The Best Thing I Never Had (31 page)

She’s dangerous: isn’t that what he had told himself upon first seeing her again? She’s dangerous because you want her – still – and she’ll lure you in and fuck you up again, and after a second time all the petite brunettes in the world won’t make you feel right again.

‘I didn’t “run away”,’ she continued, ‘so much as I was chased away. And I didn’t deserve it. I don’t deserve to be the
persona non grata
at this wedding. I didn’t do anything wrong.’ Her tone was infuriating; she did, but didn’t
quite
say:
but you did
.

‘That’s what you think?’ He could hear the sneer and the poison in his voice and wondered detachedly at how absurdly easy it is to flip between love and loathing. Or maybe it was just with her. He started counting on his fingers. ‘You kept us a secret. That was wrong. You never – not once in your life – stood up to Leigha. You let her get used to getting her own way, no matter what it was she wanted. That was wrong. You hid away in your room instead of confronting matters. That was wrong.’ Harriet’s fists were white and bloodless, she was holding herself so tightly.

‘And then you pushed me away and just left me when I had bloody
ripped
myself open and laid everything out there, trying to make it work, trying to make you happy. And that was wrong. Because I told you and I told you and I am fucking telling you again now – that despite the fact I think, deep down, you actually want it to be true –
I never slept with Leigha!
’

It might have been muscle memory, a flashback from that night in the computer lab. Adam registered the tell, the tensing in her shoulders, and caught Harriet by the wrist, neatly blocking the intended slap. Her cuff bracelet landed at her elbow joint. Harriet glared at him hotly across their crossed arms.

‘Not this time,’ he told her, quietly.

She didn’t say a word, or even look at him again. She scooped up the bag and walked out of the hall at a dignified, even stately pace, like she was reprising her earlier walk down the aisle.

Adam watched her until she was lost through the far doors. And that, he promised himself, is the very last time that Harriet Shaw ever walks out on me.

When it became painfully clear that Adam wasn’t following her, Harriet sped up, moving swiftly from one quad into another and out, out past the office buildings and their car park and through the front gates. Her feet carried her down the most familiar route whilst her thoughts pitched and rolled.

When she happened upon the first bus stop of the high street she stopped abruptly, sitting down hard on the shiny red plastic bench and wrapping her arms around herself. She didn’t have a wrap or a coat and the night had turned cold. Now that the heat and adrenalin of the argument with Adam was seeping away she felt the skin on her forearms goosepimpling and became aware of the ache in the balls of her feet. She slipped her heels off and picked them up, leaving her feet bare on the gritty pavement.

Two girls came down the road, laughing, arms interlinked, pausing at the sight of a lone woman in a sleeveless yellow dress sitting in a bus shelter.

‘Sorry?’ the shorter of the two girls said. She was wearing a navy hoodie with the initials of the university emblazoned across the front. ‘The buses stop at six.’

‘Oh,’ Harriet said. ‘Thanks. I know. I was just, having a sit.’

‘Oh. Okay.’ Exchanging an uncertain look the two younger girls moved on, off to the 24 hour garage a couple of streets away, perhaps. Suitably embarrassed, Harriet got back to her feet and continued her aimless wander.

Although, of course, it wasn’t aimless. Minutes later Harriet found herself walking down Hatcher Road and came to a stop at the exact same spot she and Adam had shared their first kiss, their faces damp with snow, breaths visible and mingling together in the dark.
I never slept with Leigha
, he had shouted. Probably the most adamant and believable he had ever been with his denials; not that it mattered, not now.

The stunted tree that used to block the light into Nicky’s bedroom had been felled, the patch of crab grass upon which it had stood paved over and made into a parking space. The knee-high wall that circled the right hand side of the house and curved Dell Road into Hatcher had been fully restored – perhaps plain rebuilt – and was painted a twee white. The front door had been red and peeling a little the last time she closed it behind her, and now it was a glossy black. The new driveway was empty, the curtains all drawn open, even though it was night. The house looked empty and dead and full of ghosts; the house looked completely different.

How many lives must each student house see, Harriet wondered; how many friendships and fights, make-ups and break-ups? Do the bricks and mortar absorb all the energy, the happiness and the sadness? Maybe so – as standing there had much the same effect that walking through campus had had, drawing out more images, more and more. Harriet couldn’t believe how much was inside of her, had been just lying in wait for her to come back to it.

Sukie’s dark head framed in the right-hand window as she worked away at her desk, catching sight of Harriet returning after a week back at her parents’ and standing up and waving eagerly through the glass. Leigha draping bunting across the old tree on birthdays, and tinsel each Christmas, laughing, laughing. All four girls, latched arm-to-arm in the darkness, drunk, giggling, helping one another over the crumbled section of the wall rather than walk the extra ten foot to the gate.

