‘An Icelandic leprechaun?’
‘Of course. They’re the best kind.’ I waited for a moment. ‘Do you want another one?’
‘Yes. Please.’
‘Last year, during the Brighton marathon, my uncle tripped and twisted his ankle three miles from the end. So another guy, who was running for Mind, I think, gave him a piggyback the whole rest of the way, so he’d still finish and get the full money for the charity. He was, like, a total stranger.’
I heard a smile in her voice. ‘That’s a nice story.’
‘Hey, Zannie,’ Brian said. His voice was gentle. ‘You want to pick some music?’ He reached across her and pulled an iPod from the glove compartment. She took it from him and began scrolling through it. He squeezed her shoulder, solid and steady, before returning his shaking hand to the wheel.
We drove most of the way home without talking after that, listening to an album called August and Everything After twice through. I’d never heard any of the songs before, but Suzanne and Brian clearly had a lot, because at random intervals they would both sing along to a single sentence, or even just a word, making me jump each time. It was the kind of music where even the happy songs felt sad. Or that could just have been my mood.
By the time we pulled off the motorway and began winding through the familiar Brighton streets, Brian and Suzanne were talking comfortably, not quite as if the argument hadn’t happened but more like they’d consciously left it behind. It occurred to me that being able to smile so soon after crying was something you learned.
‘So how much trouble are you going to be in, Caddy?’ Brian asked, throwing me a knowing smile as he slowed for a red light.
‘Don’t say that,’ Suzanne said. ‘You’ll make me feel bad.’
‘You should feel bad,’ I teased. ‘We’re not all as used to it as you.’
She turned in her seat slightly to grin at me. ‘Am I a Bad Influence?’ she asked, waving her fingers and making a face of exaggerated fear.
‘The very worst,’ I said, laughing more with relief than anything else.
When Brian pulled up outside my house, Suzanne unbuckled herself and got out of the car, coming to join me on the pavement. She reached out her arms for a hug. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, surprising me.
‘What for?’ I asked, hugging her.
She laughed into my ear. ‘You want a list?’ I moved to end the hug, but her arms tightened around me, just for a few seconds longer. Her hair smelled like cigarettes and last night’s party and Suze. ‘Good luck.’ She released me, lifting her hand in her favoured mock salute before heading back to the car.
I threw a wave over my shoulder as they drove away and then turned back to my house, taking a second to just look at it. Was I caught or not? I had no way of knowing. It was Schrodinger’s house. I was bad Caddy and good Caddy, all at once. I curled my fingers around my keys and walked towards the door, bracing myself for the answer.
It was bad.
Maybe the worst thing about it, at least for me, was how close I’d come to getting away with it. My parents had no reason to question my late-night decision to stay at Rosie’s house, and even my dishevelled, same-clothes-as-yesterday appearance could have been written off as the harmless Saturday-night fun of a sixteen-year-old. What got me caught was the fact that I had a great sister who loved me. It’s funny how the world works.
Tarin, innocently helpful, had called Rosie not long after I sent my last text, trying to get a hold of me to tell me that she was heading into town to see a friend and did I want her to stop by Rosie’s house with my phone charger and a change of clothes? Rosie, seeing her opportunity, told her I wasn’t there and that I was, in fact, with Suzanne somewhere that wasn’t Brighton.
‘It’s not even that you did something so reckless and irresponsible,’ Mum said, spitting nails. ‘It’s that you lied to us.’
Except it clearly was a lot about me doing something so reckless and irresponsible. And also my ‘clear lack of respect’, my ‘failure to consider the consequences’ and ‘Jesus Christ, Cadnam, did you smoke?!’
Suzanne, previously a point of concern, had become the devil incarnate overnight. (Rosie, in contrast, was the saint who’d alerted them to the truth.) Never mind that I’d gone with her quite happily – albeit with a blinkered idea of where we were going and how long it would take – and had lied to them off my own back.
‘That’s it now,’ Dad said. ‘You can’t be friends with her any more. You’re grounded for the foreseeable future anyway, but in either case you just can’t see her again. She’s not welcome here, and you’re not allowed to visit her; we’ll speak to Sarah to make sure.’