She interrupted me. “Please don’t start.”
“Start what?”
“Telling me everything that’s wrong with your life. You’re just making it worse for yourself, and you have no idea how draining it is for everyone else.”
I was about to defend myself by explaining that my life really was messed up right now—that I wasn’t exaggerating—but stopped just in time. “We’ve been friends since we were fourteen,” I said. “You know I’m not always like this.”
She said nothing—passively disagreeing with me.
“You think I’ve always been draining?”
“You’ve always been intense,” she said. “Yes.”
In a matter of seconds, my closest girlhood friendship revised itself, then collapsed. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
She sighed, as though she couldn’t believe I didn’t already know. “Because I felt sorry for you.”
Sorry for me because my mother had cancer and was dying? Or because I was such a loser? I didn’t have the stomach to ask. “Well, you had me fooled,” I said, struggling to keep the hurt out of my voice.
“I better go,” said Alana, sounding relieved. “I’m sorry if I’ve upset you.”
I put the phone down. My jaw was stinging, about to crack. Pippa was heading toward me with a saucepan thrust out in front of her.
“You ate the last of the baked beans,” she said. “What’s Caleb going to have for dinner?”
I looked into the dirty saucepan. “Ari told me to eat them,” I said, backing away from her and trying to leave the room before I cried. Halfway up the first flight of stairs, I started to lose it, and by the time I had slammed the door to my room and flung myself on the bed, I was a puddle of childish sobs and dramatic, shivery wails.
Pippa had followed me up the stairs and started patting the bedclothes, trying to find me, but that only made me curl up in a ball and pull them more closely around myself. “It wasn’t my fault!” I cried out. “Leave me alone.”
“Listen to me, Suki,” said Pippa, whose persistence had finally gotten past the duvet. “I didn’t realize Ari told you to eat them.”
“Go away,” I said, covering my face.
“Come on, Suki, I’m just trying to help.”
“I don’t need your help,” I said, staying covered. I knew I was being ridiculous and immature, but it wasn’t enough to snap me out of it.
“You have to let someone in,” said Pippa.
Under the duvet, I froze, listening, cringing.
“I know you’ve had a hard life,” she continued. “But at some point you’ve just got to let it go and move on.”
I didn’t go downstairs again that night, and woke up the next morning on the floor of the attic bathroom with my legs stretched into the shower stall. A damp towel was wedged under my head and my shoulders were covered by a threadbare satin quilt, though I did not remember fetching either of them. When I pushed open Caleb’s door, his room was empty, his faded superhero bedspread in a heap on the floor. I looked in the mirror and hardly recognized the person there. Excessive crying had rinsed the color from my cheeks and left red rings around my eyes. Reluctantly I went downstairs, where Pippa was bustling in the kitchen, listening to a radio drama and cooking scrambled eggs. She said nothing about the night before and quickly turned down the radio when she saw me. “Sorry about the racket,” she said. “The Archers Omnibus is my only addiction. There’s coffee in the pot if you want some.”
“Thanks, it smells great.”
When I sat down at the table, she put a plate of scrambled eggs in front of me and told me to eat up. Dressed in his soccer kit, Caleb stomped in from somewhere and devoured his own plateful of eggs in about three mouthfuls. When Pippa went into the kitchen to fetch the coffeepot, he briefly looked over at me. “You were sleeping in the bathroom again,” he said.
“Did you put the quilt over me?”
“Don’t be stupid.” I thought he looked a little flustered when Pippa came back, but I didn’t challenge him. I was too tired, too shamed. Caleb got up, left his dirty plate on the table, and tied a sweatshirt round his hips, preparing to leave.
“Are you playing on Wormwood Scrubs again?” said Pippa.
Caleb ignored her.
“Please don’t go near the prison,” she said, as if he had responded. “And don’t hang about afterward smoking—even if that’s what the other chaps do.” Caleb rolled his eyes, but Pippa continued, still undaunted, “And if it starts to rain, shelter in a bus stop until it passes.”