The Best Thing I Never Had (4 page)

December 2006

Nicky shrieked in concern as Harriet balanced precariously on the arm of the sofa in her attempt to restick a rogue piece of tinsel. ‘Come down from there, you idiot!’

‘Yes, let someone taller do it, short stuff,’ Miles agreed, lending Harriet his shoulder to stabilise herself and allow her to hop down to the cushions and then to the floor.

Sukie craned her neck to see what strange concoction Leigha was mixing in their house’s one good saucepan.

‘You’re not ready yet,’ Leigha observed mildly.

‘You’re ready way too early,’ Sukie countered, leaning forward to sniff at the pungent cocktail. ‘We really should have bought a jug.’

‘We’ve been saying that for years,’ Leigha laughed. ‘And this works just as well really.’

‘And what’s one of our house parties without your famous Pan Punch?’ Sukie agreed.

‘Infamous more like!’ Nicky corrected from across the room.

‘The first time I drank that stuff I ended up spontaneously inventing and performing a dance routine to ‘My Humps’,’ Miles frowned.

‘Oh God!’ cried Harriet.

‘I’d forgotten…’ Nicky laughed, burying her face in her hands.

‘Don’t worry Miles, there’s not as much tequila in it this time,’ Leigha called, winking heavily at Sukie. Sukie grinned.

‘Shall we crack some out now?’ she asked, reaching for the ladle.

‘Uh uh uh!’ Leigha snatched it up out of her reach. ‘No cocktail for ladies not in their cocktail dress.’

‘Ley, it’s not even five thirty yet,’ Harriet moaned.

‘It’s New Year’s Eve, what does that matter?’ Leigha countered, dropping the ladle into the saucepan with a splash.

‘Wow.’ Adam coughed in surprise. ‘This drink doesn’t taste as girly as it looks.’

‘That will be the bottle and a half of tequila Leigha put in it,’ Harriet answered sagely.

‘On top of the vodka and Archers, of course,’ Sukie added.

‘Oh, of course!’ Adam coughed again.

‘Trust me, three of these, and you’ll be totally bladdered,’ Harriet assured him.

‘All the same, I think I’ll switch to beer when I’ve finished this one,’ Adam said.

‘Oh that won’t do at all!’ Sukie dropped her voice mischievously, leaning past him to refill her own glass of cocktail. ‘She wants you druuuuunk tonight.’

Harriet smacked her friend on the upper arm, causing her to jolt and splash the ladleful of drink over the counter. Sukie groaned and reached over to the kitchen sink for the dishcloth. Adam and Harriet’s eyes met as Sukie leant down between them to swab up the sticky mess dripping down the face of the cupboards and pooling on the floor tiles. Adam’s face was embarrassed; Harriet’s apologetic. Leigha had been a no-go area of conversation between them all month, since their evening together in the Armstrong.

Harriet suddenly grabbed Adam’s glass and with one quick movement poured the remainder of his potent cocktail back into the saucepan. ‘I’ll get you that beer,’ she smiled

Leigha’s cocktail was doing its work and she was well on her way to being seasonably tipsy. She periodically nodded enthusiastically in agreement with whatever it was her companion was talking about; as she was wearing a Santa hat complete with working bell, this proved quite irritating and said companion shortly made her excuses and went to join the queue for the bathroom.

Immediately Johnny slid into the vacated space next to Leigha. ‘Hey you,’ he said, looking at her with his usual soft appreciation.

‘Hey yourself!’ she smiled, twisting at the waist in order to face him.

‘You’re drunk,’ he teased, drunk enough himself to reach out and push back the fall of her hair to behind her ear.

‘It’s New Year’s Eve,’ Leigha rolled her eyes.

Johnny smiled. ‘So it is.’

Johnny hesitated, leaving his fingertips brushing the skin of her neck a little longer than was polite, mesmerised by the fluttering sensation of her pulse there. She didn’t pull away, rather, she pushed her head against his hand like a cat wanting to be stroked and smiled up at him, all red lips and white teeth.

Just as suddenly, she had pulled away, and was reaching forward to grab at Nicky’s dangling hand, leaving Johnny sitting back, breathless with that curious feeling she always gave him, like he was heavy as stone and lighter than air, all at once.

I probably love her, he thought, miserably, feeling tequila twist and burn in his stomach.

Johnny wandered over to join Harriet as she clumsily scooped slivers of a broken glass into a damp dishcloth over her hand.

