The Best Thing I Never Had (12 page)

‘Let me up to just check that, it must be important.’

Begrudgingly, Adam disentangled his legs from hers and shifted so she could stand. After a moments’ search Harriet extricated her phone from her bag – one missed call from Leigha and two from Nicky; the voicemail icon was flashing insistently. Harriet paced the small room as she called her voicemail and cycled through the menu options, enjoying the way Adam watched her proprietorially from the bed as she did.

The voicemail was from Nicky; she rambled nonsensically for the first twenty seconds of the recording before coming to the heart of the matter. Harriet listened in increasing horror. She was already groping for her clothes before the voicemail had ended.

Adam had sensed her obvious change in temperament and was sitting up against the pillows, alarmed. As Harriet dropped her phone he caught sight of the tears that had begun stinging her eyes and jumped to his feet.

‘What is it?’ he asked, catching her in his arms. Harriet only relented against him for a second before blindly pushing her way free and continuing to gather up her strewn clothes.

‘I’ve got to get home,’ she said, voice tight. ‘Sukie’s mum.’

May 2007

The house was disconcertingly quiet without Sukie, who had understandably upped and bundled herself into a taxi before Harriet had even got home. Sukie had been working in the lounge when she got the call from her father. Nobody quite had the heart to clear her stuff away, so one side of the couch was taken up with a collection of dog-eared notes and tatty playbooks, an uncapped biro lying in the spine of the one that lay open.

It seemed wrong to be social, wrong even to sit in the lounge together. As a result, Leigha retired to her bedroom for most of the rest of the week, cruised to 9,978 words and considered it a dissertation well dissertated. Nicky anxiously browsed the Internet to get a feel for both the employment and rental markets of Bath and did not feel encouraged by what she saw.

But Adam was growing increasingly impatient.

‘I can’t believe you actually think
this
is a suitable time,’ Harriet repeated, agitatedly shaking the vinegar canister over her chips.

‘Well, obviously, maybe wait till Sukie comes back,’ Adam granted, ripping open salt and pepper sachets with a little more force than necessary. ‘But for crying out loud, Harry, it’s almost been three months. Three whole months. And I love you.’

Harriet flinched. ‘I know,’ she said, in a voice that was meant to sound reasonable and placating. ‘But that doesn’t change the horrible timing. Welcome home Su, so sorry again for your terrible loss, how was the funeral, oh, by the way, there’s this HUGE thing that’s been going on behind your back…’

Adam rolled his eyes. ‘Stop being dramatic. It doesn’t need to be like that.’

‘It sounds pretty fucking dramatic to me.’

Harriet’s head whipped up as her heart spiked down to her toes. Johnny was standing there, his face like thunder to match the snarl in his voice. Adam was already on his feet, palm held out in appeasement to his best friend.

‘Mate, listen—’

‘Oh, I’m listening alright!’ Johnny laughed harshly. ‘So, what’s been going on, guys? Do I need to sit down for this?’ There was no answer forthcoming from Harriet, who was still in a stage of mute horror. Adam hurried to pull out one of the empty chairs like some sort of sycophantic waiter.

‘Mate,’ Adam tried again, as he sat back down.

‘You guys have been in some secret relationship for months?’ Johnny shook his head in disbelief. ‘I knew it, I fucking knew it. You’ve been acting really odd. You are the only two who caught the mumps. Shit!’ He sat back heavily in his chair. ‘What are you guys playing at? What’s your problem?’

Adam’s face flared with anger. ‘What’s our
problem?
This is our problem. You guys reacting
like this.
We’re in love, for fuck’s sake, can’t you be happy for us!?’

Johnny scowled back. ‘Well did you stop to think that it’s insulting us finding out how you guys have been having a laugh and pissing about behind our backs? I can’t believe this.’

‘Trust me, it has not been having a laugh,’ Adam murmured, rubbing his temple with his fingers.

‘We were just waiting until the right time.’ Harriet had found her voice again, and looked across at Johnny pleadingly. This is what she’d been terrified of; the people she cared for most hating her because of this.

‘And when, pray tell, do you think that would have been?’ Johnny scoffed. ‘When the wedding invitations were in the post?’

‘Look mate, just calm down,’ Adam pleaded. ‘Stuff’s just been up in the air. We were just waiting for Sukie to come back and then we were going to let everyone know.’

‘Whatever.’ Johnny’s voice had lost a lot of its anger; he sounded more disgusted with them now. ‘I can’t believe this,’ he said again, shaking his head slowly. ‘How could you do this to Leigha?’ Harriet wasn’t sure if he was directing this at her, Adam or the pair of them; either way, her heart squeezed sharply in her chest.

‘We’re not doing anything to Leigha!’ Adam cried in annoyance.

