And there was something else. For someone as extroverted and chatty as Suzanne, she was surprisingly reticent when it came to talking about herself. Or, more accurately, herself pre-Brighton. I still had no idea why she’d even moved here. Not that I was expecting her to offer this information to me – still a relative stranger – but I couldn’t even get it second-hand, because Rosie didn’t know either.
I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was off, even though Rosie claimed not to care. Why did Suzanne live with her aunt, and why did she never mention the rest of her family? If the subject came up she’d answer whatever question it was so casually it was easy to miss – ‘Siblings? Yeah, a brother, he’s twenty.’ – and then change the subject or make a joke. It always took me at least a minute to catch up with what she’d just said, and by then it was too late to go back. It was the artful way she did this, so clearly practised and finely tuned, that really got to me. She had to be hiding something big, and what could be so bad that she couldn’t just tell us what it was?
Half-term seemed to come out of nowhere, like always. My two-week holiday felt long overdue, but I was still impatient for the first week to pass, so I could be joined by my non-private-school friends. The extra week off was definitely a perk, but sometimes I felt, like with so many perks of the private-school life, that it was wasted on me.
Towards the end of the first week of freedom I went to a party at Luca Michaelson’s house. He was one of the St Martin’s private-school boys everyone knew, and his parties were the stuff of adolescent legend. I’d never been to one, mainly because I’d never been invited, but this time Kesh practically forced me into a dress and dragged me along with her, Allison and Mishka. The really shocking thing in all of this was that I had a good time. I drank vodka and Coke and knocked back shots when they were handed to me. I kissed a skinny boy called Jonny who tasted of cigarettes but had told me I was pretty. I sat in the bathroom with Mishka while she sobbed about her ex and held back her hair when she threw up. I thought, in one of those moments of drunken clarity, Maybe I’m good enough by myself.
In the morning, waking up on Luca’s living-room floor with Kesh using my legs as a pillow, I tried to hang on to this feeling. I imagined cutting myself loose from Rosie, leaving her with Suzanne. I could add the prefix ‘best’ to my friendship with Mishka and Kesh, and even Allison. It would be easy.
But then I looked at my phone.
22.09: Hope your having a gd time! Take a pic so I can see the dress. Miss you x
22.11: Dont get toooo drunk, OK?
23.49: You just called me and hung up. Are you OK? Call me back plz xx
23.56: Cads? Pick up your phone xxxx
00.03: I never knew how hiliarous you are when your drunk OMG. You should get like this every weekend. CALL ME when you wake up so I can tell you all the stupid things you said. Love you to pieces, you drunkard.
I was so busy smiling at these texts that it took me a moment to realize there was another message from someone else waiting for me. I clicked on it, expecting Tarin, and saw Suzanne’s name. For a moment I was confused, and then realized that her message was a reply to one from me.
‘Shit,’ I whispered out loud. A big part of me wanted to delete both messages without even looking at them.
23.46: Why do you have to be soooo perfect?
I felt a flush of pure embarrassment so acute I actually lifted a hand and tugged at my hair. Oh God. I tried to tell myself it could have been worse. Somehow.
23.59: Um. Thanks? :/
I felt a little sick, and not just because I was hungover. My fingers hovered over the keypad, trying to figure out how to respond. I couldn’t just ignore it surely, much as I wanted to.
08.37: Oh God. I was drunk! I’m sorry, don’t even know what I was talking about.
Her reply didn’t come through for another couple of hours, when I was sitting in McDonald’s with Mishka and Kesh. I had to force myself to look.
10.59: Haha, no worries. One day you’ll get why I laughed so much when I saw it. Hope you’re not too hungover! See you later x
So she got to be magnanimous and mysterious, and I was the drunken embarrassment. Great. I pushed my phone back into my bag without replying and took a sip of milkshake, trying to bring back the feeling I’d had from the night before, that sense of possibility in myself. It didn’t work.
What I always thought of as the ‘real’ half-term – that is, the week that Rosie was also off school – was well underway when I stayed over at Rosie’s house. It was the Tuesday night, and it was just the two of us. Suzanne planned to meet us the following day, with some of their other friends from school.