Four messages, six missed calls and an appeal to Rosie (‘Suze said to tell you to call her. Love Roz x’) later, around the time I started getting ready for bed, Suzanne gave up. My phone finally went quiet, the battery depleted. I plugged it in to charge on top of my bedside table and went to sleep.
I was startled awake a couple of hours later by the phone springing to life, buzzing in increments across the table towards my head. Blearily I reached for it, blinking against the sudden light. Suzanne. At 1.37 a.m.
I was half asleep and not entirely convinced I was really awake, so I answered it. ‘Uh, hello?’
‘Oh my God, I’m so glad you woke up. I thought – literally just now, and it would have been too late – that maybe your phone was on silent.’
‘What are you talking about? Why are you phoning me?’ My voice was croaky with sleep. Hers, in contrast, was bright and perky, like it was the middle of the day.
‘I’m outside, come to the window, I’m by your window.’ She said all this in a rush.
‘You’re outside?’ I repeated dumbly. I sat up in bed but made no move towards the window.
‘Yep.’
‘Why are you outside?’
‘You wouldn’t answer your phone.’
‘Do you know what time it is?’
‘Of course. I would have come earlier, but I had to wait, to make sure Sarah was asleep. So she wouldn’t hear me leave. Are you at the window? I can’t see you.’
I went to the window. When she saw me, Suzanne, who was standing in the garden like it was completely normal, waved. Over the phone she said, ‘Hi! Can you come out?’
‘Are you being serious right now? Is this actually happening?’
‘Yes, come out so we can talk.’
‘You are an actual headcase. Did you know that? It’s nearly 2 a.m. I am not coming out to talk to you.’
‘Wow, you’re much more assertive at this time of night. Come on, please? I really need to talk to you. And I brought you cookies.’ She held up a box and waggled it in the air.
‘I am hanging up on you now.’
‘OK, fine, but only if that means you’re coming out. I’ll wait.’ She hung up immediately, before I could, and then sat right down on the grass, clearly indicating her commitment to hunkering down and waiting for me.
I lay back down and tried to forget about her, but it was a wasted exercise. Less than three minutes after she hung up, I’d thrown a coat over my pyjamas and was crawling out of my bedroom window, heart pounding, trying to remember how she’d climbed up and over the garage last time she’d visited.
When she saw me coming, Suzanne leaped up and came over to the garage, leaving the box on the grass.
‘There’s a ledge here,’ she said, her voice low, pointing. ‘And the drainpipe is just to the left of where you are now. Climb down facing forward and try and get one foot on the ledge and your hand on the drainpipe.’
Needless to say, I missed the ledge entirely, and ended up in an ungraceful heap on the concrete.
‘You OK?’ She reached out an arm to help me up.
‘I need a cookie,’ I said, rubbing my scraped arm.
‘You can have all the cookies,’ Suzanne said, half laughing with what sounded like nervous relief. ‘I thought you wouldn’t come down.’
‘I don’t know why I have,’ I replied honestly.
‘Because you’re a good person and a good friend and you’re giving me a chance to apologize in person?’ Suzanne suggested hopefully. Before I could respond, she darted away from me, collecting the box of cookies from where she’d left them on the grass. ‘Where shall we go?’ she asked in a half-whisper over her shoulder. ‘Beach?’
‘Go?’ I repeated, watching her return to me, tiptoeing over the grass in what looked like ballet pumps. She was wearing leggings and an oversized shirt, a woolly grey hat the only sign that she’d considered the February temperature. She had to be freezing, but you’d never have known.
‘If we talk here, your parents might hear us,’ Suzanne explained patiently. ‘We should go somewhere else.’ She raised both her eyebrows expectantly at me and, when I didn’t speak, turned on the spot and began walking towards the road. Despite myself, I followed.
We walked for a few minutes in silence, her hugging her chest and me trying to convince myself I was really awake. This was not the kind of thing that happened to me.
Eventually Suzanne came to a stop at the end of the road running parallel to mine. She sat down on a stone wall and, after a moment’s hesitation, I did the same. She opened the lid of the box and offered it to me. I took a cookie and bit into it: soft, chocolatey goodness. It almost made up for everything.
‘I’m sorry for what I said,’ Suzanne said as I chewed. She was looking down at the floor, playing with the sleeves of her shirt.
I swallowed. ‘You came all the way here just to say that?’
She looked at me. ‘Of course.’
‘But it’s the middle of the night,’ I said slowly, as if speaking to a child. ‘Couldn’t it wait?’
‘No.’ Suzanne picked up a cookie and nibbled at the edges. ‘I was so worried you’d had it with me and that you’d never speak to me again. That you’d given up on me.’
‘Obviously I haven’t given up on you. Don’t be stupid.’