Harriet startled. Leigha was standing on the corner, wearing a beige pashmina wrapped across her torso, her arms folded across her chest, Sukie standing behind her with a cropped leather jacket thrown on over her dress. Harriet turned fully to face them; Leigha eyed her, impatiently.

‘Nice scene back there,’ she said, without preamble. ‘Nice of you to ruin Nic’s wedding day.’

Harriet frowned, finally, finally out of patience. ‘I just want to be left alone,’ she snapped.

‘Well, you can’t just have a shouting match and storm out of the room,’ Sukie said. ‘Nicky wanted to come after you but she couldn’t really, could she? So she sent us. Funny that we all knew you’d come here;’ her tone was only slightly mocking.

‘The old place looks good though,’ Leigha said, looking appraisingly at the renovations. ‘Our dick landlord would never have put this sort of money into it, he must have sold it. Hey!’ Harriet had begun walking off down Dell Road. ‘Where are you going?’

‘Away!’ Harriet shouted. ‘To be alone! Christ.’

‘Oh, don’t be so dramatic,’ Leigha said, rolling her eyes. ‘Always gotta make a scene, play the victim.’ Her words were painfully close to what Adam had said, hit on the bull’s-eye; Harriet hesitated.

This could be the last time she saw these two girls, now that there wasn’t a hypothetical mutual friend’s wedding hanging somewhere in the future. She remembered how she’d watched them walk down the garden path and away out of the sight, that last night, the night of Adam’s birthday. They were standing in almost the exact same spot now; it had a neatness to it.

‘What should I have done differently?’ she asked.

Sukie raised an eyebrow. ‘Differently? Ha! Well not getting totally pissed on contraband vodka and shouting—’

‘No, not tonight,’ Harriet interrupted her. ‘Before.’

‘Uh!’ Leigha made an incredulous noise. ‘You could have tried
not
sleeping with Adam.’ Harriet looked at her, hard.

‘Did you?’ she asked, quietly. ‘Did you
actually
sleep with him, Ley?’ Leigha frowned, biting down on her lower lip, nervous and unsure; Harriet could still read her like a book.

‘Yes, of course I did,’ she said, finally. Harriet’s heart constricted painfully; deep down, she still wanted it to not be true.
Let’s just say that I visited Australia. Many times.

‘You know I didn’t know that though, right? When I, when we… got together.’ Harriet had meant to sound matter-of-fact, and cringed when it came out sounding vaguely apologetic. Leigha looked unimpressed.

‘Whatever. We spent hours –
hours
– talking about him, me and you. Don’t you dare for one minute think you can tell me that you had no idea that I liked him, that I’d claimed him.’

Harriet flinched. ‘He’s not a… piece of land.’

‘Whatever.’ Leigha’s eyes flashed. ‘He certainly didn’t complain at the time.’

‘Guys,’ Sukie interrupted, still hanging back. ‘Do we really have to go through this? Does it even matter anymore?’ She shook her head. ‘We should get back; Nicky will worry. Just hold it together a little longer and then you’ll never have to come near one another again so long as you live.’

All the more reason to get these things said, Harriet thought.

‘Leigha, what’s the deal with you and Seth?’ she asked, and was gratified to see the smugness immediately drain away from the other girl’s face. ‘Because there is something, right? Adam said he noticed something.’

‘Adam?’ Leigha repeated, in a choked-sounding voice.

‘Things got weird between us back when I broke up with him,’ Harriet said, slowly, thinking back. ‘You always did seem more on his side than mine.’

‘Your side?’ Leigha twisted the fringing of her pashmina in her first. ‘
You
broke up with
him
, what do you even mean, ‘your side’? Christ! You broke his heart!’ Leigha’s face was as heated as her words, her fingers bone white where they gripped the material of her shawl hard enough to chase away the blood.

Harriet just looked at her, even now feeling the impulse to comfort this beautiful, angry woman, the corpse of their friendship turning over in her heart; and she wondered how she’d ever missed the obvious.

‘You and Seth,’ she tried.

‘I don’t want to talk about Seth.’ Leigha turned away abruptly. ‘Come back, don’t come back, I don’t care.’ She began to walk away and after a flicker of hesitation, Sukie started to follow. Harriet’s time was up.

‘I would have forgiven it of you,’ she called after Leigha’s retreating back. Leigha paused, glancing back over her shoulder.

‘Well, I would never have done it in the first place,’ she said, in an odd little voice.

The two girls looked at one another in silence, separated by the length of the house where they’d once lived together.

How to articulate in this one, final instant the pain that had been caused? How to explain that in her darker moments Harriet had found herself wishing that Leigha and Sukie had just been dead, because then at least the grieving and the missing of them wouldn’t come hand-in-hand with the knowledge that she had been so definitively, so personally rejected. How that if there was a time machine, Harriet would go back and try her hardest to cut out the cancer that would one day kill their friendship. Even if she had to relive all that pain again she would always do so, just to be able to spend just one day with her best friends – when that’s what they still were.

