She looked blank. ‘Why would you be starting anything? It’s just Facebook. Then you can chat. Then maybe meet him at the beach or something, if you like each other.’
Just the words were making my heartrate jack up. ‘Yeah, maybe.’
‘I thought you wanted a boyfriend?’ She nudged me again with her foot. ‘Wasn’t that one of your goals or something?’
Those stupid goals. I wished I’d never mentioned them to anyone. ‘I guess.’
She bounced up out of her seat and sat next to me instead. ‘He’d be seriously lucky to have a chance with you.’
‘OK, stop it now.’
‘What can I do to help? Want me to talk to him?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Just leave it, it’s fine.’ I could tell that she was about to speak again, so I quickly asked, ‘What are we going to do when we get to Reading?’
‘Not make plans,’ Suzanne replied, arching an eyebrow pointedly. She grinned. ‘Think you can handle that?’
12.01: What is your actual problem? Are you saying I can’t be friends with both of you?
12.06: Would that work?
12.15: No.
12.18: Fine. I’m saying when this fuck up catches up with you don’t come crying to me.
12:19: NOTED.
We got to Reading sometime after lunch, Suzanne as happy as I’d ever seen her, spinning round to face me as we walked out of the station. ‘Welcome to Reading! Birthplace of Kate Winslet, dontcha know.’ She beamed at me. ‘OK, so there’s no palace. But who really needs a palace?’
For the next couple of hours I let her play tour guide, the two of us meandering around the streets together. She told me stories about the seven years she’d spent living there, careful to leave out references to her parents but full of anecdotes about her friends and her brother. The confidence that came with being in a place you’d grown up in sat comfortably on her shoulders.
‘This is my old street,’ she said, turning a corner.
‘Oh,’ I said, surprised. I’d assumed we’d steer clear of her parents’ house.
‘It’s OK,’ she said, reading my mind. ‘They’re not here. It’s their anniversary weekend, and they always go away for it.’
‘What a lucky coincidence,’ I said.
She looked at me. ‘Sarcasm?’
‘Never.’ At least the timing of her ‘spontaneous’ trip made more sense.
Suzanne guided me around the back of the house into the garden, heading straight for a row of tomato plants along the right side fencing. I watched her kneel down and lift one of the pots, scrabbling with her fingers until she found what she was looking for. She sat back on her ankles, grinning at me, holding a key into the air.
‘It’s good you knew that was there,’ I said, even though I wasn’t actually sure whether it was good or not.
‘I lived here for seven years,’ she replied, heading for the back door. ‘Some things don’t change.’
The house was quiet and still. I paused by the back door, watching Suzanne walk into the kitchen and put her bag on the table like she still called this place home.
‘Um. We’re just stopping by, right?’ I asked.
‘Sure,’ she said, her back to me. ‘I’ll show you around first though, right?’ She walked around the kitchen, running her fingers along the counters. Her expression was unreadable. ‘It’s weird,’ she said suddenly. ‘I thought it might look different. But it’s just the same as when I lived here. I guess it didn’t all revolve around me after all.’ She attempted an ironic smile, but it was a little shaky. She glanced at me. ‘And you here – it’s like two worlds colliding.’
‘In a good way?’
I expected her to break into a proper smile, but she paused thoughtfully, her eyes falling on a calendar pinned to a cork board by the door. ‘Look,’ she said, even though I was on the other side of the room. ‘They’re in Edinburgh.’
‘Do you have family there?’
‘No. It’s where they went to uni. That’s how they met.’
A new titbit. ‘What’s your mum like?’ I asked.
Suzanne paused, considering. This was one of my favourite things about her, I realized. How she always thought about my questions before answering, like they mattered to her. ‘Sad,’ she said finally. ‘Kind of . . . small.’
‘Oh.’ It seemed like a strange way to describe your mother.
‘She stopped working a long time ago, and she spends most of her time in the house,’ Suzanne explained. ‘It always felt a bit like she didn’t really know what to do with us. Me and Brian, I mean. My dad was the only person who could really bring her to life.’
‘Did she ever try to stop him hurting you?’ It seemed safe, somehow, to ask the question in this house.
Suzanne shook her head. ‘It’s hard to explain, but it was always just something that happened. Like part of our family.’
‘That’s horrible.’
‘Yeah. Lots of things are horrible.’ She shrugged, like this was a normal thing to say, then turned away from me. Her fingers closed around the handle of the fridge, pulling it open to look inside. ‘Now I’m older, I think I get it. I think she felt guilty. About cheating on my dad, you know.’ She closed the door, holding what looked like a mini Scotch egg.