The Best Thing I Never Had

I live a happy life full of wonderful friends, in love with a man who buys me books instead of flowers. To mix things up a little, I write books where friends and lovers hit obstacles and (usually) overcome them. When I’m not doing that I read absolutely everything I can get my hands on, spend an inordinate amount of time in pyjamas and run a fun-but-informative blog on British history.

To my friends;

old, new,

ex, and those

yet to come.

but mostly:

for Oli, who

once upon a time

kissed me in the snow,

when he wasn’t supposed to.

February 2012

Nicky took the proposal in the same undemanding way in which it was offered. You know I love you, he had said, followed by: please – twice. It was like receiving a promotion when you were the only applicant in the running; she was grateful and excited, sure, but she couldn’t really say that it had been ‘unexpected’.

She stretched restlessly in bed the morning after – one day into being twenty-six years old, one day into being engaged – watching the dust dance in the slant of dawn from the skylight window. She watched as the fixtures and furnishings of the little studio flat grew pale and distinct and – rather disappointingly – looked just the same as ever. Beside her Miles lay sprawled on his front.

Nicky pulled her arm behind her head and thought back to the first bed they had shared; a single, he had not been able to sprawl then. So that first morning they’d woken spooned together, a curiously intimate position for a one night stand. He’d kept his hair longer then and it curled around his cheek and tickled at hers. She’d lain there, cramped and uncomfortable, and wondered how to get him to leave without seeming rude.

She had been laden down with Tesco bags that evening, her housemate opening the front door for them, when they both caught sight of the post-it note at the same time. Nicky had dropped one of the carrier bags to the ground and reached to peel it off the glass of her window; a little blue ink heart on the yellow square, stuck facing inwards to her bedroom. And, just in case she had hoards of men leaving hearts stuck to her window, Miles had thoughtfully added an M and an x for a kiss in the corner.

She still had it, somewhere, in a box with old text books, perhaps.

* * *

Leigha had, as her mother always put it, done very well for herself. She had her nails done every two weeks and her hair every four – whether they strictly needed it or not. Home was a minimally furnished leasehold apartment in a Georgian mansion block off the Gloucester Road, which she spent very little time in.

So, true to form, she wasn’t at home when she got Nicky’s text: she was in the office and already on her second latte and paracetamol combination of the morning. She read it three times before fully absorbing the content and breaking into a lazy smile.

Dear Nicky. She couldn’t remember the last text she’d had had from her, couldn’t put a finger on the last time they would have seen each other. Leigha rarely ventured out of London these days. Nicky belonged to a different place, a different time; one where she used to sleep until noon, ironed her hair poker straight every day without fail and, as a rule, only drank fruity cocktails – as wine used to give her a headache.

But still, here it was in black and white on her Blackberry screen: Nicky was calling in a years-old promise and Leigha was called to be a bridesmaid.

Dear Nicky, she thought again, absently, as her attention flicked back to her computer screen. I must give her a call after work.

* * *

Sukie was vaguely aware of her phone going off from downstairs but persuading her two particularly unwilling teenage sisters into their uniforms and onto the bus was taking up the majority of her attention.

Twenty minutes later, the table had been wiped clean, the dishwasher stacked, the laundry put on and Sukie went back to bed, tugging her mobile free from the charger cable as she climbed in. She felt a flicker of anticipation as she read the text. Always a little quicker off the mark than Leigha, she could immediately follow Nicky’s thinking.

She tilted back on her pillow to better see the cork board that hung at the head of her bed. A digital photo printed out on paper, so many years ago now that the ends were curled completely over on themselves: herself and her three university housemates, all in pastels, pale, thin arms looped around and around one another like the rings of a magic trick. Sukie knew that if she had received a text asking her to be a bridesmaid, then Leigha had as well and so – it could be assumed – had Harriet.

Sukie fired off an appropriately excited and congratulatory response to Nicky and dropped her phone to her bedside table. She pulled herself up to her knees and reached to smooth down the curling edges of the photo. Harriet smiled out from the middle of the group, one arm around Sukie, one arm around Nicky. Sukie brought her hand away and the white edges sprang back.

* * *

Johnny cast a desperate look at the closed en-suite door. Was it worth a dash to the communal bathroom up on the second floor? Risk running into one of the abundant flatmates? No, surely she’d be out soon. He shuffled from foot to foot on the spot. What had possessed him to stay the night? He knew this would happen. He was going to be so late for work and look like shit to boot.

There wasn’t even a clock in here. He grabbed his mobile from the bedside table and turned it on. 08.38. Fuck.

He was so distracted that he read the text that had popped up twice before he really registered its content. When it did hit home, he sat down heavily on the end of Iona’s bed, scratching at the stubble on his chin absently.

