Free Heart-Shaped Bruise by Tanya Byrne Page B

then, you’re sixteen, you’re supposed to be dismissive. You know everything, right?’
    I heard her chuckle and I think she was waiting for me to chuckle back. When I didn’t, she sighed. ‘Okay. Rose, I know how painful this is. I can feel it, believe me. I’d gladly have a bikini wax over this.’ She sighed again, more melodramatically this time. ‘But the reason I’m putting us both through this is because I think you need to talk to someone. You’re obviously very bright but your tutors say that you’re quiet and withdrawn in class and you’ve lost weight since I last saw you.’
    That hit me like a slap. ‘Hold on.’ I glared at her over the cluttered desk. ‘Let me get this straight, there are eight thousand students at this college. Eight
thousand
. Someone came into the canteen last week with a butcher’s knife and you drag me in here because I’ve lost a couple of pounds?’
    She rolled her eyes. ‘I don’t drag, Rose. I charm.’
    ‘What do you want from me?’ I snapped. And I shouldn’t have, but I could feel the panic bristling across my scalp.
    ‘I don’t want anything from you, Rose. I just want you to be okay.’
    ‘I am okay.’
    The phone started ringing then. I waited for her to answer it, but she picked it up and put it back down again. ‘Okay. If you say so. But I’m just saying: I know things are rubbish right now and it helps to have someone to talk to.’
    ‘I do have people to talk to. Do you?’
    She laughed at that, then looked at me with a small smile. ‘Not really. My best friend had a miscarriage last week. She’s been trying for years and it was her third so she’s devastated,’ she said, almost to herself. ‘But I need to talk to her, about the divorce and selling the house and the twenty-minute row I had with my ex last week over a vase I threw against a wall so that neither of us could have it.’
    She shook her head. ‘But I can’t talk to her because she’s going through hell and she doesn’t need to hear me ranting about a vase. But that happens sometimes, Rose, you want to talk about stuff but you can’t because your friends are going through things – real things, painful things – and you can’t talk to them because your stuff doesn’t feel as important as theirs. So I’m just saying—’
    ‘I know what you’re saying,’ I interrupted with a defeated sigh. ‘You’re not exactly being subtle about it. You think I can’t talk to Nancy because my parents got divorced and hers died. I get it.’ I sighed again. ‘If I want to talk, I can talk to you.’
    ‘Don’t talk to me! I can’t help you. Look at the state of me.’ She pointed at her tangle of curls. ‘I forgot to wash the conditioner out of my hair this morning.’
    I couldn’t help but laugh. Grace Humm is the only personwho has ever been able to make me go from livid to silly in less than thirty seconds.
    ‘Of course you can talk to me, Rose. Or the qualified counsellor in Welfare who is less likely to use your parents’ divorce as an excuse to whinge about her own.’
    She winked at me and I smiled. ‘Thanks, Miss.’
    I stood up, but before I walked to the door, I turned to look at her again. ‘Out of curiosity, how do you eat a cheesecake straight from the freezer without breaking your jaw?’
    She stared at me like it was the most obvious thing in the world. ‘Lick it like an ice lolly, of course.’
    Of course.

I got a reprieve from talking about Sid today because Doctor Gilyard wanted to talk about Uncle Alex. I don’t know why. Maybe she’s trying to lull me into a false sense of security and I’ll wake up tonight to find her standing over me with her notebook.
Tell me about Sid
.
    I actually shuddered as I wrote that.
    She started our session this week with: ‘Your Uncle Alex was supposed to be looking after you while your father was in prison.’
    It wasn’t the best start. I wanted to punch her in the face.
    ‘He
did
look after me,’ I told her with a