Beautiful Broken Things(Beautiful Broken Things #1)(88)

‘Is it like a breakdown?’ I asked my mother.

‘We don’t really say breakdown any more,’ she said.

I took this to mean yes.

One week after the overdose, Suzanne was transferred to an in-patient CAMHS unit in Hampshire called Gwillim House, a specialist facility for teenagers with serious mental-health problems. It was the best thing for her, I was told, and way overdue. A safe environment with trained professionals and no expectations of her except that she could be helped. As much as I knew this was true, and as glad as I was that it was finally happening, it made me feel strange to think of Suzanne being labelled as having ‘serious mental-health problems’. Technically I knew it was correct, but it wasn’t her. The four words seemed so scary and huge, painting the image I had of my friend in colours I didn’t recognize or understand.

‘Yeah, it’s almost like having mental-health problems doesn’t actually change your personality or something,’ Tarin said sarcastically when I tried to talk about it with her. ‘Ye gads! A clinical diagnosis! She is an entirely different person now.’

‘That’s not very helpful, Tarin,’ Mum said drily.

‘Try me tomorrow,’ Tarin said. ‘I’ll probably have changed my mind by then, what with being bipolar and everything.’

‘All right, I get it,’ I said, rolling my eyes. ‘Stereotypes are bad. Mental health is complicated. You can stop now.’

I had my own physical recovery to deal with, which at the very least was a useful distraction from worrying about Suzanne’s emotional one. I was out of school for two weeks after the accident, resting my head and learning how to navigate my surroundings with two of my four limbs out of action. By the time I returned to Esther’s and something like normality, I felt like a different girl than the one who had last walked through the school gates. No one noticed.

For the next few weeks I waited to hear from Suzanne, convinced at first that it would just be a matter of days and then revising that estimate as time went on. But before I knew it April had turned into May and brought with it exams. Having been all but bed-bound for so many weeks, I’d had plenty of time to revise and had also developed a healthy dose of perspective. I went into my exams with a new kind of confidence I’d never before experienced; I knew I would do well, but if I didn’t, that was fine too.

‘That’s all right for you, Miss Private School,’ Rosie said over the phone, our primary method of contact during her self-enforced revision exile. ‘Want to swap brains for a while?’

The day after my last exam, as well timed as if it had been planned, I finally heard from Suzanne. It had been seven weeks since I’d last seen her, and I’d started to forget what her voice sounded like. She’d sent me an email, so brief I actually tried scrolling down, expecting more words to appear below her name. Hi Caddy, it read, as if we were mere acquaintances. I know it’s been ages but . . . hello! Hope all’s good with you. Are you free some time soon to come and visit? There’s some stuff I want to talk to you about. Sarah knows the visiting hours so just give her a call to arrange. Love, Suze.

It didn’t seem like much after so long apart, but I understood. After seven weeks, there was too much to say or nothing at all. The most important thing was that – finally – I was going to see her again. I emailed back immediately, using far too many exclamation marks in my enthusiasm, then called Sarah. I arranged to visit Suzanne at Gwillim House that coming Saturday.

I could have been nervous, but I wasn’t. In the weeks Suzanne had been away I’d had plenty of time to worry and overthink every aspect of our friendship and what it would be like when we finally saw each other again. Now it was actually going to happen, I was just excited. More than anything else, I really missed her.

‘You should come too,’ I said to Rosie on the Thursday. She’d finished her exams almost an entire week before me and had spent the interim time applying for summer jobs. The two of us were sprawled across her bed with a bag of tortilla chips between us and Frank Turner on Spotify.

‘Not this time,’ Rosie said easily. ‘I think this kind of thing is better one on one. Don’t want to crowd her, right? Hey, do you think I’d get to eat a lot of doughnuts if I got a job at the pier?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘And you’d probably get sick of them in about a day.’

In Suzanne’s absence, without discussion or articulation, Rosie and I had found our rhythm again. Something had changed between us, there was no doubt about that, but it felt like a change that was positive. It was as if Suzanne had wedged herself in between us, squeezing in to create her own little niche in our twosome, and when she’d gone she’d left that space empty. The space felt like breathing room.

‘I don’t think it’s physically possible to get sick of doughnuts,’ Rosie replied, her fingers flying over her keyboard. ‘I’m going to go for it.’

‘You do that,’ I said. ‘But seriously. Suze. Gwillim House. Is it OK that I’m going without you? Wouldn’t two of us be better?’

‘I think if she thought it was better, she’d have asked us both,’ Rosie said. She wasn’t looking at me, her eyes focused on her laptop screen. ‘And she hasn’t, and that’s fine. It’s great that you’re going though.’

‘I’m going to take presents,’ I said. ‘What should I take?’