‘She’s going to be so mad, isn’t she?’ Harriet said to Johnny, threading her fingers miserably. Johnny gave a mirthless laugh.

‘She’s going to be so mad,’ he agreed. ‘You guys… Shit. I can’t believe it,’ he said, for the third time.

‘But this is why, this is exactly why!’ Harriet said, her voice rising a little hysterically. ‘I didn’t want her – didn’t want –’ She couldn’t finish the sentence but Johnny looked at her with a degree of understanding in his eyes nonetheless. He knew the spirit of what she was trying to say; after all, he knew everything there was to know about Leigha.

‘So, are you going to dob us in, mate?’ Adam said, taking a gamble on humour as he sensed the softening of Johnny’s mood. ‘Tell Leigha on us?’

Johnny stared at the table a few moments without responding, before reaching forward and taking a handful of Harriet’s over-vinegared chips.

‘No,’ he said, through his mouthful. ‘But you guys really need to. And soon.’

‘We will,’ Harriet said, in a rush of relief. ‘Thank you.’

‘We’re really sorry mate, we really didn’t set out to lie to you and everyone,’ Adam said, scratching at his cheek nervously. ‘It all just, kind of happened.’

‘I can imagine,’ Johnny said, ruefully, leaning back in a slightly more relaxed position than before and pinching another handful of chips. ‘So come on then, let’s hear the big love story.’

It had been persistently spitting with rain all day, but by the time the film was over the weather had turned more serious, with heavy rainfall and high wind marbling shapes onto the window glass. Johnny looked out at the squall in resigned trepidation. On the other side of the sofa, Leigha unfurled her legs and stretched like a cat.

‘Looks like you’ll have to backstroke it home,’ she smirked. ‘Man, it’s really heaving it down.’

‘Yeah, I can see that,’ Johnny retorted impatiently, rising to his feet and stopping to pick up his glass and empty crisp packet from the floor. He could feel Leigha’s eyes on him as he moved across to put them in the sink and bin respectively. The big, square room was dim, but suddenly lit up in stark greys and blues as the credits finished rolling and the DVD returned to its menu screen.

‘Fine, just stay here tonight,’ Leigha said, sounding distinctly bored. Johnny looked over his shoulder at her.

‘What, on the sofa?’

Leigha casually got to her feet and moved to turn on the corner lamp, flooding the room with colour again. ‘You know you’re too tall for it; did your back in last time, didn’t it?’ she said. ‘Go in Su’s room. She won’t be back until tomorrow.’ Johnny took another look out of the window, considering the offer for a moment.

‘No, I don’t want to intrude on her space, even if she’s not here, it would feel weird,’ he said, begrudgingly. ‘Maybe I’ll just… borrow a brolly.’

‘Oh, stop being silly. Look, just come up and crash with me,’ Leigha said, moving past him to the sink as if what she was saying wasn’t a massive deal, and pouring herself a fresh glass of water. When he didn’t answer right away she looked up at him playfully through her eyelashes. ‘Come on, Gentleman Blake. It won’t be the first time.’

She didn’t wait for his acceptance, but instead moved off and up the stairs, completely and totally certain that he was going to follow her. For one brief, mad moment, Johnny felt the urge to surprise her, to head off into the wet and the dark rather than spend another tragic night curled up behind – but never quite touching – the girl he loves.

He followed her upstairs, of course, pausing outside the closed door to Sukie’s empty room for a momentary reconsider. There was a ruler of light showing underneath Harriet’s closed bedroom door; Johnny felt another guttering of frustration in his stomach as it brought to mind Adam’s fifty per cent success ratio when it came to this house.

Inside Leigha’s room a soft, repetitive scratching noise began. Leigha sat on her bed, her back to the door – and to him – brushing her skin down with a long-handled brush. Lazily, she nudged the strap of her vest top so that it fell aside, and curved the brush around that shoulder to the back of her neck. Johnny swallowed. God, she made him crazy, drove him to utter distraction and she wasn’t even looking at him. As usual, he dared himself to just do it, just climb onto the bed behind her and trail kisses on the skin that had been scratched pink and warm. As usual, he didn’t.

Leigha pulled the heavy fall of her hair over, concealing the shoulder Johnny had just been contemplating and turning the attention of the body-brush onto the other. Glancing behind her as she did so, she shot him a quizzical look, wondering – quite rightly – why he was standing in the doorway like a tense bouncer. Flushing hot with embarrassment, Johnny hurried inside the room and closed the door behind him. Leigha continued rhythmically brushing her right arm. Johnny awkwardly settled himself on the edge of the bed.

‘Don’t look for a sec,’ Leigha told him, in a smiling voice that suggested she knew just how much he’d want to look. Johnny obediently took out his mobile and stared blankly at its little screen. He heard the shuffle and soft thud of – presumably – Leigha’s pyjama bottoms hitting the floor, and the soothing sound of the brushing resuming.