At that moment Iona came out of the bathroom in a cloud of warmth and steam, her body and hair wrapped in matching hot pink towels.

‘I’m so glad you’re here to get me up early,’ she spoke through her yawn, as he dashed past her into the bathroom and shut the door. ‘I’ve really got to get to the library by eleven. ’

Eleven! Bloody lazy students. Johnny made a face at his reflection as he wiped the condensation off the mirror with the flat of his hand.

* * *

Harriet read the text whilst waiting for the lift, her mobile in one hand, a cardboard tray of Starbucks’ coffees balanced in the other.

During their last dinner together, back before Christmas, Nicky had drunk too much rosé and confided in Harriet that she expected a proposal within the next six months. Miles had, at long last, finished his PhD and would finally be making money. What better way to express his gratitude to the girlfriend who had upped-sticks and moved across the country with him – then financed five years of him researching one of the more obscure battles of the Wars of the Roses – other than purchasing an appropriately sized diamond with his first few doctorate pay cheques? Harriet had thought Nicky was damn right to expect it.

She automatically pressed Reply, backed out of the Reply screen to read the message through once more, pressed Reply again, and paused.

She had herself almost convinced; surely, after almost five years, she was the only one stupid enough to still be thinking about it? Things could never be like they were before, but maybe, at the very least, they could stand there for one day in identical dresses. They could share old smiles, clasp arms and sing along to old songs. Maybe Adam would seek her out, look at her up and down in that old way he had of looking at her that she would never forget.

Harriet began to tap out her reply with the side of her thumb: Of course, of course I will be your Maid of Honour!!

* * *

Adam had his text from Miles the night before. He had felt his iPhone buzz in his suit trouser pocket – apologised to his companion for bad date etiquette – and read the text with appreciation.

‘She said yes!’ he grinned at his date, on an automatic impulse to share the moment. She stared at him blankly, thrown by the sudden change in conversation. ‘My mate’s proposed to his girl,’ Adam clarified. ‘I’m going to be best man!;’ and suddenly she was off, talking a mile-a-minute about all the weddings she had attended over the last year, and wasn’t it funny how everyone seemed to be getting married lately?

It suddenly struck Adam that there was finally going to be a wedding. He’d spent months knowing Miles was going to propose on Nicky’s birthday. He’d even gone ring shopping with him, helped him book the chapel on their old University campus. Now the ring was on the finger, quite literally speaking, and they were all on countdown for an Easter wedding.

After the purchase was complete they’d gone for a pint, the ring with its respectable diamond quiet in its plush black box on the table in front of them. Miles had scratched under his chin in that nervous way he had. ‘I assume… she’d want… the other girls. You know, as bridesmaids?’

Adam had taken a long sip from his pint while he arranged his answer. ‘I guess’.’There was no point pretending he didn’t know which other girls Miles was referring to.

‘So it will be, like, a reunion,’ Miles had said carefully, taking a long draught of his lager himself.

‘To be honest mate, it’s about time’,’ Adam had answered, and had meant it.

He drew his attention back to his date, describing the halter-neck bow that had been on her dress for her sister’s wedding. Her arms were held up above her shoulders, bent backwards at a strange angle as she laughed at herself for not being able to articulate what she meant. She looked very soft, very sweet, and suddenly Adam felt an impractical urge.

Let’s leave the rest of the bottle – he wanted to say to her – let’s go for a walk along the river. Let me tell you a story, from when I was young and stupid.

‘That sounds really nice though,’ was what he said instead, re-filling her glass with wine.

September 2006 – June 2007

September 2006

The Nokia rumbled against the table; Nicky was up like a shot, grabbing the phone and pulling the charger cable taut against the screen of the TV. Leigha immediately made inarticulate sounds of protest through a mouthful of dinner.

‘Miles?’ Harriet asked.

Nicky didn’t bother to take the phone off charge, instead reading the text message standing slouched against the wall. Her mouth twisted; she tapped her thumbnail against the side of the phone nervously before looking up at her three housemates, who were looking back at her expectantly, eating momentarily forgotten.

‘He’s found somewhere,’ she said finally, though she still chewed absently at her bottom lip.

‘Hurrah,’ Sukie replied, with probably a little more feeling than was tactful. Leigha shot her a quick look.

‘Cool, nearby?’ she asked Nicky, who had placed her mobile back on the table without sending a reply. Nicky’s lip-chewing intensified.

‘The high street, actually.’

‘Wow, that’s lucky!’

‘It’s above the estate agents’,’ Nicky interrupted, before the impression that this was a good thing could cement.

‘Well, that doesn’t mean it’s not still really convenient,’ tried Harriet.

‘It’s with two blokes he’s never even met, and they’re undergrads.’

