Beautiful Broken Things(Beautiful Broken Things #1)(2)

‘Oh yeah. Sorry. I mean boy bullies. Obviously you don’t get those at Esther’s. Those are the ones I chase for you.’

I let her tease me about teenage boy thieves for a few minutes more until we hung up. I headed back upstairs in the direction of my bedroom, walking past my mother, who was ironing in front of the TV.

‘I’ve got your uniform here,’ she called after me. ‘Do you want to come and get it?’

I trudged reluctantly back towards her. My uniform was hanging on the cupboard door, the pleats on the skirt perfect, the blazer practically shining. I’d avoided looking at my uniform all summer. It was even greener than I remembered.

‘All freshly ironed,’ Mum said, looking pleased and proud. No one was happier that I was at Esther’s than her. When she found out I’d got in, she cried. Actually we both cried, but mine were not happy tears.

‘Thanks,’ I said, taking the hangers.

‘Are you excited about tomorrow?’ She was smiling, and I wondered if she was being oblivious on purpose.

‘Not really,’ I said, but I injected a note of humour into my voice, to avoid a long ‘don’t disparage your opportunities’ speech.

‘It’s a big year,’ Mum said. The iron made a loud, squelching hissing noise, and she lifted it up. I suddenly realized she was ironing my father’s pants.

‘Mmmm,’ I said, edging towards the door.

‘It’ll be a great one,’ Mum continued happily, not even looking at me. ‘I can already tell. Maybe they’ll make you a prefect.’

This was unlikely. Being well behaved and getting good grades was not enough to set you apart at Esther’s. The two prefects likely to be selected from my form were Tanisha, who’d started a feminist society in Year 9 and wanted to be prime minister, and Violet, who headed up the debating team and had campaigned successfully to get the school to go Fairtrade. Esther’s was made for people like Tanisha and Violet. They didn’t just achieve, which was expected to be a given for everyone, they thrived.

‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘Don’t be disappointed if I’m not though, OK?’

‘I’ll be disappointed at them, not you,’ Mum replied, like this was any better.

Great, I thought. Another thing to worry about.

‘I really hope you’ll be focusing on your goals this year,’ Mum said, looking up at me just as I tried to make my escape from the room. She was always big on goals.

I thought of the milestone list I’d mentally penned earlier on the bus. Boyfriend. Virginity. Significant Life Events.

‘I am,’ I said. ‘Completely focused. Goodnight.’

Here’s my theory on Significant Life Events: everyone has them, but some have more than others, and how many you have affects how interesting you are, how many stories you have to tell, that kind of thing. I was still waiting for my first one.

Not that I’m complaining, but my life up to the age of sixteen had been steady and unblemished. My parents were still married, my best friend had been constant for over ten years, I’d never been seriously ill and no one close to me had died. I’d also never won any major competition, been spotted for a talent (not that I had a talent) or really achieved anything beyond schoolwork.

This wasn’t to say I hadn’t been on the fringe of these kinds of events for other people. Rosie herself had had two, both bad. At two and a half her father walked out on her and her mother, never to be seen again. When she was eleven, her new baby sister, Tansy, was a cot-death victim. My older sister, Tarin, had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder at the age of eighteen, when I was ten, and the entire period of her diagnosis had been marked by dark clouds and tears and Serious Discussions. I’d experienced these latter two events from the middle of the storm, and had seen how they’d shaped the lives of two of my favourite people in the world.

Rosie and Tarin both thought my significant-life-event theory was ridiculous.

‘Don’t wish tragedy on yourself,’ Tarin said. ‘Or mental illness.’ She didn’t get it when I tried to explain that significant life events could be happy things as well. ‘Like what?’

‘Like getting married?’ When her eyes went wide I added quickly, ‘I mean in general, obviously, not for me any time soon.’

‘God, Caddy, I hope you dream bigger than marriage as your life’s significant event.’

Rosie was dismissive. ‘They’re just horrible things that happened, Cads. They don’t make me more interesting than you.’

But the thing was, they did. The only interesting story I had to tell about my own life was that of my birth, which aside from my starring role as The Baby really had nothing to do with me. My parents, holidaying in Hampshire several weeks before my estimated arrival day, were stuck in a traffic jam in a little village called Cadnam when Mum went into labour. She ended up having me on the side of the road, with the help of a nurse who happened to be in another car.

This made a great story to pull out of the hat if I ever needed to, and I’d told it so many times (‘Caddy’s an interesting/weird/funny name. What’s it short for?’) I knew what kind of facial expressions to expect from the listener and the jokes they’d likely make (‘Good thing they weren’t driving through Croydon/Horsham/Slough! Ha!’). But that still didn’t make it mine. I couldn’t remember it, and it had no effect on my life. It was a significant event for my parents, not for me.