A small smile had lifted Suzanne’s face. ‘That sounds nice.’
‘Of course it sounds nice,’ Rosie said. ‘It’ll be great. Quiet but celebratory. With presents.’ She looked pleased with herself. ‘Are you in?’
‘I’m in,’ Suzanne confirmed. She took a spoonful of macaron gloop. ‘I can’t believe how good this tastes. Why do people even bother with proper macarons when you could just do this?’ She licked a spot of whipped cream off her wrist. ‘You know, this is what I want the rest of my life to be like.’ She looked happy and relaxed, maybe more so than I’d ever seen her. ‘Baking with my friends.’ She grinned at us both.
‘I am definitely on board with that,’ Rosie said.
‘What do you think, Cads?’ Suzanne asked me. ‘A new tradition?’
The macaron pieces in the cream were sweet and chewy and perfect.
‘A new tradition,’ I confirmed.
As soon as I got home from school the Friday before Suzanne’s birthday I went straight to my room to pack my stuff for the weekend, something I’d been too lazy to do the night before, when I’d actually had time.
I was just flicking through my T-shirts, trying to find the one that featured Moomintroll, when I heard the phone ring. As it was the landline, I hoped immediately it was Rosie, and strained to hear Mum calling my name. When no shout came, I turned in slight disappointment back to my clothes. A few minutes later, just when I was pulling the Moomintroll shirt over my head, Mum poked her head in. ‘Can I come in?’
‘Sure,’ I said, pulling my hair out from under the T-shirt.
‘That was Suzanne’s aunt on the phone,’ Mum said, her voice cautious and measured. She let out a long sigh and then said, ‘There’s not going to be a birthday weekend. It’s been called off.’
My first thought was that Suzanne had done something wrong, that she and Sarah had fought over something and Suzanne had lost. My second, far more ridiculous and yet right on the heels of the first, was that it was just me that had been uninvited, that Rosie would still be there. ‘Why not?’
Mum didn’t say anything for what felt like a long time. She looked like she was thinking hard. Finally she said slowly, ‘Suzanne’s finding things difficult at the moment, and she’s just not in the right frame of mind for celebration. Does that make sense?’
Not even a little.
‘What do you mean, difficult?’
Another silence. ‘The word Sarah used was “sad”. She’s very sad, overwhelmingly so.’
‘You mean like depressed?’ None of this made sense. I’d seen Suzanne so recently; in fact we’d all three met up in Starbucks earlier that week, and she’d seemed fine. And Rosie hadn’t mentioned anything about her being sad at school.
‘I don’t think it’s like that. I think it’s just the case that a weekend of joviality is too much to expect right now.’ It was just like my mother to use the word ‘joviality’ in a sentence. Why couldn’t she just say fun, like a normal person?
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?’