‘I love you,’ I choked out. ‘And I –’ I stopped, trying to find the words that could explain to her how much she meant to me, how she’d brought sparks and surprise and light and layers to my life, how every broken bone and all the tears had been worth it, for her. ‘You’re just the best . . . my best . . .’
She interrupted me by leaning over, putting her arms around my shoulders and hugging me. I let my forehead rest against her shoulder, her familiar blonde hair bunching against my face. I wondered how many times we’d hugged in the short time we’d been friends. How many times we’d hug in the future.
‘Hey,’ she said. ‘Talk about significant life events, right?’
I smiled, trying to regain my composure. ‘Oh God – that feels like a million years ago.’ I thought of my former self, limbs intact, wishing for significant things. A year earlier I’d been planning my sixteenth birthday and playing ‘where will I be when’ with Rosie, entirely oblivious of what was to come. So much of what I had thought would be important then had turned out not to matter. Here I was, weeks from my seventeenth, still boyfriendless and in full possession of my virginity, and I didn’t even care.
‘Oh,’ I said, suddenly remembering. I reached into my pocket and pulled out the small box I’d been carrying her necklace in. ‘I brought this back for you.’
The dove at the end of the chain dangled between us. She looked at it, her brow furrowing. ‘I gave it to you,’ she said after a pause.
‘But it’s yours,’ I replied. ‘I can’t keep it.’
‘What if I want you to?’
‘What if I don’t?’
We looked at each other, stalemated.
‘You said it was like a promise,’ I reminded her, as if she’d have forgotten.
‘A broken promise,’ she said, and something in her face cracked. ‘It hurts to look at it.’ She looked at me. ‘You have it, Cads, please?’
‘How about this?’ I said with a flash of inspiration. ‘We’ll share it. You take it now, and next time I see you, you can give it back.’
She was silent for a while, her eyes moving from the necklace to my face.
‘Like a promise,’ I added.
‘Between you and me?’
I nodded, holding out the necklace towards her. After a moment, Suzanne opened her palm to me and I dropped the chain into it.
‘And if anyone asks where you got it,’ I said, watching her unclip the catch and reach up behind her neck, ‘you don’t even have to mention your mother.’
‘I won’t,’ Suzanne said. She glanced down at the necklace then back at me, a grin breaking out across her face, brief but wide and so familiar. ‘I’ll say my best friend gave it to me.’
Beautiful Broken Things has been a long time in the making, and I am lucky enough to have many people to thank for their help and guidance, or just for the simple act of being there along the way.
First and foremost thanks to Claire Wilson, my brilliant agent, who made all this possible. Thank you for your patience and unfailing encouragement, for believing in this book and for believing in me. I got really, really lucky. Thanks also to the team at Rogers, Coleridge & White, particularly Lexie Hamblin.
Thank you to my wonderful editor, Rachel Petty, and everyone at Macmillan Children’s for their enthusiasm and support at every stage of this book’s creation. I’m so proud to be able to call myself an MCB author.
To everyone involved in the Authors for Philippines project in 2013, particularly Keris Stainton, thank you. You did such good, and in doing so set in motion small ripple effects like me and this book. Sara O’Connor, who went above and beyond the call of duty, I am inexpressibly grateful for your advice and encouragement. I will do my best to pay it forward.
Thank you to Claire’s Coven, especially its intrepid leader Alexia Casale, for being so welcoming and supportive and for continuing to make me laugh every single day. Particular thanks to Alice Oseman, Lauren James and Catherine Doyle. I feel so lucky that I got to achieve a dream and make such amazing friends at the same time. Tusen takk, Melinda Salisbury: my dinobro, my friend.
This book has involved a lot of research over the years of one kind or another, but I am particularly indebted to the generous folks on Twitter, who responded to my incredibly niche questions with the generosity I’d usually associate with my closest friends, not near strangers. Particular thanks go to Rosie Claverton and Joanna Cannon, who understand how to balance accuracy with storytelling, and helped me with both.
Thank you to Erin Hanson, for writing such beautiful poetry and for allowing me to use the perfect four lines at the opening of this book. Anyone who is interested in finding out more or in reading more poems can visit Erin’s website at thepoeticunderground.com.
Thanks to Rachael, who read this book when it had no title and has championed it ever since, and my other early readers, Lauren, Emily, Rebecca and Catherine. The fact that you wanted to read this story before it became a book meant the world.