‘Oh no, however will he cope? It’s not like he’s dating one. It’s not like he’s just been squatting in the house of four all summer.’ Sukie rolled her eyes, helping herself to some more rice from the foil takeaway container on the floor.

‘It’s only three hundred, and that includes some bills,’ Nicky continued – although nobody had asked – ‘so maybe we’ll still be able to have something put away by graduation.’

‘Not if you keep getting Chinese takeaway,’ Sukie said through a mouthful of rice. Nicky ignored her and returned to her place on the sofa, looking about herself for her fork.

‘When does he move in?’ Harriet asked, tilting her head back to better see Nicky’s face from where she sat on the floor in front of the sofa.

‘He can from tomorrow.’

‘Means I can start walking around in my underwear again!’ Sukie laughed.

‘Yippee,’ mumbled Nicky, pulling her fork from the gap between the sofa cushions.

* * *

So, here he was, back for his final year at university. It seemed like no time at all since he’d been an embarrassment of a Fresher and now it was the beginning of the end.

Shaking off the rather uncharacteristically maudlin chain of thought, Adam immediately made himself at home, giving the most cursory of goodbyes to his damp-eyed mother (always emotional during the return-to-term farewell) and lugging his suitcase up the stairs, leaving it unopened just inside the doorway to his bedroom, where he was pretty sure it would remain until at least Reading Week.

The room smelt warm and musty from being shut up the whole summer but otherwise looked and felt much the same. At the foot of his unmade bed was a neat pile of envelopes, post that had arrived for him over the summer. Adam suddenly felt a little flare of annoyance at the presumption, the embarrassing politeness, at what he assumed to be the work of his new housemate.

He and Johnny had harboured serious hopes that their landlord wouldn’t be able to let the box-room after their mate Mike sodded off on his placement year in industry, and their third year would just be the two of them. Of course, it was too much to hope for, that the guy’d be able to overlook the rent being short by a couple of hundred quid each month, and unsurprisingly, he’d rustled someone up. All Adam knew was that it was a guy, a postgrad, and his name was Miles.

It transpired that Miles was indeed embarrassingly polite, just the sort of guy that would sort a stranger’s post for him and leave it in a neatly right-angled pile in his room. Nice enough, but he seemed so terribly old and serious; when he was at home he was closeted in the tiny box-room studying. Not that he was often at home. Because what Adam and Johnny found most irritating about Miles Healy was that he wanted to be there even less than they wanted him there.

Miles, it came as surprise, had a girlfriend, Nicola, who lived down the road. He’d spent the summer living there with her, being fussed and cosseted over without having to pay a penny towards rent or board; by all accounts, quite a jammy git. Miles’ abrupt deterioration in circumstance to a rather damp, lacking in furniture, second floor flat above the estate agents’ on the high street was purely down to the girls’ landlord belatedly working out that he had an unofficial tenant. It contravened the tenancy agreement, he blustered, and Miles was out on his ear. It was two weeks before the start of term and every last measly room in the main town and the neighbouring student village had gone; apart from, of course, their box-room. Probably something to do with the fact that it hadn’t had a carpet. Or a window that opened.

And eventually, after a tactful few days for the boys to acclimatise to one another, the girlfriend arrived, with a housewifely smile and a casserole in a Perspex dish. Johnny and Adam were – surprised. She was dirty blonde, tall and coltish, with a shy, unexpectedly pretty face.

‘Talk about Legs Eleven!’ Johnny whispered to Adam the second Nicky’s attention was on serving out the food. Adam subtly held up his two middle fingers in agreement: their private sign for ‘that bird has cracking pins’.

Nicky had let the boys dominate the conversation, interjecting here and there to encourage Miles to tell specific anecdotes, keeping the beer flowing, nurturing what had initially felt reasonably formal into easy chat. And then, at the end of the night, as Nicky pulled on her shoes, Miles hesitated.

‘I think I’ll stay here tonight, pet,’ he said, haltingly, looking over at Johnny. ‘You need to show me this so-called “dream team” on your Pro Evo!’

‘Ah, mate, it’s a work of art!’ Johnny had been banging on about the particular merits of his carefully crafted digital football team the entire evening. ‘I’ll bring my Playstation downstairs.’

Nicky smiled to herself as she finished tying her laces. ‘Okay, love. See you tomorrow?’ Miles gave her a distracted smile and kiss on the forehead before bounding up the stairs with Johnny to help him disconnect his console from his bedroom television.

‘It was nice to meet you, Nicky,’ Adam said politely, upon being left alone in the lounge with the girl. ‘That dinner was great. Feel free to come back, any time!’ he teased.

