Broken Heart Club

by Cathy Cassidy

  My feet fall into step with his and we head out of the garden, Rocket at our heels.

  33

  Ryan

  Showing Eden the garden at Miss Smith’s place is cool. She looks around, wide-eyed and curious, full of challenges and ideas.

  ‘No way,’ she says, when she works out where we are. ‘This is where you harpooned the old lady?’

  ‘It was a javelin,’ I correct her. ‘And the old lady wasn’t even outside at the time. Nobody got hurt. It was an accident … sort of!’

  Eden frowns. ‘The school grapevine says that javelin speared three fish, smashed a greenhouse and took the old lady’s hat off. I heard someone say she fainted and had to have the paramedics round …’

  ‘Rubbish,’ I argue. ‘There are no fish in the pond, and there’s no greenhouse at all, smashed or otherwise. No hats or paramedics were involved.’

  ‘I hate it, the whole rumour-mill at school,’ she says. ‘People will say anything if they think it makes a good story. I wonder what they say about me?’

  ‘Beautiful, sad-eyed girl takes pity on school loser,’ I quip. ‘Hauls him back from off the rails and on to the straight and narrow …’

  ‘I can’t even rescue myself,’ she says. ‘Seriously. I am not a rescuer. Don’t get your hopes up.’

  I tell her about my plan to make amends for the javelin disaster by tidying up Miss Smith’s garden, how I’ve already weeded and planted and strimmed, and how I’m going to mow the lawn today. We ring the doorbell and Miss Smith appears.

  ‘Peter!’ she exclaims, beaming. ‘And Patch! Who’s this you’ve brought to meet me? A lady friend? How exciting! What’s your name, dear?’

  ‘Eden.’

  ‘Edie?’ Miss Smith echoes, offering a wrinkled claw to shake. ‘That’s a beautiful name. Well, you’re very welcome! Any friend of Peter’s is a friend of mine!’

  ‘Who’s Peter?’ Eden whispers. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘She gets a bit muddled,’ I say under my breath. ‘She thinks I’m someone else; she thinks Rocket is someone else, too. She seems happy about it, though …’

  Miss Smith gives me the key for the shed and I open it and drag out the ancient, rust-caked mower. It’s a basic push-along one that looks like it could date from the reign of Queen Victoria, and from the state of the garden I’d guess it probably hasn’t been used in a hundred years, either. OK, I may be exaggerating a little, but not much. I have to rub the thing down with wire wool and wipe it with oil and twiddle with it a bit, but after a while I manage to get it moving.

  While I’m doing this Eden unearths a slightly mildewed deckchair and sets it up beside the back door. She is braver than me, and ventures into the house to find a pale blue knitted shawl to cover the stains and a cushion to make it more comfortable, then sets up Miss Smith in the sunshine with a glass of ice-cool orange squash and a couple of cheese sandwiches from the picnic rucksack.

  ‘Lovely, dear,’ she says, and Eden grins. When she does that, it’s like sunshine through clouds; it lights up everything and makes the world sparkle.

  By the time I’ve finished mowing, Eden has rigged up a sunshade to keep the old lady from getting sunburnt, and Rocket is stretched out on the path at Miss Smith’s feet.

  ‘Peter will tell you, this pond was lovely once,’ Miss Smith is telling Eden. ‘Big orange goldfish, we had, and water lilies. Dragonflies used to come in the summer – their wings were like tiny rainbows!’

  ‘Wow,’ Eden says. ‘I’d love to have seen that!’

  She rolls up her jeans and wades into the pond, her arms speckled with mud as she uproots reeds, skimming off skeins of pondweed with a long stick.

  I wander over and poke at the ancient blue pond liner with a finger, watching it crumble and split. ‘Don’t go getting any big ideas about fixing up the pond,’ I say. ‘This liner must be decades old! We can tidy it up a bit, pull out the weed, but it’s never going to hold enough water for goldfish’

  Eden frowns. ‘New liner, then?’ she says. ‘I really think we can make it beautiful again, Ryan. C’mon, we have to try!’

