‘She cheated on your dad?’
Suzanne pushed the Scotch egg into her mouth, whole, then chewed slowly. Swallowing, she said, ‘Yeah. Didn’t I tell you that he’s actually my stepdad?’
‘Well, yeah, but I guess I didn’t—’
‘It was just once,’ Suzanne said, interrupting me. ‘Apparently.’
I had absolutely no idea what to say to this.
‘Hence –’ Suzanne spread her arms, gesturing to herself, then posing momentarily like a blonde, female Freddie Mercury – ‘my existence.’
‘Did you always know?’ I asked stupidly.
She returned her arms to her sides. ‘Nope. Found out when I was fourteen. That was a fun revelation.’ She rolled her eyes, determinedly unbothered. ‘My dad had known for years. I mean, my stepdad.’ Seeing my face, she shrugged again. ‘My family is ten levels of fucked up.’
I thought of my parents, boring and ordinary, bickering about loading the dishwasher. ‘How did you find out?’
A shadow passed over her face. ‘I don’t really want to talk about this.’ As if someone else had brought it up. ‘Come on,’ she said, chancing a small smile. ‘Want to see my room?’
I got the sense that she wanted to show me more than I actually wanted to see it, so I followed her despite my reluctance when she headed up the stairs, tapping the banister as she went. She turned to walk down a hallway, pointing at a closed door to her right. ‘That’s Brian’s room,’ she said as we passed. ‘And that’s my parents’. And . . . here’s mine.’ She pushed the door and walked in.
For an awful moment I thought we’d enter to find the room stripped of any trace of her, but it was unmistakably the room of a teenage girl, albeit one who didn’t live there any more. The bed was made, there were still books on the shelves. But there was one glaring difference.
‘It’s so bare,’ I said, surprised by how thrown I felt by it. ‘No posters or anything?’ I thought of her jumbled walls in Brighton, overflowing with life.
‘My dad hates clutter,’ Suzanne said, standing in the middle of the room and gazing up at the walls. ‘Like, really. He’s a neat freak.’
‘A poster or two is hardly clutter,’ I said.
‘In this house,’ Suzanne said, ‘it’s not worth it.’ Her phone started ringing in her pocket and she pulled it out, her face lighting up when she saw the name on screen. She answered, turning slightly away from me. ‘Hi!’ Her voice was suddenly bright and animated. ‘Oh my God. You’ll never guess where I am! Reading!’ She paused, and I heard the excited babble, tinny through the phone. ‘Yeah! I’m literally standing in my bedroom.’ She let out a laugh. ‘I know! They’re not here. I’m here with my friend.’ She glanced back to beam at me.
I grinned back at her, proud to be there, proud to be her friend. I let her carry on talking as I wandered over to a shelf in the corner of the room that housed a collection of ornaments, similar to one I’d had when I was younger, though mine had been mainly woodland animals and hers seemed to be fairies and other faintly ethereal winged creatures. The light had cast an odd shadow on what could have been an angel, and I tilted my head to get a closer look. A slight but defined line separated the folded hands of the angel from its arms. I frowned, taking in more of the figurines, seeing that at least half of the collection had their own markings. Some were cracked, others were missing wingtips, a few showed scars where they had been stuck back together.
‘Cool, huh?’ Suzanne said, suddenly at my side. ‘I loved collecting this kind of thing when I was, like, ten or something.’
‘They’re all broken.’ I said.
She grinned at me, like she’d expected me to say that. ‘What? Are they?’
‘I don’t get it.’ I said.
‘They’re fixed,’ she corrected me. ‘They were broken, but now they’re repaired. And it didn’t seem right to only keep the still-pretty ones, so I had to keep the broken ones too. They keep each other company.’ She looked pleased. ‘Besides, you can only tell if you look properly close.’
‘How did they get broken in the first place?’
‘Dad. Of course.’ She didn’t elaborate, to my guilty relief.
I had a sudden vision of a younger Suzanne bent over a pile of broken china, gluing the pieces back together. My heart ached in sympathy. ‘So you put them all back together again?’
‘No, it wasn’t me.’ Suzanne hesitated, then sighed. ‘Dad did it. I was staying at a friend’s house one night, and when I came back he’d done it. I went to my room and . . . well, there they were. That might be more why I never threw them out.’
I felt a confused sadness crinkle my forehead. ‘Why would he do that?’
‘Because sometimes he felt bad.’ Her face had lost its sparkle. ‘Sometimes.’
There was so much I would never know, let alone understand. A violent dad who repaired damaged fairy ornaments. A broken girl who kept them on display.