She could almost see cartoonesque sweat beading on his forehead; poor guy. But there was nothing quite like watching a harmless romantic comedy to start up that itching inside her head, and Leigha knew she didn’t want to be alone tonight. The house was too quiet – Sukie back home with her family, Nicky over with Miles at the boys’ flat, Harriet whey-faced and holed up in her bedroom and Adam pleading his dissertation deadline. It was easy - Leigha was discovering – to feel alone, no matter how many people you surrounded yourself with.

She finished exfoliating her legs and – after a moment’s thought – decided she didn’t need to replace her pyjama bottoms after all. Instead she just swung her bare legs up onto the bed and arranged herself to her best advantage, lying on her side with her head propped up by her elbow. Johnny must have realised the brushing had stopped and that she’d lain down beside him, but he doggedly continued playing on his phone, presumably until she otherwise instructed. Leigha smiled.

‘Let’s talk,’ Leigha commanded from where she lay, perilously close to him. Johnny briefly panicked over whether or not it was okay to put his mobile phone down on her bedside table before deciding that it probably was.

‘What about?’ he asked, tilting his body casually towards hers and trying to mirror her nonchalant pose by propping his head up too; it wasn’t particularly comfortable on his elbow but it would have been too embarrassing to reposition so soon.

‘Anything!’ Leigha laughed. ‘What’s new with you?’

Immediately, every single aspect of his life – aside from the hours spent either with or thinking about her – fled his brain.

‘Oh, you know,’ he said, blithely. ‘Revision. And stuff.’

‘Ack, revision!’ Leigha daintily screwed up her nose. ‘I literally cannot wait until it’s all over, can you?’ Johnny shifted, awkwardly.

‘Well, I wouldn’t go that far,’ he said. ‘I’m not exactly looking forward to moving back in with my parents.’

‘Well, it won’t be like you’re underfoot,’ Leigha pointed out, readjusting so that one of her bare legs stroked leisurely against the other. Her vest top rode up against her stomach, almost imperceptible, were it not for the metallic flash as her belly button stud became exposed to the light. ‘With your internship. You’ll be out and about.’

She was right; he couldn’t complain. There was gainful employment and roast dinners aplenty waiting for him back in Bradford; he’d managed to wangle the coveted internship on the city’s newspaper. It paid little more than expenses, really, but who knew what it could lead to. He’d been so elated with himself the day he was accepted, he’d felt electric. Now, looking across at his beautiful, disobliging Leigha, he just felt vaguely sick. The thought of being four, five hours on the train away from her; sick, sick, sick. Would she even bother staying in contact with him?

‘I’m just going to kick back, relax,’ Leigha continued. ‘Sign up with some recruitment consultancies, see what there is to see job-wise…’ Johnny smiled crookedly at her; it was an old topic of conversation between them.

‘I don’t know how you can just – not have a plan,’ he told her. ‘Not even have the slightest clue what sort of job you want.’

‘Hey, I do so have a plan,’ Leigha retorted immediately. ‘The plan is just to get the first decent job going and move out into London, back into together. Nothing wrong with that as a plan.’

‘You and the girls?’ Maybe he and Adam could get a place? How high was London rent? Maybe he could get the same sort of internship down here…

‘Yeah, well, Nicky’s going off with Miles,’ Leigha frowned, waving her hand dismissively. ‘And who knows what’s going to go on with Su now. She’ll probably want to stay close to home for a while. She’s got two kid sisters and her dad’s always travelled a lot on business, so they’ll need her,’ she said sadly. ‘So, maybe it’ll just be me and Harry – at first, anyway. God,’ she smiled. ‘There’s going to be
mountains
of washing up in
that
flat…’

He could picture it. Leigha and Harriet in a cute little flat, he and Adam living only a couple of tube stops away. Things would be more or less the same as now, better even: him and Adam over at the girls’ all the time, slobbing on the couches, eating takeaway and watching films, each with their arms around their respective girlfriend. In that split second, it just seemed so fucking achievable; Johnny’s chest cavity suddenly burned with an elation that was almost painful.

‘Adam and I were talking about getting a flat together in London,’ he lied. Leigha’s eyebrows arched.

‘Yeah? He was mentioning moving to London when we were talking the other day,’ she said, nonchalantly. The burn inside Johnny suddenly rushed cold. When was this? Was it just around the house, a conversation that he’d somehow missed? Or had the two of them had lunch together, or another random coffee date? The way she spoke about him, so proprietary; she always had, he knew, but
why still?
Why, when she knew Adam didn’t want her and she knew that Johnny did – God, so, so much? It wasn’t so very long ago that they’d spent the night together in this very bed, drunkenly kissing under the weight of the covers, slick with sweat.