Beautiful Broken Things(Beautiful Broken Things #1)(72)

When Brian pulled up outside my house, Suzanne unbuckled herself and got out of the car, coming to join me on the pavement. She reached out her arms for a hug. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, surprising me.

‘What for?’ I asked, hugging her.

She laughed into my ear. ‘You want a list?’ I moved to end the hug, but her arms tightened around me, just for a few seconds longer. Her hair smelled like cigarettes and last night’s party and Suze. ‘Good luck.’ She released me, lifting her hand in her favoured mock salute before heading back to the car.

I threw a wave over my shoulder as they drove away and then turned back to my house, taking a second to just look at it. Was I caught or not? I had no way of knowing. It was Schrodinger’s house. I was bad Caddy and good Caddy, all at once. I curled my fingers around my keys and walked towards the door, bracing myself for the answer.

It was bad.

Maybe the worst thing about it, at least for me, was how close I’d come to getting away with it. My parents had no reason to question my late-night decision to stay at Rosie’s house, and even my dishevelled, same-clothes-as-yesterday appearance could have been written off as the harmless Saturday-night fun of a sixteen-year-old. What got me caught was the fact that I had a great sister who loved me. It’s funny how the world works.

Tarin, innocently helpful, had called Rosie not long after I sent my last text, trying to get a hold of me to tell me that she was heading into town to see a friend and did I want her to stop by Rosie’s house with my phone charger and a change of clothes? Rosie, seeing her opportunity, told her I wasn’t there and that I was, in fact, with Suzanne somewhere that wasn’t Brighton.

‘It’s not even that you did something so reckless and irresponsible,’ Mum said, spitting nails. ‘It’s that you lied to us.’

Except it clearly was a lot about me doing something so reckless and irresponsible. And also my ‘clear lack of respect’, my ‘failure to consider the consequences’ and ‘Jesus Christ, Cadnam, did you smoke?!’

Suzanne, previously a point of concern, had become the devil incarnate overnight. (Rosie, in contrast, was the saint who’d alerted them to the truth.) Never mind that I’d gone with her quite happily – albeit with a blinkered idea of where we were going and how long it would take – and had lied to them off my own back.

‘That’s it now,’ Dad said. ‘You can’t be friends with her any more. You’re grounded for the foreseeable future anyway, but in either case you just can’t see her again. She’s not welcome here, and you’re not allowed to visit her; we’ll speak to Sarah to make sure.’

He said this with all the gravitas of a person who’d cultivated their friendships before the Internet.

‘And we’re taking away your phone,’ Mum added, as if she’d read my mind. ‘And your laptop.’ When my face dropped in horror, she shook her head. ‘This behaviour isn’t acceptable, Caddy. We expect so much more than this, especially this year, when you’ve got your exams coming up. These are your consequences.’

As bad as it all was, it wasn’t the worst thing. When they were finished shouting at me, I went upstairs and knocked softly on Tarin’s door before pushing it open and poking my head into the room. ‘Am I allowed in?’

She was sitting on her bedroom floor, surrounded by coloured bits of paper, a book open in front of her. Origami was her hobby of the moment, a colourful distraction.

‘Sure,’ she said, but she didn’t look up and her voice was flat.

I crept into the room and stepped carefully over her creations, taking a seat on her bed. ‘Um,’ I said, intelligently, ‘I’m really sorry.’

‘Thanks, but I don’t think it’s me you need to say that to,’ Tarin replied. She still wasn’t looking at me, her eyes focused on the yellow paper she was holding. Her fingers moved carefully, folding and turning.

‘I feel like it is,’ I said.

‘I’m on the list, yeah,’ Tarin said. ‘Me and Mum, Dad, Rosie, Sarah, Brian.’ I wondered how she knew about Brian. ‘And Suzanne too.’ She shook her head, almost to herself. ‘That little fucked-up friend of yours. She probably thinks she’s hit the jackpot with a friend like you, the poor kid.’

My heart twisted. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘You’re steady. And you’re nice. You won’t understand what that means because you’ve never needed it yourself. You don’t realize how important it is.’ With one hand Tarin lifted the bird she’d made into the air so its sharp-cornered wings caught the light. It made me think of the dove on Suzanne’s necklace, always around her neck. ‘And so you think you’re being a good friend by going along with her and not saying, “Stop, you’re hurting yourself.”’

‘You don’t even know her.’

‘No, but I know what it’s like to feel like you’ve lost control of your life. And I know you. Helping someone who feels like that isn’t in saying yes, Caddy. It’s in saying no.’

Part of me understood what she meant, but the other part, the obstinate part, was sure she was wrong. If I had said no, what difference would it have made? Suzanne would surely have gone to Reading with or without me. It was hardly like she needed my permission or approval to do anything.