  I can’t help grinning because she said ‘we’. I like the sound of that. I’m also smiling because it’s the first time in ages I have seen Eden sounding excited about something, even if that something is just an overgrown garden. So what? If she wants to buy a water lily and some goldfish, we’ll do it.

  Eden is wrong about not being a rescuer.

  She has Miss Smith sitting in the sun, eating and drinking, which is kind of awesome, and by the time we’re ready to leave, the old lady is looking happier and more alert than I’ve ever seen her.

  ‘Come again, Edie,’ she says. ‘And look after my Peter, won’t you? He’s a good boy!’

  I wink and stick my tongue out, and Eden laughs.

  34

  Eden

  The two of us make plans to buy goldfish and a new pond liner from a big garden centre on the edge of town, and I head for home with a spring in my step.

  I decide to surprise Mum with a chocolate fridge cake, and once I’m in the kitchen smashing up digestive biscuits and melting chocolate and stirring in fruit, I remember why I loved baking so much. Maybe I’ll try something more ambitious next time? Mum is pleased, anyhow, and we eat a slice each after tea, watching a slushy DVD and sipping orange juice with ice. My mobile buzzes halfway though, but it’s just Ryan reminding me where to meet next day.

  Operation Goldfish: eleven o’clock at the bus stop by the park gates, he says. Don’t be late!

  Wouldn’t dare, I text back, grinning.

  ‘A friend?’ Mum asks, looking up from the DVD. ‘That’s nice!’

  ‘Yeah … a friend,’ I say, hiding a smile.

  I’m still smiling as I set out faded denim shorts and a pale blue T-shirt for tomorrow, choosing from the dwindling pile of clothes that Andie declared were OK. It’s not that I am especially worried about how I look for Ryan – well, maybe a bit – but also that Andie’s home truths have made me look at my clothes in a new light. Do I want to hide away in layers of anonymous grey-black? Part of me does, but another part is brave enough to say I’ve had enough of pretending to be someone I’m not. And if I’m not a Goth, isn’t it time to work out exactly what and who I really am?

  I think a shopping trip might be required, and wish that Andie was still around to come. Maybe Mum would go with me. She is always nagging me to get a bit of colour into my wardrobe.

  As for the towering pile of baggy black combats and outsize T-shirts and hoodies, I sigh and start packing them into carrier bags to take to the charity shop. I’m just finishing the third bag when my mobile bleeps, and I pick it up, expecting another message from Ryan.

  A different name flashes up: Andie.

  My heart races as I click on the message.

  Sorry I had to leave in such a hurry on Friday, it says. Something came up. Looks like the party ended with a bit of a bang! I noticed Ryan was there – did you talk to him? A little bird told me the two of you were getting on great! ((oxox))

  I throw my mobile on the bed, hands shaking. Once upon a time Andie and I texted maybe twenty, thirty times a day. We texted every minute we weren’t together, sharing the slightest thoughts, the smallest things. We held a mirror up to each other’s lives.

  It’s been two years now since I’ve had a text from my best friend; two years is a long time. Even when she was around last week, she didn’t text, just came and went when it suited her.

  Something came up? What does that even mean? And what does sh
e mean about Ryan? Did she see us? Is she angry? How does she know? I think of Andie’s birthday sleepover and the fight that followed, and for a moment I panic. It takes a moment for my breath to slow again, and when it does I pick the phone up and type out a reply.

  Miss you so, so much, Andie. I wish you’d waited a minute so we could say a proper goodbye. How do you know about Ryan? xxx

  The answer appears almost at once.

  Aha, I know all sorts of things, Eden! You’re my best friend, right? It’s my job! Well, actually I saw you both dancing to the band – looked like you were having fun! Be nice to Ryan … he’s had a hard time. Sorry again I had to leave so fast; it was a bit of an emergency. Speak soon! oxox

  Ryan’s had a hard time? What about me? And what kind of best friend vanishes for two years and then turns up again as though nothing has happened? I don’t care, I realize. Where Andie is concerned, I will forgive anything. Exasperated, I text back to tell her that I’m seeing Ryan tomorrow, that I’m biting the bullet, taking the clothes she sorted to the charity shop. I even get brave and ask her when she might be in town again.

