Page 17 of Sad Girl Hours

Chapter Sixteen

Saffron

It’s my party and I can’t cry, but I’d really quite like to.

“This is a great party, Saff,” Lucille, one of my friends from Athletics Club, is saying to me.

“Thank you so much,” I say. “It’s all the others’ work, though. They’re the real masterminds behind tonight.” I toss a smile to Casper, who smiles back at me with a pastry-laden mouth.

He gulps his sausage roll down, throat bobbing like a cartoon character. “It’s not every day two of your best friends turn twenty. In fact, it’s only one day; I doubt this will ever occur again.”

Everywhere I go there are people wishing me a Happy Birthday or telling me what a great evening it is.

I pass out thank yous like party favours, moving between rooms, never staying in one place too long, making sure everyone’s having the nice time they claim they are.

When people request songs, I add them to the queue.

If someone’s drink is empty, I say I’m going to the kitchen anyway so I’ll get them another.

I’ve never been a particular fan of my birthday; it’s never really been anything special before. I enjoyed this afternoon, just crafting with Nell and trying to pretend like it was only her birthday and not mine too, but the necklace around my neck reminds me otherwise.

I didn’t exactly have a great morning. When I woke up, it was still dark outside and it felt like the darkness was pressing in on me.

The cold has finally snapped this week, meaning getting out of bed feels even harder, knowing I’ll be emerging from my bed where I feel safe and warm, out into the rest of the world, which feels like neither.

And then, at uni, they gave us the dates for our end-of-term exams and putting them in my planner made me feel thoroughly nauseated.

I missed so much last year. What if I don’t do well again? Things actually count this year. I can’t afford to screw up again.

And then there’s also the card sitting under the key bowl in the hallway, carefully opened, closed again and returned to its place. I recognised my mother’s handwriting immediately. Capital letters. No excessive curls.

I recognised the card from our junk drawer at home, a generic one with a daisy on the front. Inside, it read: Saffron, Happy Birthday. Mum and Dad. That was all. No ‘love from’, not even a ‘to’. No present.

Not that I need presents or I’m not grateful for everything they’ve done for me in the past, but…

I’m wearing a sunflower necklace. My favourite flower. Bought for me by Nell ’s parents, who’ve met me once and deemed me important enough to go to a shop and pick something out for me – something that I genuinely love.

It’s weird but when I think about the necklace I get the same feeling inside I did when my grandparents died. I’m just not sure what it is I’m grieving this time.

I should be thankful. I should be dancing with these people who’ve come to celebrate me and Nell. I should be laughing and joking.

I feel the all-too-familiar mismatch between the person I know I should be and the person I actually am lunge at me jarringly, trying to jolt tears out of my eyes.

But I’m Saffron Lawrence. Life of the party. I make everyone else feel comfortable, even ( especially ) when I don’t feel comfortable myself.

I keep trying, I really do. I play a drinking game with some people on the landing, diligently doing a couple of shots and smiling on the outside while internally I think that I deserve to feel the sting of the alcohol catching at my throat.

I excuse myself after my second shot. I don’t like getting drunk. Who knows what would come out if I wasn’t able to keep hold of myself the way I normally do?

I head back downstairs, the music thumping through the building. I dropped off some cupcakes and a note inviting our neighbours on either side to the party and apologising in advance for the noise if they didn’t want to come, but I still worry that we’re disturbing them.

I’m about to go into the lounge to try to sneakily turn the music down a couple of decibels when I see Nell leaving, slipping round people to get to the front door, face determined, but also a little sad.

I’ve never seen Nell like that, eyes softened into sadness, mouth not curved up into a grin or twisted into an expression of righteous indignation or something similar.

I don’t like seeing her like that.

I change course from the lounge to the front door and pull it open, stepping out into the night. Nell is leaning against the low brick wall, surrounded by a halo of white light from the street lamp across the road.

“Nell?”

She takes a second before twisting round to face me. “Hi,” she says as I perch on the wall next to her.

“Are you OK?” I ask, leaning into her side.

She leans back, I think unconsciously, staring straight ahead. “Mmm. I think so. You?”

“I asked you first.” I smile, though she’s not looking.

“And I answered.”

“Very vaguely,” I say, making sure to keep my voice soft in jest.

“Maybe I’m not in a particularly committal mood.”

“Then what kind of mood are you in?”

She turns to face me now, eyes dancing with amusement and the warm glow of the fairy lights that are strung round our window indoors. “I know what kind of mood you’re in, Miss Inquisitive.”

“It’s lovely to meet you too, Miss Evasive.”

She laughs but her eyes are still heavy with the weight of something unsaid. I think she sees my concern because the laughter fades away into a sigh. “I just…” she starts. “I just wish I knew why I feel certain things. Or, rather, why I don’t feel certain things.”

This does little to clarify anything for me. But instead of elaborating, she says, “Why are you out here anyway? It’s your birthday – you should be celebrating.”

“It’s your birthday too. And I was, kind of. But I saw you leave and you looked sad, so I followed you.”

“Funny,” Nell says. “That’s exactly what happened at New Year’s Eve.”

I cast my mind back to standing outside in the quad in the freezing cold. “Wait.” I frown. “I thought you just came out for some fresh air that night. I didn’t know you’d come after me.”