‘Mind yourself,’ she said, automatically. Johnny ignored her, bending down to pick up the larger shards that had fallen to the floor.

‘Is Leigha serious about Adam?’ he asked, without preamble. Harriet faltered, dropping most of the little splinters that she had managed to collect. She glanced around to see who was in earshot before replying.

‘What are you talking about?’ Johnny straightened up, throwing the glass he had collected carelessly into the kitchen sink.

‘I just want to know. Is she just flirting or,’ he coloured, ‘does she want something serious with him? Does she want
him
?’ Harriet frowned as she deliberated how best to answer.

‘What business is it of yours anyway?’ she said finally, meeting Johnny’s eyes. Johnny didn’t drop the eye contact, but leant heavily against the kitchen side, uncaring of the wetness or the fragments of glass.

‘Because
I
want her,’ he answered simply, the rawness of the honesty causing Harriet to pause.

‘I don’t know how she feels about it all, really,’ she lied. ‘And besides, Adam’s not exactly into her, so even if she did have a thing for him –’

‘Not into her?’ Johnny interrupted with a harsh laugh. Then wordlessly, he took her shoulders and spun her around so she faced down the corridor to the front of the house. In the gloom by the main door she could just make out the smudge of redness that was Leigha’s dress, a dark tallness that was Adam, a burst of white caught in Leigha’s hand: the bunch of mistletoe, commandeered from its place affixed in the upstairs stairwell.

And the longer Harriet looked the more was brought into focus, Adam’s hands, one pale against the darkness of Leigha’s hair as he held her face to his, the other roving and plucking at the hem of her dress, Leigha’s free hand invisible, slid up under Adam’s shirt. Discomfort shivered queerly against Harriet’s skin.

‘Happy fucking New Year,’ Johnny said – more to himself than to her – before picking up his bottle of beer off the side and saluting her with it.

Leigha awoke on New Year’s Day, 2007, still wearing her tights, lips bruised from kissing, a wicked hangover fogging her sense and memory. Cautiously, without raising her face from the pillow, she stretched her fingers out across the bed, whipping her arm back underneath her when they touched the warm body of the other occupant.

Her companion groaned and stirred, rolling over and away and taking most of the duvet with them. Through her eyelashes, Leigha recognised the person and found herself exhaling in relief; the short hair had thrown her for a moment, but it was only Harriet. She scooched closer, pressing her forehead in-between Harriet’s shoulder blades.

‘Who’s in your bed?’ she whispered. Harriet groaned again.

‘I have no idea,’ she answered groggily. Leigha laughed softly.

‘I love New Year’s Eve,’ she murmured, settling her head down on Harriet’s pillow. Harriet only grunted in response.

January 2007

Nicky placed her elbows on the table and buried her face in her hands. ‘Poor Johnny,’ was all she could muster.

‘Poor Johnny indeed,’ Sukie agreed, dismantling her toasted panini to remove unwanted tomato.

‘I mean, it was obvious he quite fancied her,’ Harriet said, dolefully. ‘But he’s got it bad.’ She dropped her voice. ‘He thinks its love.’

‘They always think its love,’ Sukie rubbished, pausing to lick mayonnaise from her fingertips. ‘He just wanted to bone her, like they all do, and he’s pissed off that Adam’s getting there first.’

‘You’re a heartless cow,’ Harriet glared. ‘He could
very well
be in love with her!’

‘Adam too for that matter,’ Nicky added, reappearing from between her hands. Harriet frowned down at her lunch. She hadn’t yet shared her concerns about Adam’s vacillating interest in Leigha with the others.

‘And you’re a total hypocrite!’ Sukie argued, jabbing a chip at Harriet, breaking her out of her introspection. ‘When you were breaking up with Seth, what was all that crap about love being invented by Disney?’

‘Oh yes, in collusion with Hallmark,’ Nicky remembered, arching her eyebrow. Harriet rolled her eyes.

‘You didn’t see his face,’ she insisted. ‘It was heart-breaking.’

‘Well, our Leigha
is
a total man-eater,’ Sukie said with affection, dipping a chip into Nicky’s ketchup.

‘And coming up right behind you,’ Nicky warned, voice pitched low. Sukie and Harriet turned to see Leigha pushing through the glass doors into the café. The three girls looked up at their friend expectantly as she dumped her handbag under the free chair and began extricating herself from her scarf, gloves and hat. Her cheeks and nose were red with the cold, her hair was touched by the sleety rain and was hanging stuck to her face.

