The Best Thing I Never Had (8 page)

‘See you in a bit then, trouble.’

Harriet held her phone limply against her cheek for a full minute or so after the line had gone dead. The sounds of the house pushed back at her attention – the loud bass of the television, the bell-like pitch of the other girls laughing, the clatter and knock of cupboards and drawers opening and closing in the kitchen, where someone had stepped up to finish making the teas in her absence.

Tossing her phone down to her desk, Harriet quickly scrunched her fingers through her hair, testing how clean it was, staring unblinkingly at her closed wardrobe door in a mild panic. It was stupid, suddenly worrying what she looked like in front of someone who’d seen her in pyjamas, in the gym, falling over herself drunk in the Union. Plus it would probably cast doubt on their coursework excuse if she tripped over there in a full face of make-up, mini-dress and four inch heels …  Standard jeans and a top it was then. She flicked some obligatory mascara onto her lashes, and prepared to go downstairs and make her excuses to the others. She pulled her Adaptations of Shakespeare reference book down from the shelf above her desk and held it prominently against her chest for good measure.

Adam flung his phone in the direction of the soft landing of his bed, already out the bedroom door before it had hit the mattress. The bathroom door was pulled closed but, optimistically, he tried the handle anyway. Locked. Thwarted!

‘Occupied,’ Johnny sang out. Exasperated, Adam banged the side of his first against the door.

‘I need to have a shower!’

‘Alright, alright, I’ll not be long…’

‘You’re sitting there playing Snake on your phone, aren’t you?’ Johnny laughed, affirming Adam’s suspicions. Adam groaned and whacked the door again. ‘You’re the slowest shitter in the world!’

‘This isn’t speeding anything up!’ Johnny growled back.

‘I need to have a shower!’ Adam repeated.

‘Yeah, I heard you, wait a bloody bit!’

‘Harriet’s coming over to help me with an essay that’s due in tomorrow,’ Adam lied smoothly. ‘And I smell like armpit.’

‘Just Harriet coming round?’ Johnny asked after a pause. Adam felt a pang of pity for his friend.

‘Yeah, I suppose so,’ he said. ‘Sorry mate, I know you’re mad for her but Leigha’s not the go-to-girl for literary brilliance, is she? Come on, hurry up, Harriet’ll be here in like, five minutes!’

‘Yeah, alright!’ Johnny yelled in exasperation. ‘I’m coming out. Shall I start the shower running for you?’

‘Yes please,’ Adam said, reaching for his towel that was hanging over the landing banister to dry. ‘And you can spray some air-freshener around too while you’re at it.’

Harriet strung out the seven minute walk between the girls’ house and the boys’ flat for as long as she could, clamping down hard on the embarrassing urge she had to hurry. The student village was muted and peaceful, a Tesco delivery van driving slowly along the main road as Harriet turned the corner into it, the streetlights flickering into life for the evening as she walked underneath one. The slushy high street had been seen to by the council, grey whorls of melting snow shovelled away into gutters and handfuls of grit scattered across the pavement, sharp and crunching under Harriet’s shoes.

She could see the boys’ flat by then, on the first and second floors above the lettings agent at the end of the high street. Adam’s bedroom was one of the windows at the front; the curtains were closed. Harriet slowed down even more.

Harriet was practical to a fault. She knew very well that she should tell Adam straight away that things needed to go back to how they’d always been. She shouldn’t even be going over, she should have said as much to him on the phone. Leigha would be so hurt if she ever found out and, anyway, Harriet was more or less certain she’d probably end up just hurting Adam too, like she had Seth. If she didn’t handle this, she’d just end up losing two of her best friends, she knew that, she knew it, but still her heart felt huge in her chest and still her breath was catching in anticipation as she reached the end of the road.

She pressed the doorbell on reflex, hearing it chime somewhere inside the building and, a few moments later, the answering heavy footsteps on the stairs down to the front door. She plastered a panicked smile onto her face, but when the door swung inwards it wasn’t Adam standing there, but Miles.

‘Hey,’ he said, ‘what’s up?’

‘Come to do Adam’s coursework for him, what else?’ Harriet answered, in an overly jokey tone. Miles stepped aside to let her past him and onto the stairs.

‘You’re an enabler!’ Miles laughed, closing and dead-bolting the front door. ‘You can’t sit his exams for him, you know.’

‘He’ll be fine,’ Harriet threw over her shoulder as she climbed the narrow staircase. ‘He passed first and second year without my help, didn’t he? And I’m only guiding him, I’m not really doing anything
for
him…’

‘Hmmm, yeah well… let’s just say if he gets a First I’ll be highly suspicious.’

‘Hey, Harry,’ Johnny raised a hand in greeting from where he sat on the couch with his feet on the coffee table. ‘Is it still snowing out there?’

