She took a deep breath, shaky and jagged. ‘If I go back, I’m scared nothing will change. What if I just fall back into the same stupid habits, make the same mistakes? Even if it’s not straight away, give it a few weeks and I’m crawling out of the window again. Going to you when I want to feel good, Dylan when I want to feel bad. It’s what I do, and it’s so destructive, and so painful, and then, one more year down the line, I’m swallowing pills again. I don’t want this to be the pattern of my life until one day there’s no one there to save me.’ She looked at me, anxiety etched in every line on her face. ‘Do you know what I mean?’ She was really asking me, I could tell. ‘Does any of this make sense? I’m trying to be sensible –’ she tried to smile – ‘and you know that’s not exactly my default mode.’
I knew I was supposed to smile back, say something reassuring, let her know I understood. But my ears felt hot, my chest was pounding. This was all wrong. This wasn’t why I’d come here. She finally chose to be sensible and it was a decision that was going to effectively end our friendship? How was that fair? ‘I don’t get why any of this means you can’t come back home.’
Suzanne’s face dropped. ‘Because it’s not home,’ she said. ‘I don’t have a home, Caddy. That’s the whole fucking problem.’
‘I thought you liked Brighton.’
‘It’s not about liking –’ She stopped herself, letting out a frustrated breath. ‘God, Caddy. Are you really going to do this?’
‘Do what?’ I could feel tears building and I forced myself to hold them back. ‘Aren’t I allowed to talk about this with you?’
‘No!’ she burst out. ‘No, because it’s not fair. You’re talking about this like you know, like you’ve got the first fucking idea what any of it was like half the time. Do you still not get it?’ It was almost a relief to see the anger spill. ‘Do you want me to spell out how much I hid from you? You think because you saw me freak out maybe two or three times that you saw me at my worst? That’s not even close. You want to hear about my birthday? My fucking sixteenth birthday, when my parents treated me like they didn’t even know me, and I couldn’t deal with it, so I had a meltdown and smashed up Sarah’s kitchen? And then, when Sarah tried to calm me down, I sliced my arm open with a broken plate?’ Tears were streaming down her face, but I felt frozen. I couldn’t speak.
What was it Mum had said? She’s very sad. Overwhelmingly so.
‘Twelve stitches in A & E, Caddy. And did you have any idea? No. Because I hid it from you, like I hid most of the fucked-up things about me. Are you getting it now? And here. Seven weeks of therapy. Psychologists and nurses and being under observation and taking fucking medication and everyone being all, Listen to us, Suzanne, we’re trying to help. Do you know how long it’s taken me to get to a point where I finally accept that I have to do this? And then you come here, you who’s supposed to be the good, unselfish one, and you’re making me doubt myself?’
I opened my mouth to speak – to defend myself or apologize, I wasn’t sure – but instead I burst into tears. The horrible, uncontrollable kind you have no hope of disguising or minimizing. In the seconds it took for the tears to steal my vision, I saw the part-horrified, part-enraged look on Suzanne’s face and I had the dim sense that I was doing exactly the wrong thing, exactly what she’d been afraid of. But this wasn’t how stories like this were meant to end. She was meant to get better and come home, not leave completely. Not after everything. I trusted in happy endings, and this felt too much like sadness, like something lost.
‘Caddy,’ Suzanne said, her voice tense.
My name resounded in my head. Caddy, I thought, this is not about you.
‘I’m sorry,’ I managed. I pushed my hands up against my face, forcing myself to calm down. I drew in a sharp breath, then let it out slowly, closing my eyes. When I opened them again, Suzanne’s head was tilted slightly, her eyes trained on me.
‘Do you understand now why I need to do this?’ she asked, her voice suddenly steady and quiet again.
I took a deep breath. ‘I don’t want to.’
‘But do you?’
I nodded. I knew that I had to turn this around. If I couldn’t pull this back, something would be lost. ‘Fuck your life,’ I said.
It worked. For a split second she looked startled, then her face changed and she laughed out loud. ‘I know, right?’ she said. The smile disappeared almost as soon as it had arrived, her face falling sad and flat again. She twisted the bag handles in her fingers, letting out a sigh. ‘God, this is hard.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said again. Her words had started to register and now I had guilt flooding into my head as well as everything else. The last thing I wanted to do was make her question seven weeks’ worth of progress.
‘What for?’
‘Everything.’ I wiped my eyes with my sleeve, wishing I was better at this. ‘For being so useless.’
‘No, Caddy. No. You’re the best person I know.’ She dropped the gift bag’s handles and took a hold of both my hands, squeezing for emphasis. The gesture was so adult-like, but also somehow so her, it brought on a fresh wave of tears. ‘The best. OK? I don’t think you’ll ever know what you’ve done for me, and how much it means that someone like you would care so much about someone like me.’