me after what had happened, but she was just herself.

Rosie had settled herself on to the blanket and started pulling the lids off the containers, peering at the contents.

‘So what are your brother’s housemates like?’ I asked, taking what looked like a samosa and biting into it.

‘Great,’ Suzanne said. ‘Really friendly. They didn’t seem to mind this random fifteen-year-old turning up. They had a house party while I was there, and it was amazing. It made the ones we have look like children’s parties.’

She crammed two tortilla chips into her mouth and crunched through them slowly, turning slightly to look out at the waves. The wind had picked up since we’d sat down, causing them to break with a fierce crash against the stones.

I tried to imagine myself at a student party, surrounded by twenty-year-olds. Drunk twenty-year-olds. Just the thought was enough to make my stomach seize with anxiety. I took another bite of samosa, trying to shake it off.