There was no way of getting any of that across, no way and no time. Harriet dropped her eyes.

‘It wasn’t just something seedy. I did love him, you know,’ she offered, almost by way of explanation. Leigha’s lip curled. I loved you too, Harriet thought. And – just like what you do with everyone else’s love – you took it for granted. You wasted it. And when it came down to it, you threw it away like it was nothing. But I let you.

‘Good for you,’ was all Leigha said.

‘We should get back…’ Sukie said again, impotently, half to herself.

‘And I wish that we had been able to stay friends,’ Harriet continued. ‘I guess what I’m trying to say is…’ She met Leigha’s eyes again, for the last time. ‘I’m not sorry for what I did. But I’m sorry for it.’

Leigha turned away.

‘That’s nice, Harriet. The thing is though, you can be the best friends in the world, but some things are unforgiveable.’ Without looking back she started walking away again, back in the direction of the campus. Sukie looked between the two of them, uncertain. Harriet smiled ruefully.

‘You know what, Ley? I completely, completely agree.’

Leigha gave no sign that she had heard her. She was almost at the far end of the road.

‘Are you coming back to the do?’ Sukie asked, gruffly.

Harriet shook her head. ‘No, I don’t think so. I think I’m done.’

Sukie nodded, awkwardly, giving Harriet and the old house one last look before hurrying after Leigha. Harriet was left alone, standing in the spot where – one evening in February – her friend had kissed her, and set all of this in motion.

Annie would probably call this closure. Harriet didn’t know about that. She felt empty and hollow, the way you did after a good cry. She felt a strange sort of peace, too, standing there, like on this corner she could reach through the membrane of time and space, clap her twenty year old self on the shoulder and tell her that she’s going to be fine. That there will be other best friends: gorgeous, funny, supportive Annie. In time there may be other Adams, who knew?

She dallied, saying goodbye to the corner and to the house, giving Leigha and Sukie enough time to make it to the intersection with the main road before starting her own walk back to campus. That bottle of Jacob’s Creek and the oblivion of sleep was calling to her. She focused on her feet – still bare – as she walked, watching out for anything she didn’t want to step in, tired of thinking about anything harder. So she was almost upon Leigha, waiting at the intersection, before she noticed her.

Leigha had an expression that even Harriet didn’t know how to read. She didn’t – she couldn’t - look Harriet in the face. She opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out for a moment or two.

‘I just wanted to say,’ she managed, eventually, looking into the middle distance. ‘I didn’t.’

‘Didn’t..?’ Harriet echoed, hardly daring to breathe in case Leigha didn’t finish her sentence.

‘Didn’t,’ Leigha repeated. ‘Sleep with him, I mean. I was lying. He wasn’t.’ She gave a shrug. ‘I wanted to hurt you.’ She toyed with the longer of the two necklaces she was wearing. ‘Because you hurt me.’

There was an excruciating pause where neither of them spoke. Leigha hesitated, as if she were waiting for a thank you. Harriet couldn’t speak; pain had risen up inside her like bile. Leigha stared down at her own fingers, fiddling with her chain.

Without another word, Leigha turned and marched across the intersection, walking away and out of sight. She walked under a streetlight at the last possible minute, coming alive suddenly in a riot of dark hair and yellow dress, before being consigned to the shadows of the campus wall, leaving Harriet alone with a regret that felt physical enough to choke her.

Nicky laughed delightedly as the DJ and the congregation of women behind her egged her on.

‘Okay!’ she called. ‘Okay! One!’ She swung the now slightly worse for wear bouquet up and then brought it back down to her chest. ‘Two!’

She pitched the flowers gently over her shoulder as she shouted ‘three’, causing the women behind her to jump and scatter.

‘Christ!’ Leigha mumbled, smartly stepping sideways and out of the trajectory. Miles’ teenage sister squealed and shot forward, arms outstretched for the prize. The bouquet grazed her, bouncing off her shoulder and smacking the nearby Sukie in the face, forcing her to catch it in her arms. She looked across the tangle of whites and yellows and greens, giving Demi – sitting nearby – a look of mock horror.

Demi, Johnny, Iona and Adam were seeing off the rest of the bottle of vodka; waste not, want not. As the excitement of the bouquet toss faded and the crowd of onlookers dispersed back to their own tables, the DJ announced that he would be playing his final song of the evening: safe journeys one and all.

‘There’s a game I played in my halls last year,’ Iona said, excitedly.

‘I don’t think there’s a single drinking game in the world that you can tell us about that we haven’t played,’ Johnny interrupted her, smugly. Iona glared at him.

‘It’s the one where you have to give a statement about yourself, something you haven’t done—’

‘Never Ever,’ Johnny interrupted again, smirking. ‘Standard!’

Adam shifted. ‘I don’t like that game’ he said. The room filled with the strains of Aerosmith’s
Don’t Wanna Miss A Thing
; apparently once in one evening just wasn’t enough.