  There’s no reply. My phone stays silent all evening.

  Hearing from Andie again stirs up all kinds of confusing thoughts; things I don’t even want to think about. Is this how it will be from now on? A couple of brief text messages now and then, so that she can check up on me, make believe we are still best mates? It’s not enough. I don’t want to be best friends with a girl who is never around, not any more. I touch the broken heart necklace; the silver pendant lies cool and heavy against my collarbone.

  It wasn’t just the Heart Club that broke when Andie went away, it was my own heart, too, and I am weary of holding myself together. It was getting harder and harder, and then Andie came back and started chipping away at the shell I’d built around myself. She told me she knew what she was doing, that it was all for the best, but then she vanished and I was lost all over again.

  I still haven’t worked out whether the kiss has made things better or worse. Maybe it was just the last straw, getting under my skin when my defences were down, waking up my feelings again after two years in the deep freeze. I feel like Sleeping Beauty in the fairy story, with Ryan as the handsome prince who has to hack his way through a thorn forest armed only with a javelin. I’m not beautiful, of course, but Ryan could pass for handsome and I am starting to see that his bad boy persona is just as much a mask, an act, as my ice maiden one has been.

  We are both damaged goods, Ryan and me.

  Is there hope for the two of us? I have no idea, but here I am, the blue spotty scarf from Friday night tied up in my hair, a swipe of eyeliner and a smudge of shadow accenting my eyes like Andie showed me. I dawdle through the park, checking my mobile for the time, knowing I’m going to be way too early for our meeting.

  Ryan has texted three times already this morning, reminding me of the time, the rendezvous, asking me to bring a bucket to carry home the fish. He seems keen, but what are we to each other really? Strangers, friends, something more? How am I supposed to tell?

  Is this a date or just a goldfish expedition, a pond renovating afternoon – even just some kind of weird voluntary service exercise in aid of lonely elderly ladies? Does it matter?

  I have named the fish in my head already; Fish and Chips. I wonder if the names will make Ryan laugh, if I’ll dare to tell him.

  I drag my feet, loiter at the playground, buy an ice cream from the van and sit on a bench to eat it all, being extra careful not to drip anything on my clothes. All that and I am still ten minutes early, but when I come out of the park gates it doesn’t matter because Ryan is at the bus stop already, checking his mobile, brushing down his jeans, straightening his T-shirt.

  Then he sees me and his eyes light up and my heart feels like it’s lifting up, right out of me, like a bird in flight.

  I’m not scared any more. My heart’s already broken, so the worst that can happen is that he might break another little piece of it. And maybe that won’t happen. Maybe.

  35

  Ryan

  Today I wake up happy for the fourth day running. It could be the sunshine, or the school holidays. Alternatively, it could be Eden.

  She is like a chrysalis turning slowly into a butterfly, breaking free of the shell that has cocooned her for the past two years. She’s fragile still, uncertain, but if I step back and let her stretch her wings, she might just come back to me. I am hopeful.

  Me? I might be changing too, slowly. Who knew?

  Buzz and Chris have been texting, asking me to come and hang out in the shopping centre in town. Buzz has worked out that you can stand up on the gallery level and drop water bombs on the shoppers, then make a quick getaway through the multistorey car park.

  It doesn’t hurt them or anything, he texts. It’s just balloons filled with water. A bit of water never hurt anyone, did it? It’ll be a right laugh!

  Busy, I text back, and switch off my mobile.

  I wonder why I ever thought that Buzz and Chris were funny, because lately they are bugging me big style. What if people see me the way they see Buzz and Chris? Clumsy, careless, crass? Not funny, but scary, annoying, embarrassing? The thought of that makes me feel very bad indeed.

  Eden and I sit on the top deck of the number 23 bus heading out of town, talking about pond liners and goldfish. It shouldn’t be romantic but it kind of is. Technically we’re just friends working on a project together to make life a little bit nicer for a lonely old lady, but both of us know it’s more than that. We pretend not to care. We don’t hold hands – we barely touch at all – but the air around us feels electric.

