Fierce Fragile Hearts

by Sara Barnard

  When we get inside, she turns to me, beaming, and tucks her arm through mine. ‘Don’t run off,’ she says, as if that’s the potential problem here.

  ‘Cads,’ I say, meaning to remind her that she’s the only person I know here, but we’re at the front of the bar and she’s turned to the barman, raising her voice to order.

  For the next hour, I try to swallow down my anxiety, burying it like I bury every feeling I don’t want to deal with, but it keeps bubbling up. Every time I see Tess lean in to say something into Caddy’s ear, the two of them laughing. When a guy tries to talk to me by a pillar and Caddy gives me a look. I’m not myself. I don’t know how to be myself here.

  I shut myself in one of the toilet cubicles to give myself a break for a couple of minutes, and when I come back out again, I can’t find Caddy, or even Tess, or anyone I vaguely recognize. I wander around the club for a few minutes, a carefree smile on my face, avoiding making eye contact with anyone, until I finally spot Caddy’s head in the crowd near the bar. I head towards her, keeping one hand flat over the top of my cup and feeling the liquid beneath splashing up against my palm. She’s standing with Owen, both of their backs to me. Their heads are close together, but their voices are still raised above the music.

  ‘You look good, tonight,’ Owen is saying. Or yelling.

  I can’t see Caddy’s face, but I can tell by her voice that she is smiling, bashful and pleased. ‘Thanks. But it’s all Suze. She’s like a miracle worker.’

  I lift my hand to touch Caddy’s shoulder so she’ll know I’m there, but before I can do this, Owen is speaking again. ‘Your friend is gorgeous. Like, seriously. Wow.’

  Caddy shrugs. ‘Yeah.’ Now her voice is flat.

  My hand hovers in the air between us. It’s not really fair to just stand there listening to them talk about me, but something about that ‘yeah’ has made me stop, nervous.

  ‘Will you put in a good word for me?’

  ‘What? Why?’

  ‘Go on, Cads. Be a pal. Tell her I can be her token student shag.’ He laughs, amiable. ‘You can be my way in.’

  ‘You don’t need any of that. Just tell her she’s gorgeous like you just told me. Get her a drink. She’ll be all over you.’

  ‘For real? Awesome.’ Owen is grinning as he glances behind him. ‘Oh,’ he says.

  There is a silence that, thanks to the throbbing music, is not at all silent. Caddy turns to him, sees me and freezes.

  ‘Want a drink?’ Owen asks me smoothly.

  Caddy gives him a shove.

  ‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘Actually, I do. Rum and Coke. Double.’

  He turns away from us, clearly grateful to have a reason to remove himself from the awkwardness, and leaves Caddy and me facing each other. As I look at her tense expression – part guilt, part defiance – the instinctive anger I feel fades. This is Caddy. Caddy.

  I try and smile. ‘What are you drinking?’

  ‘Schnapps and lemonade,’ she says. She wants to ask me what I heard, I can tell, but she won’t, because she’s Caddy.

  Owen hands me my drink in a plastic cup and I take a sip without thanking him, tasting the rum against the sweetness of the Coke. I feel better.

  ‘I’m going to have a smoke,’ I say. ‘I’ll see you later.’

  ‘I thought you’d quit,’ Caddy says, tentative.

  I shrug. ‘You know me.’

  ‘Too well,’ she replies, almost smiling.

  Suddenly, I feel an overwhelming urge to cry. I miss Caddy so much, and she’s right here in front of me. This distance we’d both tried to pretend hadn’t grown between us during the time I’d been away now feels like something physical. She’s so far away from me. I want to tell her I love her, but it won’t make any sense. I want to tell her that I can see that she likes Owen, that I wish she would tell me so we could talk about it. I want us to share secrets again, like we used to. I want her to know she can trust me, that it’s OK to have crushes, that if she’s confused about her feelings, that’s what I’m here for. I want to tell her she’s my best friend, and it’s OK if I’m not hers.

  ‘You really do look good,’ I say instead, then turn and head for the exit.

  Outside the club, I find a group of guys and flirt my way into a free cigarette and conversation. The anonymity of these people is a relief after the confusion of being with Caddy. Here, drink and cigarette in hand, tossing my hair and smiling at guys who don’t know me and never will, I am my best self. I tell them my name is Vanessa. When they ask me what I’m studying, I say Film.

