Beautiful Broken Things(Beautiful Broken Things #1)(27)

The thought of Suzanne being so sad she didn’t even want to see her friends on her birthday was in itself so unbearably sad that I suddenly felt like I wanted to cry. Mum, seeing my face, reached out and gave my hip a reassuring rub. At least, I assumed it was meant to be reassuring. The fact that it was my hip diminished the comfort slightly.

‘There’ll be other weekends,’ she said, missing the point entirely. ‘Why don’t you have Rosie here instead?’

‘Maybe,’ I said, though I knew that wasn’t an option. There would be something callous about having Suzanne’s birthday weekend without her, and in my house, not hers.

It struck me after Mum left my room that only a few weeks ago I would have been thrilled at the chance to have Rosie to myself for the weekend, especially at Suzanne’s expense. But so much had changed in such a short space of time, and as surprising at it still sometimes seemed to me, Suzanne was as much as part of my daily life now as Rosie was.

I sent her a message saying I hoped she was OK and to let me know when she was feeling better. She didn’t reply.

On Saturday, Rosie and I met up in town and settled down in Starbucks with hot chocolates and cake. It was pouring with rain outside and neither of us was in the mood to navigate the sodden crowds of Saturday’s Brighton, let alone go to the beach.

‘So what did your mum tell you?’ I asked. We’d saved the most pressing conversation – Suzanne – until we’d secured the sofas.

‘That Suzanne’s depressed,’ Rosie said, arranging our two plates in front of her and picking up a knife. She raised the blade above the Danish, biting down speculatively on her lip before cutting decisively down through the middle. Custard oozed across the knife and on to the plate. ‘Does that look even?’

‘Sure,’ I said, picking up the smaller half and putting it on my plate. I watched as she cut the chocolate muffin in half. ‘Did she say anything else?’

Rosie shrugged, already in the process of cutting her halves into bite-size chunks. ‘Not really. What else is there to say?’

‘Mum didn’t use the word “depressed”,’ I said, not sure where I was going with this. ‘She said Suzanne was sad.’

Rosie laughed, but not meanly. ‘Isn’t it annoying that she tries to sugar-coat everything for you like you’re five years old?’

‘Well, yeah, but I’m not sure that’s what she’s doing this time. I asked if that meant she was depressed, and she said this is different.’

‘Different how?’

‘I have no idea.’

‘What difference does it make anyway?’ Rosie picked up her first chunk of Danish. I’d already finished mine. ‘The end result is the same.’

I had a feeling that it made quite a big difference, and that Sarah had used sad as opposed to depressed quite deliberately. But the nuances of the two words, the look on my mother’s face and even the tone of Rosie’s voice seemed to belong to a world I didn’t understand, no matter how much I strained.

And then the answer came to me, so obvious I wasn’t sure why it had taken so long. ‘We should go and see her.’

Rosie paused, flakes of Danish still on her fingers. Her forehead wrinkled slightly. ‘What do you mean?’

‘We should go and visit Suzanne,’ I said. ‘Which bit is confusing?’

‘But Sarah said not to.’

‘No, she didn’t, she just said the birthday weekend was off. We should take her presents.’ We’d bought Suzanne’s card together, along with a toy elephant and a hanging butterfly decoration for her wall.

Rosie exhaled a sceptical ‘hmmm’, then said, ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea. She obviously doesn’t want to see people. What if you go there and Sarah’s like, “What are you doing here? I told you not to come”?’

‘Then we can leave. But at least we’ll have made the effort, and that might help.’

‘Help with what? You don’t even know what’s wrong with her.’

I wondered if she was being obtuse on purpose. ‘Well, obviously it’s something to do with her family.’

‘You shouldn’t assume stuff like that.’ Rosie picked up the last chunk of Danish and popped it into her mouth.

I tried to ignore my rising frustration and keep my voice level. It was a waste of time for me to try to argue with anyone, especially Rosie, because I lost every single time. I was too weak to hold my ground. Soft all over, too easily dented.

‘It doesn’t matter anyway,’ I said, trying my best to regain control over the conversation. ‘Either way, she’s unhappy and we’re her friends, so we should go and see her on her birthday.’

Rosie considered this, her brow still scrunched. Finally she said, ‘I do see what you mean, but I still don’t think it’s a good idea. We don’t know her like we know each other, you know?’

I didn’t see what that had to do with anything.

‘I just mean that maybe we should let this one go and wait until we see her again,’ Rosie said. She was watching my face carefully. ‘If it was you, I’d definitely go anyway, whatever you said. But it’s not you, and I don’t know how she’d react, so I really don’t think we should risk it.’