Suzanne rested her chin on her knees. ‘That’s great.’
I waited for her to say more, as she would have done before, but she just smiled a little at me, quiet. I felt a wave of nervous sadness I didn’t quite understand, remembering how she’d lifted the umbrella above her head and danced around on a roof, so dauntless and vibrant and bright. It was like I was remembering a different person entirely. I had never really been able to tell where the front ended and she began. Now that front was gone, and I wasn’t sure exactly who was left.
‘Maybe by the time you come home I’ll be fine,’ I said hopefully. At these words, her expression faltered slightly, so I added, ‘Do you know when that will be?’ She didn’t reply, chewing her lip between her teeth. ‘We should plan something,’ I said, trying to smile. ‘Me being mobile, you coming home.’ She was still silent, so I picked up the bag I’d set on the floor and put it in front of her. ‘Here, I brought you stuff.’
‘Caddy.’ Suzanne opened her mouth, then closed it again slowly. I saw her teeth catch a hold of her tongue. ‘Caddy, I . . .’
There was something in her voice that stopped my breath.
‘This isn’t why I asked you to come here,’ Suzanne said, her voice shaky. She put her hands on the top of the bag without even looking inside it. ‘God, I’m sorry.’ I watched her face crease as she lifted her sleeve to her eyes. ‘I’m so sorry, Caddy.’
‘Stop it,’ I said, my sudden, all-encompassing anxiety fraying my voice. ‘At least tell me why you need to be sorry before you say it.’
‘I’m not coming home,’ she said. ’I’m not going to come back to Brighton.’ Her eyes were steady on me, the handles of the bag twisted around her fingers. ‘I asked you to come here so I could tell you that. Not for presents, or anything like that. To say . . .’ she hesitated. ‘To say goodbye properly. Obviously I’m going to be here for a while, but even after I leave, I won’t go back to Sarah’s.’
Something had stuck in my throat. I tried to swallow. ‘Why not?’
‘I’m going to go into foster care,’ she said carefully, like she was weighing out every word. ‘There are, like, specialist foster carers for teenagers like me, who have been in places like this but don’t have families to go home to.’ She shrugged a little, but I could see the crease of pain on her forehead. ‘There’s a couple in Southampton who are going to take me. I’ve met them. They’re nice.’
‘Southampton?’ I repeated, understanding starting to seep in. Southampton was a two-hour drive from Brighton. ‘But that’s . . . that’s miles away.’
‘I know,’ she said, ‘but it’s good. They’ve taken in girls from Gwillim before, so they’ll know what they’re doing with me. Way more than Sarah did anyway. Nuru, one of my key workers, says she thinks they’ll be good for me. They—’
‘But why Southampton?’ I interrupted without thinking, seizing a glimmer of hope. ‘Don’t they have those kinds of foster carers in Brighton?’ I had no idea how this kind of thing worked, but I ploughed on anyway. ‘Even if you don’t live with Sarah any more, you can still come—’
‘No.’ She was shaking her head. ‘No, you don’t get it. I don’t want to go back to Brighton. Sarah was ready to give it another go, but not going back is my choice. I need a clean break, away. I need to start again.’
The words died in my throat. ‘Oh.’ A hollowness was starting to work its way from my stomach to my chest. ‘I . . . Oh.’
The tears that had been gathering in Suzanne’s eyes finally spilled. ‘I’m sorry, Cads. I know how that sounds. It’s not . . . it’s not you, or anything. You and Roz are the reasons I would want to go back, but deep down I know I need to do this. I need to try again, by myself, and I need to do that somewhere new, where there isn’t someone I’m already depending on. I use people, Caddy. I lean on them, way too much. And then I get so panicked that I’ll lose them that I make myself be what I think they want. I did it with you. I so wanted to be that person you thought I was. I tried so hard.’ Her voice caught and hitched, and she pressed her sleeve to her mouth, like she was trying to hold something in.