  I’m only outside for about ten minutes, but when I try to head back into the noise and crowd, the bouncer refuses to let me in without a ticket, even though I have clearly already been in there. I’m too frustrated and tired to put up much of a fight, so I slope off and find an empty bench in a little courtyard, text Caddy and sit back to wait. There are messages waiting for me, but I decide to read them later because having things to look forward to, even small things, is one way of making life liveable.

  I lie back and look up at the stars, trying to shut out the world. I’m starting to wonder why I came here. What had I expected, really? That Caddy would be unchanged by this kind of experience? That she’d still need me to be the fun one?

  But what am I if I’m not the fun one?

  ‘Hey, you.’

  In the dark, Caddy’s silhouette is still familiar. I can see that her head is cocked, can hear a kind of resignation in her voice. She pokes one of my legs and I lift them obediently, turning myself in the same motion so I am sat on the bench as she takes her place beside me. We are both silent for a while. She rests her head on my shoulder.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say eventually.

  She’s surprised. ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t know. I just am.’

  And then she’s crying, and I’m so startled and then scared that I start bawling too. She lifts her head from my shoulder and wipes at her eyes, no doubt leaving smears of my carefully applied makeup down her cheeks.

  ‘Just say whatever it is,’ I say. I sound surer of this than I actually am. ‘Just … go on.’

  There’s another long silence. I’ve just decided that she’s not going to answer me and I should lift the tension with some kind of joke, when she speaks.

  ‘I don’t …’ A slight pause. ‘I don’t know you any more.’

  Oh God, my heart.

  ‘I think I’ve known that for a while, but I just didn’t want to. I think I’ve been clinging on to who I knew when I was sixteen. And I love you so much. But … I’m nineteen, and I’m at uni. And I’m meeting all these people that I have so much in common with, and I tell them about you and Rosie, and they don’t … they don’t get it. They’re like, so you grew up with Rosie, that’s cool, and then the other girl is the one who was around for a few months, dropped you through a skylight, then left again? And at first I was like, yeah, shut up, you don’t get it, but now … well. I don’t know. I guess that’s pretty accurate.’

  My heart.

  ‘I don’t know what’s left of us. Rosie and I have so much history. Even when we fight, and even though we’re apart at the moment too, there’s so much to keep us together. I know she’ll always be around. But I don’t … trust that with you. That you won’t just leave. And I try and think about all the things that make us friends, but all I can come up with is that I really love you and being friends with you was like what made my life. Before uni, anyway. You made things happen, and it was so great, being who I was with you. But then you left – and I get it, I obviously get why you left, I’m not stupid – but you really left. You just checked out, like, emotionally. Not just physically. You didn’t reply to my emails or tell me anything about your life while you were away, not unless I really pushed you, and it was like, OK, she doesn’t actually care about me at all, not really. And that hurt, Suze.’ She takes a quick breath, shuddery and hitched. ‘It honestly felt like that, like you didn’t care. Not about me or our friendship, and I�
��d always thought that mattered to you. And Tess, she said, all of this, it’s the kind of thing you say about someone you have good memories of. Not someone who is a lifelong friend. And I think she’s right. I’m scared that she’s right.’

  In the darkness beside her, I am letting my tears fall silent and heavy down my face, keeping my lips clamped together so she won’t realize and stop talking out of guilt. I know I need to hear this and that she needs to say it, but it hurts. So. Fucking. Much.

  When I don’t say anything, she speaks again. ‘And, like … Suze … you do things like leave your phone off. You don’t talk to me for days. I feel like I put in so much and you just don’t. I think I spend all this time worrying about you and that’s not friendship, is it?’ She turns to me just as a camera flash goes off somewhere, illuminating our faces for a fraction of a second. ‘Oh my God, you’re crying. Oh God. I’m sorry, I’m sorry.’ She’s frantic, patting and then squeezing my wrist and then hand and then fingers. ‘That all kind of just came out.’

  I try to speak but find I can’t. I crush my fingers against my mouth to try and stop the tears and lean forward, my hair brushing my knees. Caddy curls her arms around my shoulders, her face against the side of my head, and I reach up my hands to clutch her wrists. We are tangled together on the bench, both of us in tears. She is saying she’s sorry, and I’m trying to reply but I can’t.