‘Nope, and what did settle is melting. Bit of an anti-climax,’ Harriet answered, shrugging off her coat and draping it over the back of a chair.

‘Adam’s in his room; he’s just got out of the shower so I’d give him a minute unless you want to catch him in the altogether,’ Johnny advised. Harriet felt her entire face burst into flame. Flustered, she opened and closed her textbook for no apparent reason. Johnny looked at her curiously. ‘You alright?’

‘Poor girl feels ill at the thought of Adam in the nud,’ Miles joked, sitting down on the other sofa.

‘Oi!’ came Adam’s disembodied voice from the upstairs landing. ‘Fuck off!’ Miles and Johnny burst into laughter. Harriet looked up to where she could see Adam’s legs through the banisters of the stairs. ‘Harry, do you want a cup of tea or something before we… start?’ he asked.

‘No, I’m fine, thanks.’ Harriet flexed the text book nervously between her hands.

‘Okay then…’

Harriet winced. They sounded petrified of one other, ridiculously formal. How could Johnny and Miles not realise something was up? A glance back into the lounge showed that the other two boys were oblivious, transfixed by the television. Adam’s shins waited impassively at the top of the stairs.

Harriet faffed for a moment more with her handbag, decided it was best to leave it downstairs with her coat and moved to the foot of the stairs. Adam had retreated up into the shadows of the landing. As she rounded the banisters she saw he was waiting for her in the doorway to his bedroom, backlit by the glow from his desk lamp. The words she’d geared up to say gummed in her throat but Adam just ran his eyes down her from head to toe as if those words were written down the length of her body. His hair was still wet from the shower and hung in dark clumps on his forehead. Then he smiled at her as if she was the most wonderful thing in the world and stepped forward.

And then – just like the previous night – he was suddenly in front of her with her face between his hands and was bringing her lips up to his, pulling her gently backwards into his bedroom. As he pushed the door closed behind them he sighed softly against her mouth.

‘Adam,’ Harriet tried weakly. He pulled away and rested his forehead to hers.

‘Don’t overthink it, just kiss me,’ he instructed. ‘This was always going to happen.’ Harriet closed her eyes. Her head was spinning.

‘This is…’

‘Right?’ Adam supplied, bumping his nose against hers. ‘Come on. For once, don’t think so much. Seriously, just shut up and kiss me.’

And whilst she knew it definitely wasn’t practical, Harriet couldn’t argue that it didn’t feel right. She let the textbook fall from her hands and it slid between their legs – coming to land at their feet, pages bunched into curls – and let all her thoughts sink away under the urgent pressure of Adam’s mouth and body against hers.

February 2007

Harriet had a tiny mole behind her left ear that he’d never noticed before. Adam lazily stretched forward to kiss it. Harriet giggled; he had discovered she was very ticklish around her neck area.

‘I cannot believe,’ Adam murmured against her skin, causing her to squirm under his arm, ‘I have spent, like, five whole months knowing you and
not
kissing you. What
have
I been doing with my time?’

‘A lot of Playstation and sleeping?’ Harriet laughed, turning her face back round to his so that the tips of their noses touched. Adam’s single bed didn’t give them much room to manoeuvre, not that they wanted it. Harriet’s bedroom was a little more spacious, but they’d felt much more nervous the two times they’d been in there together. The other girls had a habit of walking into one another’s’ rooms without warning, and a constant state of vigilance for the sound of footsteps on the stairs was not conducive to passion.

‘Ah, fair enough, so it wasn’t a total waste then,’ Adam grinned, kissing her mouth now that it was within his reach. He was getting addicted to kissing her. He was going to slip up sooner rather than later. Secret-laden smiles as they greeted one another when in company could never be enough; he wanted to fling his arms around her and kiss her whenever she walked into a room. Resting their hands on one another’s knees under the lecture theatre desk was one thing, but he wanted to stroll around campus with his arm thrown across her shoulders, make his lap a pillow for her as she lay and studied in the grassy quad, introduce her to everyone he came across as his girlfriend.

Finding that chain of thought too tender to pursue, Adam kissed her again, found himself wishing into her as if she were a candle he was blowing out.
Please, decide that I’m worth it.

Harriet reached for his hand and curled his fingers around hers as he pulled back and resettled against his pillow. Her eyes were a little sad as she looked at him, as if she’d somehow heard his mute plea.

‘Happy two week anniversary,’ she said, pressing her forehead against his.

He waited for her to tell him that she was going to speak to Leigha, but she didn’t.

Miles had made himself perfectly clear. Nicky knew that she was just being irritating now, but with a First Class stamp her application paperwork could still make the deadline and perhaps she wasn’t going to accept the inevitable until there was truly no other option.