Nicky laughed. ‘Oh, I’m sure you’ll be seeing me around!’ She paused at the head of the stairs that led down to street level and the flat’s front door. ‘We’re having a party, me and the girls I live with, across on Dell Road? A sort of “back to school” sort of thing.’ She used her fingers to mime satirical quotation marks. ‘On Saturday. You guys up for it?’

‘Er, yeah.’ Adam stepped back to let Johnny through, trailing a quagmire of black cables. ‘We’ll definitely try to make it.’

Deciding that it was infinitely cooler to turn up a couple of hours late, making it seem like they’d had ‘another thing’ on, Adam and Johnny had sat in their lounge drinking Carlsberg and playing Pro Evo for the first half of Saturday evening, before pulling on their shoes and making the five minute walk into the heart of the student village.

The door was open, with people spilling out into the front garden. A slight, Oriental girl looked up at them quizzically from where she was sitting on the crumbling garden wall – mid-way through bringing a cigarette she had bummed from her companion to her lips – but didn’t seem bothered enough to object to their entering the house. They pushed past the bodies congregating in the hallway and at the foot of the stairs, coming through to a large, open-plan kitchen–diner. Adam nervously adjusted the bottle of cheap wine he was holding by its neck.

A brunette girl in a dark pink skater-style dress had turned away from her conversation, throwing her hair over her shoulder as she did. She smiled at them.

‘Beads!’ she said, very matter-of-factly.

‘Sorry?’ Adam thought he must have misheard.

‘Beads,’ the girl repeated, her smile growing wider. ‘And a punishment shot. You don’t come late to our parties.’ She had turned to a shoe box on the kitchen worktop which was filled half-way to the top with necklaces of plastic beads, delved her hand deep into the clicking mass of them. She untangled two necklaces, draped them around his and Johnny’s necks and was turned back to the worktop in a flash, the short skirt of her dress flirting around her upper thighs as she twisted.

‘So, who do you belong to?’ she
asked conversationally, pouring generous measures of Sambuca into two comedy shot glasses.

‘Er, Miles,’ Johnny answered, quickly. ‘Er, I mean, not that we, I mean-’

‘He’s moved into our flat,’ Adam supplied, with a touch more poise. He shot the rosy-faced Johnny a look.

‘Aha!’ the girl said, looking back at them with renewed interest, spinning the lid of the Sambuca bottle tight against the flat of her hand. ‘Well, welcome guys. I’m Nicky’s housemate. I’m Leigha.’ Then she held out a shot glass to each of them like a handshake.

‘Hey. Adam,’ Adam said, taking the shot without complaint.

‘Johnny,’ Johnny introduced himself in the most nonchalant tone imaginable, whilst his fingers fumbled as Leigha passed over his shot glass; he had to suck the spillage from between his thumb and forefinger.

‘And this is Harriet,’ Leigha gestured behind her to the girl she had been talking to when they arrived, who had been leaning against the fridge and smiling a small smile throughout the whole exchange. She was petite – downright boyish in frame, especially standing next to her curvy friend – with dark, dark hair cut short at the nape of her neck.

‘Hiya,’ Adam nodded to the girl politely, which Johnny echoed before downing his shot as manfully as he could manage and handing the empty glass back to their hostess, whose attention had already drifted across the room.

‘I recognise you,’ Harriet said. Adam looked at her quizzically. Their campus was a small one; after two full years, it wasn’t too unlikely that she might know his face. ‘You do English with me,’ she finished. It wasn’t a question.

‘Er, yeah.’ Adam searched her face again; she had eyes as dark as her hair. He didn’t recognise her.

‘You guys!’ Nicky was suddenly there, her fair hair in a fat plait over one shoulder, and clearly slightly drunk as she launched into a series of clumsy hugs. ‘You made it!’

‘Yeah, we thought we’d drop by,’ smiled Johnny, although he turned his head away to watch as Leigha moved away from them across the kitchen and started to converse with somebody else, the girl who’d been smoking in the front garden, who turned a liquid gaze upon them.

‘So, you’re the fresh meat,’ she said, baldly, as she stepped closer to them. Adam blanched and laughed nervously.

Nicky, swaying on needlessly high heels, spoke before he had a chance to retort. ‘Johnny, Adam, this is Leigha, and Harriet, and Sukie.’ She gestured with a lazy flick of her hand to each of the girls who were gathered around them as she spoke. ‘My housemates,’ she finished, with an indulgent smile.

‘Okay, so everybody knows everybody,’ Sukie said, impatiently. She reached behind Johnny for the half-empty bottle of Sambuca. ‘I thought we were here to have a party, not a debutante ball.’ She began to form a line of sticky, empty shot glasses ready for the stream of Sambuca that was yet to come. ‘Now, is anybody up for a game of Twenty Ones?’