Beautiful Broken Things(Beautiful Broken Things #1)(33)

‘Sarah,’ she mouthed back. She pointed towards the door and mimed listening with her hand to her ear.

I strained to hear, and sure enough I could just about hear the sounds of my mother talking to another woman. I wouldn’t have been able to place the voice as Sarah’s by myself.

‘Shit,’ Suzanne said out loud through a sigh.

‘Why is she here?’ I asked, bewildered.

She made a face as if she really didn’t want to answer this, then said, ‘She made me give her yours and Rosie’s addresses, when we first started being friends. She must have come here first because it’s closer.’

‘Why is she so overprotective?’ I asked. ‘She doesn’t seem like the type.’

‘It’s not that she’s overprotective. She’s just trying to . . . get a grip on me, I guess. Maybe she thinks if I know she’ll come looking for me, I won’t leave.’

‘Do you leave a lot?’

‘Sometimes I just want to be by myself. I just walk for a bit, but I always come back. Usually she doesn’t even notice I’ve gone.’

I thought of the bare window in her room. Always leave an exit clear. So she had meant it.

Suzanne looked towards my window now, twisting her lip thoughtfully. ‘If I leave now, I can get home in ten minutes. Then she can wander around Brighton looking for me for as long as she likes, and I’ll still be there when she gets back.’

‘What if she’s worried about you?’

‘She’s not.’

‘What if you get in trouble?’

She laughed at this. ‘What kind of trouble? Like ground me? I’ll just go anyway. She can’t do anything. Who cares?’

I hesitated, trying to think of the best way to play this. ‘I wonder why my parents haven’t come up here to look for you.’

‘They must just assume I’m not here.’ Suzanne had picked up the polish again and was finishing my last two nails. ‘Because obviously if I turned up at your window, you’d tell them immediately.’ She grinned at me.

‘Obviously,’ I said, but a little more weakly. ‘But why’s Sarah still here then?’

‘Probably complaining about me. You know she and your mum have met up a couple of times since that day at the supermarket?’

‘Really?’

‘Yeah. I think it’s the Samaritans thing.’

‘Yeah, people like talking to her because they assume she must be a good listener.’

‘No, I mean . . .’ Suzanne trailed off, then smiled. ‘Yeah, that must be it.’

She’d finished my nails and was twisting the lid back on to the bottle.

‘I think you should go downstairs,’ I said.

Her face fell a little and she looked at me warily. ‘Why? Are you turning me in?’

‘No, I just think that’s the best way to play it. I’ll come downstairs with you, and we’ll say you came to see me. Maybe we can all agree that you can come and see me whenever without needing to ask. Then you’ve got freedom, and she won’t check up on you.’

Suzanne smiled. ‘As simple as that, huh?’ She glanced towards my window again. ‘It would be a lot easier to just go.’

‘Not in the long run,’ I said.

She was silent for a while, considering this. ‘OK, fine. I’ll try it your way.’ She stood up. ‘Will this get you into trouble?’

Possibly. ‘Shouldn’t do.’

We headed out of my room together and down the hall to the stairs. I could hear Sarah’s voice more clearly as we started down them, her words suddenly decipherable. I tried to get into the kitchen as fast as possible to stop her saying anything bad about Suzanne, but we ended up walking through the door just as she said, ‘The problem is, I thought she’d be grateful. But she’s such hard work.’

There was a terrible silence as Sarah and my parents realized we were there. I glanced behind me at Suzanne, hoping that by some miracle she hadn’t heard, but her face was hard and set. I looked towards Sarah, hoping to see guilt and contrition on her face, but her initial expression of surprise had faded into frustrated anger.

Apologize, I thought to her desperately. If she apologized immediately, things could still be OK.

But she didn’t.

‘Caddy,’ Dad said, patiently but with a hint of annoyance, ‘why didn’t you tell us Suzanne was here?’

‘I didn’t think I needed to,’ I responded, hearing my sullen tone and instantly regretting it. None of this was going right.

‘So you are here,’ Sarah said to Suzanne, her voice shaky with controlled anger. ‘Why didn’t you answer your phone?’

‘I left it behind.’

‘Don’t you care that I can’t get a hold of you when you do that?’

Suzanne looked her right in the eye. ‘No.’

My heart was starting to pound, my hands clammy at my sides. Fights between my own family in my kitchen were bad enough. But a fight between Sarah and Suzanne? I had to fight a childish impulse to run away.

‘I’m trying to look after you,’ Sarah said slowly, angrily. ‘How can I do that when you decide to disappear?’

‘I’m right here,’ Suzanne shot back.