  A couple of times yesterday, I looked up and caught Eden looking at me, and my cheeks darkened with colour like they did when I was six years old. It’s like having a fever – that hectic, heightened way you feel when you’re about to get ill with flu or something.

  ‘When we’ve done the pond, we’ll have to have a look at that frazzled old tree,’ Eden says now. ‘And we can paint the fence so it’s not horrible bare wood. Cool, right?’

  ‘Cool,’ I say.

  ‘We could make a hammock, too,’ she suggests. ‘Is Miss Smith too old for hammocks, d’you think?’

  ‘Nobody’s too old for a hammock,’ I say breezily, even though I know Miss Smith probably couldn’t even walk as far as the trees, let alone kick back in a hammock. She is more a Zimmer-frame kind of girl, to be fair.

  ‘I’m going to bake her cookies,’ Eden decides. ‘Shortbread ones. Or macaroons. Old-fashioned ones, anyway. I’ll put them in a tin, with a paper doily underneath. She’ll like that. Have you noticed she calls me Edie – isn’t that cute?’

  ‘You are kind of cute,’ I tease, and Eden digs me with an elbow.

  ‘Shhh,’ she says. ‘This is serious!’

  It’s serious, all right. I am a lost cause, a hopeless case. I grin.

  ‘Miss Smith thinks your name is Peter and that Rocket’s name is Patch,’ she points out. ‘Who d’you think the real Peter is? A neighbour? A grandson?’

  ‘A neighbour, maybe,’ I say. ‘From the past. She never married, so it can’t be a grandson. Whoever it is, I bet he’s all grown-up and gone to uni by now. As for Patch …’

  ‘Aw, don’t,’ she says. ‘Poor Patch. Probably long gone. Poor Miss Smith; d’you think anyone ever visits her, apart from us?’

  I shrug. ‘Never seen anyone.’

  ‘It sucks to be lonely,’ Eden says, and I get the feeling she knows what she’s talking about. I guess we both do.

  36
>
  Eden

  We have a trolley with folded-up pond liner in it, and a water lily, and water irises. We also have two small goldfish swimming in circles in the plastic bucket. They are a lot smaller than planned; we didn’t have enough money for the big kind.

  ‘Fish and Chips,’ I say, watching them flick their tails as we queue for Coke floats in the garden centre cafe. ‘Aren’t they beautiful?’

  ‘Hope they’re worth it,’ Ryan retorts. ‘D’you think Miss Smith will even notice?’

  ‘Of course she will,’ I say. ‘She’ll love them!’

  We sit down at an outside table with the Coke floats.

  ‘We are co-owners of two small goldfish,’ Ryan says. ‘Does that make us foster parents? Do we take it in turns to feed them, in case Miss Smith forgets?’

  ‘Once term starts, we can do it on the way home from school,’ I say. ‘Not a problem. I’ve always wanted a pet, and we’re not allowed them at the flat. It’s a win-win situation!’

  At that moment, a little girl in the distinctive green blazer and tartan skirt of St Bernadette’s comes into the cafe with her mum; they pick out cakes and drinks, and I catch little wisps of their conversation.

  ‘So glad you enjoyed the induction morning … great opportunity to mix with your new classmates … what did you think of the Latin taster class? Latin opens so many doors …’

  ‘This blazer is boiling,’ the little girl says as she passes our table. ‘Roll on winter!’

  ‘I can offer you a half-share in Rocket, if you like,’ Ryan is saying. ‘He already likes you better than me. You gave him ice cream …’

  I nudge his arm and nod towards the little girl.

  ‘Look,’ I whisper. ‘She’s been to one of those induction mornings at St Bernadette’s. Remember when Hasmita had to do that? It seems like so long ago!’

  ‘Scary uniform,’ Ryan says with a frown. ‘This is the twenty-first century – who wears tan-coloured tights these days? And that skirt; green, orange and yellow tartan? Nasty.’