  When I finally manage to speak, it’s pathetic. ‘I can’t lose you.’ My voice is thick and hitched. ‘Please, I’m sorry. I’ll be better.’

  ‘No, it’s OK, I’m not …’ She is pressing her face against my hair, as close as she can get, closer than any boy ever goes, closer than family. Isn’t this what friendship is? How could I let myself lose someone like Caddy? ‘You’re not losing me, I’ve just been drinking and uni’s such a mindfuck.’

  I choke a laugh. ‘You never used to say things like “mindfuck”.’

  There’s a pause. ‘I’m not your mousy friend any more. I haven’t been for a while.’

  ‘You were never just my mousy friend,’ I say.

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  I do.

  ‘There you are!’ The voice is cheerful, sudden and above us. It’s Owen. ‘God, Cads, don’t you ever answer your—’ He stops abruptly. ‘Shit, have I gatecrashed a funeral?’

  Something about his arrival jolts me back into myself. I wipe my hair back from my face – it sticks in places – and flash a grin at him. ‘This is what happens to girls when they drink.’

  Caddy laughs. There’s relief in it. ‘How can you not know that, Owen?’

  ‘You’re usually a happy drunk,’ Owen replies, frowning. ‘You get all giggly.’

  ‘Suze brings it out of me,’ Caddy says. Her arm is still around my neck and she pulls me close, kissing the side of my forehead. ‘Any friend can make you laugh. Best friends make you cry.’

  I love her so much.

  ‘Girls are weird,’ Owen says, definitive. ‘You coming back to the flat? Sam’s got Calvados.’

  ‘What’s Calvados?’ I ask.

  ‘Posh alcohol,’ Caddy replies. ‘It’s like a brandy. The guys love it in our flat.’

  I smile. ‘You’re really ruining the student stereotype here. Whatever happened to cider and cheap vodka?’

  ‘We’ve had that already,’ Owen says. ‘This is a nightcap.’

  Both Caddy and I crack up, and he looks momentarily offended, then laughs too. He reaches out a hand to Caddy and she takes it, beaming at him. I lift myself up and bounce a little on my feet before following them up the path. I watch them, keeping myself an almost imperceptible step behind them, counting seconds. I count nine before they drop hands.

  Back in the flat, we gather in the kitchen, stretched out on the seat by the window. My back is against the fridge and I keep drifting out of the conversation and just watching everyone else. Caddy and Tess are playing the totem game, throwing their hands up in strange poses around their heads as Sam, crouching on the seat, takes pictures. The three of them are laughing, and Owen is leaning back against the window, a grin on his face. They all belong here, I think. It’s nice to watch, if a little lonely.

  The Calvados we’re drinking tastes how my head tells me alcohol is supposed to taste. Thick, strong and important. Grownup. I don’t really like it but I drink it anyway, slowly, sip by sip.

  ‘Do you have a boyfriend, Suze?’ Tess asks me, her voice suddenly loud. It annoys me that she calls me Suze.

  I think of Matt.

  ‘No,’ I say.

  ‘Don’t you get lonely?’ There is sympathy in her voice, and it grates.

  ‘No,’ I say again. Of course I get lonely, but it’s not because I don’t have a boyfriend. It’s because I don’t have a fucking family.

  ‘I would,’ Tess continues. ‘I mean, even without the love and hugging and stuff, I’d totally miss the sex.’

  ‘You don’t have to be in a relationship to have sex,’ I say.

  ‘No, but that’s not healthy, is it?’ She curls her lip in distaste. ‘You’re, like, asking for STIs.’

  ‘Am I?’ I ask.

  She looks horrified. ‘No, not you. Obviously not you.’

  ‘OK,’ I say. I look away, take another sip from my glass.

  There’s an awkward pause. In my peripheral vision, I see Tess give Caddy a look. I know I’m being the bitchy, unfun friend, that I should be friendlier towards someone Caddy cares about, that it’s below me to be jealous and even worse to let it show. But, God, I’m so, so tired. I don’t belong here and I’m tired.

  I force myself to try a little harder, asking Sam about his course – History, which is what Brian studied at uni – and making Owen laugh with a stupid joke about Viagra. It’s so much easier with boys. I know I shouldn’t admit something like that, but it’s true.