‘What?’ she snapped peevishly.

‘Nothing!’ Sukie dabbed another chip into Nicky’s ketchup; Harriet couldn’t stop herself from asking…

‘Weren’t you meeting up with Adam at the Armstrong?’ she said, tentatively.

‘No,’ Leigha answered, pulling her handbag onto her lap and busying herself trying to find her purse within it. Nicky and Sukie exchanged a meaningful look.

‘He standing you up already, Ley?’ Sukie asked, with characteristic directness. Leigha scowled.

‘He’s not
standing me up
,’
she hissed. ‘He’s going to the library, he said he’s really got into the flow of his dissertation this week.’ Harriet managed to hide the utter disbelief on her face by dipping her head just in time.

‘Well,’ Nicky answered after a moment’s awkward silence, ‘that’s good. Looks like you are starting to rub off on him,’ she nodded at Harriet. Leigha shot Harriet a livid look, before wordlessly walking over to the food servery. Harriet exhaled nervously.

‘Christ!’ she said. Sukie made the screeching
Psycho
noise in eloquent agreement.

Adam could have sworn that Harriet had hesitated in the aisle, that her intent had been to keep moving through the lecture theatre, however her companion Lucy – perhaps already too accustomed to their seats at the back of the hall – slid in beside him as usual. A heartbeat too long later, Harriet followed suit. Adam leant forward awkwardly to speak across Lucy’s chest.

‘Morning, trouble.’

Harriet shot him her routinely condescending look, but perhaps it was a little more loaded than usual.

‘I hear your New Year’s resolution is going well,’ she said in a careful tone, pulling her book and notepad from her bookbag and laying them on the desk. When she was met with a quizzical silence from Adam she continued, ‘cracking on with your dissertation, I mean.’

The very tips of Adam’s ears went pink, a fact that surely did not escape Harriet’s notice. She continued, airily. ‘Which idea are you going with then?’ Adam just glared at her mutinously, well aware that she knew he hadn’t given his thesis a second’s more thought since New Year’s Eve.

‘I’m still playing around with some options,’ he answered drily. Harriet nodded sarcastically.

‘Good idea.’ She lay her biro perpendicular to the notepad and sat back against the back of her chair, staring out at the lectern ahead of them. Adam strained across Lucy a little more.

‘Bloody hell, stop it, let’s just swap seats!’ Lucy demanded, before duly obliging by standing on the chair momentarily whilst Adam squeezed past her and into place.

‘Look, I was busy,’ he said, without preamble, knowing full well by this point that yesterday’s cancellation on her best friend was most likely at the root of this strange hostility. Up close, she still smelt like being outside, sharp and cold and wintery.

‘Do you remember how you
promised
me that you weren’t just after one thing with Leigha?’ Harriet asked him, lowering her voice as the lecturer walked into the room.

‘Yes, and I’m not!’ he groaned.

‘You’re not?’ Harriet scoffed, ‘you snog her face off, then it takes her – what? – five texts before you agree to meet up with her? Then you cancel on her at the last minute?’

Adam had no immediate answer; the tips of his ears were pink again. ‘I got busy,’ he repeated, finally, dropping his voice to a whisper as the lecturer began to speak. Harriet stiffly turned to face front, uncapping her pen and reaching for her notepad. Adam let out a loud sigh of frustration, rubbing the heels of his palms against his brow.

Harriet glared at him and pushed her notepad towards him, where she had scribbled the words:
You’ve made your bed, now you bloody well lie in it!!

The year rushed on and the slushy, sleety January drew towards its end. Leigha finally stopped texting Adam, her limit of humiliation reached by the umpteenth weak excuse received in response.

Taking their cue from Adam and Johnny – who seemed to have decided never to talk about ‘what happened’ – the others fell delicately back into place and routine was restored between the seven of them; game nights, movie nights, quiz nights.

Harriet watched Johnny watching Leigha watching Adam; Leigha started to pour spirits into all of her evening drinks and laughing always slightly too loudly. One or other of the girls was always on hand to pull Leigha’s fingers from her mouth when she bit at her nails a little too long, Harriet looking sidelong at Adam as she did, her annoyance with him clear to read in every line on her face.

She had warned him – no, worse –
asked
him – not to play this game with Leigha. For all her bluster and posturing Leigha was no easy flirt; for whatever reason she did not trust without effort and most of all was terrified, absolutely terrified, of rejection.