Miles was dicing up vegetables in the kitchen. Leigha – the only other girl in the house that evening – had made herself scarce, retiring upstairs to her bedroom pleading that she didn’t want her hair to smell like onion. More likely she sensed that things were still tense between the couple, maybe she’d even worked out how close the TEFL application deadline must be; Leigha was always intuitive like that. The wet slice and thunk of the knife through the veg and against the chopping board was hypnotic. Nicky stood stupidly in the middle of the kitchen – the bundle of forms in hand – Miles’ back to her, resolute as a wall.

‘Honey…’ she started nervously, moving to Miles’ elbow; the chopping noises paused. ‘Can we just—’

‘Oh no,’ Miles frowned, interrupting her as he caught sight of the papers and guessed at her intent. ‘Not this again. Nicky, I’m trying to cook dinner.’

‘But the deadline is at the end of the week, I really need to be sure—’

‘Sure about what? What aren’t you sure about?’ Miles interrupted again, his usually calm and composed nature worn extremely thin after two weeks of the same argument. ‘Because I’m sure as hell I’m
not going to France
.’ Nicky fell into a wretched silence. After an awkward pause, Miles began dicing the vegetables again. ‘I told you,’ Miles said to the chopping board, ‘you can go, if it means this much to you. We can try and make long distance work, especially if it’s only a year.’

‘I don’t want to be apart from you for a year,’ Nicky said miserably.

‘And I don’t want to be apart from you either, that’s why I asked you to move in with me in Bath,’ Miles said impatiently.

‘I can’t afford to do a conversion course,’ she said, ‘but I want to be a teacher. What am I going to do in Bath?’ Miles put the knife down; the vegetables were as diced as it was possible for them to be by now.

‘I don’t know, pet,’ he said, finally making eye-contact with her. ‘You’ll probably have to just get a regular job and then volunteer when you can as a classroom assistant.’

The emphasis wasn’t lost on Nicky. ‘How much money will you be bringing in?’ she asked. ‘What are you getting in the way of an academic grant?’ There was a telling pause before Miles answered her.

‘Not much. A little, to help with the rent. Not enough to live on, really.’

Nicky studied him. ‘You’ve been inferring that you
will
have enough to live on.’

Miles shrugged awkwardly, squaring up the pile of diced vegetables with the knife blade. ‘I didn’t want you thinking I only want you moving in with me because I can’t afford to live alone.’

‘I wouldn’t think that of you,’ Nicky answered immediately, hurt.

‘Look,’ Miles said, ‘a couple of years – five, tops – and then I’ll get a professorship and we’ll have enough money for you to do a conversion course. But I have to go to Bath this year, I’ll lose my grant.’ He cupped the vegetables between his hands and dropped them into the waiting wok where they sizzled sullenly on the low heat.

‘I love you,’ Nicky said miserably, uselessly.

‘And I love you. I’m just thinking long-term and about what’s best for the both of us. I hope you understand that.’

And then there really wasn’t anything else for Nicky to say. She put the TEFL papers down on the kitchen side and mechanically opened the packet of stir-fry noodles.

‘Do you think there’s any chilli powder in the house?’ Miles asked casually.

It was snowing again, for what would turn out to be the last time that year. Sukie paused, elbow-deep in the sudsy washing-up water, to watch the snowflakes outside the kitchen window twist direction in the wind.

Her phone vibrated in her back pocket. She reached for the tea-towel before deciding it was too damp, instead drying her palms on her jeans before extracting the phone. In response to Sukie’s query, Harriet had replied to say she’d been in the library and was on her way home – and yes, she knew it was her turn to do the washing up, she’d do it when she got in.

Sukie frowned, putting her phone back and immersing her hands in the water again, returning her attention and the dishcloth to a particularly stubborn coffee ring. Their degrees being the two more primarily research-based – having fewer hours of class-time – she and Harriet most often lazed around the house together of an afternoon watching crap television:
100 Greatest Surgery Shockers
,
Best Celebrity Spats
etc etc. Lately Harriet was spending more and more time in the library, or barricaded away in her room with piles of books and an equally preoccupied Adam. There was something like four months until the final year dissertations were due; if Harriet were being this flustered already, Sukie couldn’t imagine how bad she’d be come June.

Sukie was putting the last glass back in the cupboard, the damp tea-towel now sodden through, when she heard Harriet’s key in the lock.

‘Brrr!’ Harriet shivered theatrically. ‘White Easter, do you think?’ She dropped her handbag and bookbag to the floor at the foot of the stairs, shedding her coat as she moved further info the house; little globes of melting snowflake glittered against the darkness of her coat and hair under the kitchen ceiling spotlights, which were pre-emptively switched on against the gloom of the winter afternoon. ‘Tea?’ Harriet asked, moving across to the cupboard and fetching out two mugs. ‘Thanks for doing the washing up.’ Harriet checked the water level in the kettle before clicking it on. ‘Add it to my housework tab.’