  Tess goes to bed first and Caddy bounces after her, telling me she’s left her moisturizer in Tess’s room and will be right back. Sam follows them both, throwing up a lazy, tired hand on his way out of the kitchen.

  When they’re gone, Owen turns to me. ‘So how do you like student life?’ His voice and grin say he expects me to love it.

  ‘It’s different,’ I say. He raises an eyebrow, waiting for more, and I hesitate. ‘It looks like it would be a lot of fun, from the inside.’

  He shrugs a little, agreeing or disagreeing with me, I can’t tell, and drinks the last dregs of Calvados from his cup.

  ‘You and Caddy,’ I say, not sure where I’m going with this.

  He looks at me, wary. ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Is there anything—’

  ‘She’s got a boyfriend,’ he interrupts. ‘So whatever.’

  It’s not exactly an answer to what I hadn’t exactly asked, but I can sense it’s the closest I’ll get tonight. ‘OK,’ I say. ‘Sorry.’

  Owen lifts his cup again, realizes it’s empty and puts it down on the windowsill with a grunt of annoyance. ‘Look,’ he says, turning to me. I wait, ready to tell him that Caddy has Kel and he is everything, that if he hurts her I will kill him. ‘Tell me straight. Do I have a shot with you?’

  I blink. I make a noise that sounds like, ‘Uh?’

  ‘Tonight,’ he says. ‘I’m single, you know.’ His eyes flicker over me. ‘You look like you’d be a lot of fun. And I’d—’

  ‘No,’ I say. My voice is level. ‘You don’t have a shot with me.’

  He shrugs again, his expression hardly changed. ‘Worth a try.’

  Like I’m a slot machine at an arcade. A discount on a jacket with a thread hanging loose. Worth a try, nothing more.

  Caddy comes leaping across the room and lands on the chair beside me. It’s like her whole body is smiling. ‘Want another drink?’ she asks. ‘I’ve got some Tuaca in the cupboard.’

  I shake my head. ‘I’m really tired. Sorry, is that OK?’

  ‘Of course!’ She smiles at me, then turns to Owen. ‘You want a shot, right?’

  ‘At least one,’ Owen says, grinn
ing.

  The smell of the sweet liqueur makes my head hurt. ‘I’m going to go and brush my teeth, OK?’

  If she’s disappointed, she covers it well. She nods, reaching into her pocket. ‘Sure. Here’s my door key. Remember to turn the key and lift the handle. And don’t lock it behind you, so I can get in later.’

  Caddy’s room is quiet and still after the constant noise of the night, and it’s a relief for about thirty seconds. And then I realize I’m back on my own again, which I hate, and I consider going back to the kitchen. But Caddy is sure to come to bed soon enough and the sooner she does that, the sooner it will be just the two of us, talking like we used to.

  I brush my teeth, wash my face, put a long T-shirt on over my leggings and get into Caddy’s tiny bed. With the main light off and her lamp shining up into the corner, the room is cosy and dark. I settle against the wall, unlocking my phone to read my messages. There’s one from Matt and he’s still awake when I reply so we chat for a while as the clock ticks closer to 3 a.m. After half an hour, I tell him I’ll talk to him properly tomorrow and slide my phone under the pillow, sinking my head down. Still no Caddy. I let my eyes close, hoping she’ll come in before I get too sleepy. We’ve got so much to talk about, and I can’t stay too late tomorrow. It’s a long way back to Brighton.

  Time passes, the world gets fuzzier. I can’t quite tell if I’m awake or not. I have a vague sense that someone is whispering nearby, and then the door closes. The lamp switches off.

  I mumble, ‘Caddy?’

  ‘Hi,’ she whispers. She pulls the covers back and slides down beside me. ‘Go to sleep, it’s super-late.’ Her breathing is faster than normal, and I can feel her heart beating. Her arms close around my back in a quick, tight hug. ‘Sorry.’

  I am at that almost-drunk point of nearly-asleep, which is why the words come out when her arms release me. ‘Don’t let go.’

  There’s a pause, just long enough for sleep to take me over. She says something I don’t hear, and then her arms are back around me, secure and safe, as I fall asleep.