She nodded. ‘Your house is really nice.’
‘Thanks,’ I said, as if it was something I had any control over. I stepped into the house and she followed me, moving aside so I could close the door.
Rosie reappeared in the doorway to the kitchen, holding three red cans. ‘You drink Coke, right?’ she said to Suzanne, waving one at her.
Suzanne glanced at me, as if wondering if she should ask permission.
‘Don’t mind her,’ I said, taking one of the cans for myself and starting up the stairs. ‘She thinks this is her house too.’
‘It basically is.’ Rosie sounded far more cheerful than she usually did after her first week back at school. By this point the previous year, she’d collapsed on my living-room sofa and refused to move.
In my room, Rosie pulled over my beanbag chair and sank into it, for some reason choosing not to take her usual spot beside me on my bed. Suzanne sat down next to her, her eyes flitting around. I saw her glance land on my battered poster from the old Disney film The Rescuers – a present from Tarin several years ago as a nod to a treasured childhood joke – and a bemused smile skittered across her face.
I tried to study her surreptitiously, this possible pretender to my best-friend throne, who was so not who I’d expected from Rosie describing her over the phone.
This was probably because, for all her talking over the last few days – and there had been a lot – she’d neglected to mention what for me was the most noteworthy thing: Suzanne was gorgeous. Not just pretty, or cute, or any other standard word, but full-on stunning. It wasn’t just the blonde hair – far more natural looking than mine, to the point where it might even be natural – or the blue eyes, or even the fact that she was model slim. It was also her make-up and even the way she carried herself. I felt daunted by her, painfully aware of my unbrushed hair and my tendency to slouch, not to mention my hideous caricature of a school uniform. No wonder Rosie had described her as so confident. How could she not be, when she looked like that?
‘So how do you like Brighton so far?’ I asked, choosing the easiest question to start with and hoping it would be enough to fulfil my duty as friend of a friend.
‘It’s great,’ Suzanne said, looking back at me and smiling. ‘I was saying to Roz, you’re both so lucky to have grown up here.’
I registered the use of ‘Roz’ and bit down on the inside of my lip to stop myself making a face.
‘I told her it’s overrated,’ Rosie said.
‘You’ve got a beach!’ Suzanne replied with a laugh.
‘A pebble beach!’
‘There are worse places to grow up,’ I said. ‘You’re from Reading, right?’
Suzanne raised her hand and wiggled it from side to side. ‘Sort of. From when I was eight.’ Anticipating my next question, she added, ‘I was born in Manchester.’
That explained the not-Southern tinge to her accent.
‘So how come you moved here?’ I asked. ‘Was it, like, a job thing?’
Her brow crinkled in confusion.
‘I mean, did your parents get a new job or something?’ I elaborated.
‘Oh.’ She looked uncomfortable. ‘Actually it’s my aunt that I live with.’
‘Oh,’ I said, not sure what to say next, apart from the obvious. I glanced at Rosie to see if this was news to her. Her unconcerned expression suggested not.
Another silence. I waited, hoping she’d reveal a bit more, but she said nothing. Rosie, apparently enjoying watching the two of us fumble for conversation, raised her eyebrows at me. I could see the ghost of a grin on her face.
‘What does your aunt do?’ I asked finally.
‘She’s a chef,’ Suzanne said, brightening. ‘She owns one of the cafes on Queen’s Road. Muddles?’
‘Oh yeah, I know it.’ I’d walked past it once with my parents and my mother had commented that Muddles was a stupid name for a cafe. Dad, in a jaunty mood, had said it was a cosy name. We hadn’t gone in.
‘What do your parents do?’ Suzanne asked me.
‘My dad’s a doctor,’ I said, ‘a consultant at the hospital. My mum’s a communications manager for the Samaritans.’
Her eyebrows lifted, as people’s tended to do when I mentioned my parents’ respective careers. People assumed a lot when they heard ‘doctor’ or ‘the Samaritans’. Words like ‘saint’ and ‘hero’ and ‘selfless’ and ‘if only everyone was like them’ tended to crop up.
The truth was more along the lines of a distracted and rarely glimpsed father and a world-weary, seen-it-all-before mother. From the evidence, they were great at their jobs. But that didn’t necessarily make them golden human beings.
‘What kind of consultant is your dad?’ Suzanne asked, the kind of question people asked when they either couldn’t think of anything else to say or just wanted to be polite.
‘A & E,’ I said.
She looked instantly impressed. ‘Wow.’
‘It’s not as interesting as it sounds,’ I said.