‘How’s the work going?’ Sukie asked.

‘Oh, good.’ Harriet busied herself adding teabags and sugar to the mugs. ‘Long way to go though.’

‘Listen, I want you to do something for me,’ Sukie said, spreading the tea-towel over the handle of the oven to dry out. ‘You’ve been single for six months now.’

Harriet paused. ‘And?’

‘And I want to set you up with someone. He’s a really nice guy. Been single a little less time than you. Saw pictures of me and you together when he added me on Facebook the other week, thinks you’re hot stuff. Which of course, you are.’ Sukie prodded for a smile, for any reaction. Harriet had blanched. ‘Listen, you’re working too hard. You need someone to wine you and dine you, take you somewhere that isn’t the library,’ Sukie pressed. ‘Or your bedroom. Although…!’ She wiggled her eyebrows suggestively.

Harriet tapped at the side of the kettle as if it would somehow make the water within boil sooner. ‘Now’s not a good time, I really need to focus on my coursework and dissertation. I really want that First…’ she said.

‘Come on!’ Sukie squeezed Harriet’s arm. ‘One date. Dan just wants to meet you on campus one evening, no big deal. It will be good for you. You’ll like him, I promise. He’s friends with Adam actually, though I don’t hold that against him!’ Sukie laughed. The water in the kettle came to the boil; Harriet stared at it blankly. ‘Look,’ Sukie said, reaching for the kettle and pouring the water into the mugs herself. ‘I’m not asking you to sleep with the guy, I’m not asking you to marry him. Just go for a drink, see where it goes. What can it hurt?’

Harriet finished making her cup of tea in silence, wrapping her fingers around it thoughtfully. ‘I’ll think about it,’ she said eventually, leaning against the kitchen side and taking a tentative sip.

‘Good.’ Sukie straightened from putting the milk back in the fridge. Her gaze softened as she looked at her friend, cheeks and nose still raw from the cold, dark circles under her eyes from the long nights she’d been pulling lately. ‘We’re just concerned for you, Harry,’ she said. ‘You’re turning into a Literature Hermit. Even we hardly get to see you anymore.’

‘I know. It’s just… you know.’

‘Yeah, I know,’ Sukie said kindly, although she didn’t. She moved towards the sofas and picked up the remote control. ‘Shall we see what’s on the telly?’

She hadn’t expected him to find it funny.

‘I never knew Dan had such good taste,’ Adam laughed, trailing his fingertips territorially across Harriet’s hipbones and down along the curve of her. She twitched away anxiously, even though they were relatively unexposed thanks to the dense forsythia planted in the flowerbed that curved around the walkway.

‘Yes, it’s so funny,’ Harriet frowned. ‘I’m going to have to go out on a date with this guy now, it’s weird.’ Adam shrugged.

‘So what? Just go for the drink with him. Better yet, go for the drink with him and while you’re there, tell him about us. He’ll think it’s funny.’

‘He’ll tell Su,’ Harriet scowled. Adam resettled the strap of his bookbag on his shoulder with an uncomfortable expression on his face.

‘Yeah, well, don’t you think it’s time she knew? That everyone knew? It’s getting weird, Harry. It’s like you’re ashamed of me.’

Harriet closed her eyes momentarily as she collected her thoughts. Adam had been building up to this for days now, she’d known it was coming; she just wished he’d chosen a better moment than ten minutes before a seminar.

‘It’s not like that, you know we’ve got to be careful with Leigha.’

‘She’s not a child,’ Adam retorted, frowning.

‘No, but the situation is delicate because of you!’ Harriet shot back, regretting it immediately as a swell of hurt and annoyance flashed across Adam’s face.

‘Why say that?’ he asked her.

‘Well, why kiss her?’ Harriet couldn’t help but reply. Adam’s face darkened further.

‘You know what?’ he said, shifting his bag strap again as he took a step back from her. ‘Leigha is just an excuse. You’re not sure how you feel about me, no matter what you say in bed, when we’re alone. And you don’t want to risk pissing off your mates for something that might not be worth it.’ Harriet was struck dumb with astonishment – only for a moment – but it was enough. Adam looked at her pityingly. ‘I’m so right, aren’t I? Whatever.’

‘Adam–’ Harriet started.

‘I wanted you to be a girlfriend, not a fuck buddy.’ Harriet winced at his crudeness and at the past tense; Adam started to walk away.

‘What about the seminar?’ she called weakly after him.

‘Like I give two fucks about the seminar,’ he responded, without looking back.