Beautiful Broken Things(Beautiful Broken Things #1)(22)

Shell looked worried. ‘If you give me her number, I’ll give her a call and explain the situation.’

A look of panic passed over Suzanne’s face. She looked seconds away from retreating back into herself. ‘But she’s at work,’ she managed.

‘I’ll go with you,’ I said suddenly, surprising all three of us. ‘Then you won’t be on your own in the flat.’ I thought of Rosie, probably still queuing for popcorn, wondering if she’d be mad at me for leaving her there with everyone else with no warning.

Shell looked at me for a moment, an unreadable expression on her face. Then she turned to Suzanne. ‘How about that?’

Suzanne scrunched the end of her sleeves between her fingertips, her eyes scanning my face. ‘Are you sure?’ There was something childlike about her voice. A reluctant, cautious hope.

‘I’m positive,’ I said.

It wasn’t until Suzanne shut her front door that I realized the two of us had never actually been alone together, unless you counted the confrontation outside the diner, which I tried not to. What did we have to talk about? Rosie was our mutual friend, and without her there to act as a buffer, were we really anything more than strangers? Rosie’s response to my text – ‘Sz had a panic attack, going to hers with her. Explain later? Sorry!’ – had been a surprised but pleasant: ‘OK! No worries, hope she’s OK? Call me later x’

‘Thanks for coming back with me,’ Suzanne said softly, dropping her bag on the floor and walking into the kitchen.

‘Oh, that’s OK.’ I could hear the awkwardness in my voice and it embarrassed me, but being aware of it didn’t make it any easier. ‘Um. Have you ever had a panic attack before?’

Stupid, idiotic, stupid question.

‘Yes,’ Suzanne replied, as if it had been appropriate for me to ask. ‘I usually handle them better than that. But it was . . .’ Her voice gave out and she let out a breath. ‘It was a shock. Seeing my dad.’

‘Yeah,’ I said. Still the awkwardness. ‘I guess it would . . . yeah . . . be a shock.’

‘How did you know that that was what it was?’ she asked, taking a couple of glasses from a cupboard and turning on the tap. She filled them both and handed one to me.

‘Oh, Tarin used to have them,’ I said, taking the glass even though I wasn’t thirsty. ‘You know she’s bipolar, right?’

Suzanne shook her head. ‘I didn’t know they were part of that.’

‘They aren’t always, but she used to have quite bad ones sometimes, and her doctor said it was all related.’ I glanced at the clock, wondering what time Sarah finished work. ‘How come you’re not allowed to be in by yourself?’

Suzanne looked at me for a long moment, her eyes just slightly squinting. If the earlier devastation wasn’t still painted across her face in tear-stained blotches, I’d have thought she was amused.

‘Sarah doesn’t think it’s safe,’ she said finally.

‘Oh,’ I said, none the wiser.

We were silent for a while, both of us sipping from our glasses. I was frantically trying to think of something to say, any way to plug the silence with something other than either a comment on the fact that it was raining or a seriously heavy question about her dad.

Finally Suzanne let out a shaky laugh. ‘You know, I just realized I’ve only cried twice outside of this house since I moved here, and both times it’s been in front of you.’

I smiled, unsure if this was the right response.

‘I hate crying in front of people,’ she added, unnecessarily.

‘I don’t think anyone likes it,’ I offered.

‘Some people do. I had a friend who used to turn on the tears for attention. It was really annoying.’ She rolled the bottom of her glass against the tabletop. ‘But it’s pathetic, crying like that. Like you can’t control your emotions. It’s so weak.’

‘There’s nothing wrong with showing weakness sometimes,’ I said.

Suzanne made a face. ‘You only say that because any time you’ve shown weakness people have responded with love.’

I tried not to let the annoyance I felt show on my face. ‘You don’t actually know if that’s true.’

‘Oh, it is,’ she said, matter-of-factly, almost dismissively. ‘I can tell.’

‘You hardly know me.’ I tried to say this in a light-hearted voice, but even to my own ears I sounded defensive and trite.

Suzanne looked at me, a strange half-smile on her face. The openness of the vulnerability that had come with breaking down in front of someone had gone. She was unreadable again.

‘I don’t need to know you to know that,’ she said. ‘It’s not a bad thing. You should be pleased.’

I had no idea if she was trying to goad me, or if she really did think that way. Maybe it was both. I tried to think of how to respond, but before I could speak she spoke again.

‘My dad hated it when I cried.’ She ran her finger around the rim of her empty glass, her eyes fixed on it. ‘It made him so mad. So I’d try to stop myself, but . . . sometimes you can’t.’

And then of course there was nothing I could say.

Eventually Suzanne got restless sitting in the kitchen and we went to the cocoon of her room, where she wrapped herself in an afghan on top of the bed and hunched her chin down into her chest, looking at me as if expecting me to speak. The lack of other places to sit in her room made me perch on the end of her bed, half sitting on my shins. It still felt awkward between us, and I wasn’t sure if she even really wanted me there. But it would have felt more weird to not have followed her, like I was her babysitter or something.