“Well, I had,” Nell says simply. “I wanted to make sure you were OK.”

“We’d only just met.”

“Yes, and? You made a good impression. And besides, no one should be alone at New Year’s Eve. Even a pretend one.”

“Or on their birthday,” I add, trying not to think about all my past birthdays.

“I’m not alone,” Nell says. “You’re here.”

“Yes,” I answer. “I am.”

I don’t generally feel that close to people. I mean, I do but there’s always the thought in the back of my mind, the alarm bells ringing that it won’t last, that they don’t really care about me, or that they wouldn’t if they really, truly knew me.

I don’t feel any of that right now. I can’t hear any alarms. Just the muffled music and laughter from inside. And all I can feel is Nell’s left arm against my right.

The words come out before I’m aware I’ve thought them. “My parents sent me a card.”

“Oh,” Nell says. “That’s nice?”

“No,” I say, chest pounding like it’s in the final beats of a countdown.

“No?”

Without more words, I go to the door, feeling Nell’s confusion follow me, slip inside quietly and fetch the card, before coming back out and handing it silently to Nell.

She pulls it out of the envelope. “ Saffron, Happy Birthday. Mum and Dad. Hmm. Chatty, aren’t they? What did they say when you spoke to them?”

“I haven’t spoken to them. They haven’t called. Or texted. All I got was this.” I take the card from her and put it back in the envelope, like if it’s tucked away it doesn’t exist.

Nell is looking at me like I’ve grown another head. “That card is all you got? No present or anything?”

“I got this,” I say, lifting up my sunflower. “And you guys all gave me really lovely things.”

“But that was it?” she says. “From your parents?” She’s saying it like she doesn’t understand, and I’m not sure if it’s making me feel better or worse. When I don’t say anything in response, she fills in the silence herself.

“Saffron, that’s AWFUL. What kind of people don’t speak to their child on their birthday ?

They should be overjoyed ; they should be dancing in the streets.

This is the day that the world changed from a Saffron James Lawrence-less place to one with her, an infinitely better place. They should be doing this.”

She steps forward a few paces into the deserted street and starts violently disco dancing like she’s just watched Saturday Night Fever and then done a large quantity of drugs.

“LOOK. Dancing. Celebrating. What a day this is,” she pants, now doing the Hot To Go dance, despite the absence of the song.

I’m not sure whether to laugh or cry. I decide to opt for laughter. “You’re ridiculous.”

“Personally I think I’m being very sane. This is the only rational response to you entering the world.”

“I love you, you know? You absolute buffoon,” I say through another laugh.

“I love you too,” Nell says, attempting a moonwalk. “OK, I’m going to stop dancing soon but please don’t think I’m not dancing on the inside about the fact that you exist, because I am. Constantly.”

Something slips over on the laugh-to-cry-o-meter and tears fill my eyes. I think they’re the good kind, but Nell’s by my side instantly anyway.

“Oh no. What’s wrong? Was my dancing that bad?”

“Your dancing was wonderful,” I say with a watery smile. “I just … I’ve never had any of this before. I’ve never told anyone about my parents.”

Nell’s quiet for a moment before she speaks again. “What are they like?”

“I don’t think they like being parents,” I say, voicing aloud for the first time what I’ve wondered all my life.

“So … they just kind of try not to be. They had me because that’s what people did, but I’ve never really felt …

anything from them. There was this time, when I was a kid …

it was my tenth birthday, I think.” I say it like I don’t remember vividly.

“I was really upset. I didn’t know why, I just felt sad , and I kept crying, but my parents got tired of me saying that I didn’t know what was wrong so they sent me to bed.

But I still couldn’t stop crying. I just felt so… ” My voice trails off.

It was the first year that I felt properly low.

It came around mid-September and never fully left again.

“Anyway,” I carry on, “eventually, many hours later, I must have fallen asleep. When I woke up in the morning, I went to go downstairs and I tripped over a pillow that had been left outside my door.”

Nell’s brow wrinkles. “Why would they just sleep outside instead of coming into your room if they were worried?”

I feel my centre of gravity deepening towards the earth’s core. Of course she would think that that was what they did. She has parents who love her.

“No,” I say softly. “That’s not why it was there.”

“Then why?” Nelle asks, still looking confused. But then it hits her. Her jaw juts out. “ To block out the noise. ”

I nod.

“That’s…” She doesn’t seem to have words. She takes a few moments but, when she lifts her head, her eyes are brimming with fire. “That’s horrible. You were just a kid… And you’ve known that’s what it was for since you were ten?”

“Yep.”

I’d known it before then on some level but that was the day I fully understood that my emotions were an inconvenience to my parents, that it would be better for them if I hid things inside.

That’s why they’ve been even worse since I came home last January.

I had to admit to them that I wasn’t OK, and they had to watch me cry every day.

I know I have seasonal affective disorder – I went to the doctor’s when I was in sixth form and told them about how I can feel low all year round, but things are amplified in the darker months.

They gave me some leaflets, put through a referral for counselling I never heard back from and told me to make another appointment if things got worse.

I didn’t tell my parents. I knew they’d just think I was making excuses.

Part of me wonders whether I’m just making excuses.

But anyway. That’s why they’ve been worse this past year. I broke our unspoken agreement. I let my feelings win.