Harriet had been wary but happy when Leigha had first set her sights on Adam; a friend, already a friend, someone she couldn’t just kick out of her bed and pretend didn’t exist. Someone she already had a relationship with; that, Harriet had known, was likely the best shot of Leigha ever having one at all and she so,
so
wanted her best friend to be happy, to relax, and lose that strange kernel of hardness and fear that she carried around inside of her.

Adam met her hard look with a maddeningly assured smile. It was like trying to be angry with a puppy that didn’t understand what it had done wrong. Harriet cupped Leigha’s hand in her own and resolutely looked away from Adam, keeping up the conversation in a falsely bright voice.

Like he had done countless times before, Adam gave Harriet’s slightly ajar door a perfunctory knock and pushed it open.

She looked up at him from where she sat, cross-legged on her bed with her laptop balanced on her thighs, hard-read books lying open to their broken spines around her. She was listening to the new Fall Out Boy album that he had lent her. He smiled broadly. She looked back down at her screen, expressionless.

‘Come to ask me to do your
bildungsroman
coursework for you?’ she asked. Apparently uninterested in his response, she began typing again. Adam faltered.

‘Er. No. Just wondering where you were, what you’re doing holed up here when we’re all downstairs.’ He flashed what he considered his most charming of smiles. ‘But the coursework, well, if you’re offering…’

Harriet’s typing got harder. ‘Something to do with
Catcher in the Rye
?’ For the first time since she’d started typing again she looked up at him. ‘Actually, you remind me of Holden Caulfield.’

Adam, not knowing whether this was an insult or a compliment, decided to change the subject. ‘Are you coming downstairs?’ he asked.

‘Nope.’ Harriet paused in her typing, reaching round to swipe at a paragraph in one of the books with a yellow highlighter. ‘Unsurprisingly, I’ve got to do my
bildungsroman
coursework.’

Adam stared at her, bemused. ‘Harry,’ he began, feeling a sudden swell of panic, ‘are you really
this
annoyed with me?’

Harriet’s answer was to pick up a slim paperback from the mounds around her and toss it at him. Adam caught it flat to his chest:
The Catcher in the Rye.
He looked up at her, nonplussed.

‘You can take my copy,’ she said, turning back once again to her screen. ‘I’m not referring to it in my essay. I hate that book.’

Adam stood there stupidly, speechless, holding the book weakly in his hand.

So say, what are you waiting for? Kiss her, kiss her,
Fall Out Boy sang out into the tight silence. Harriet stabbed at a key on her keyboard and the CD skipped to the next track.

‘Well, Harriet’s shitting bricks and Johnny looks like he wants to cry, deck me, or both whenever we’re in the same room.’

With this abrupt and uninvited entry into Miles’ room, Adam threw himself dramatically down on the bed.

Miles pushed himself back on his desk chair and surveyed his prone friend. ‘Honestly? I don’t blame either of them.’

‘Oh, cheers mate! I knew I could count on you to cheer me up!’ Adam moaned, flinging the back of his arm over his face.

‘You can’t keep avoiding Leigha,’ Miles advised, seriously. ‘It’s really obvious and it’s embarrassing her to hell. Harriet’s probably angry because all she hears at home is Leigha whining about you playing her – and Johnny’s annoyed because you pulled the girl he fancied for no apparent reason, because you sure as hell don’t seem to care about her or want to go out with her. Can’t you see why people are pissed off at you?’

‘Well… yes, obviously.’ Adam sat up and rubbed his face tiredly. ‘This is
exactly
what I didn’t want to happen.’

‘Well you shouldn’t have bloody kissed her then!’ Miles exclaimed. ‘No sympathy from this corner. Bad show.’

‘Oh yeah, like you would have said no, to her, like that, in that dress, holding freaking mistletoe, and after a skinful of beer! If you were single…’ Adam added hurriedly at the sight of Miles’ supercilious expression.

‘I certainly would have,’ he answered grandly, ‘especially knowing what a nightmare it would cause. Seriously, you’re going to HAVE to take her out on a date. That’ll calm down the girls. Johnny – well, put it this way, it won’t upset him any
more…
’

Adam groaned into his palms. ‘I don’t even like her that much. She can be so annoying. I don’t know what got into me,’ he admitted.

‘A skinful of beer, wasn’t it?’ Miles clapped a compassionate hand to Adam’s shoulder.