The Best Thing I Never Had (7 page)

Adam was stumped into silence. ‘Upsetting you, I guess.’

‘Did you tell Sukie you fancied me to have a great big joke at my expense?’

Adam shook his head emphatically.

‘Well, good,’ Harriet said, studying the reflection of the light bulb overhead in her drink. ‘That’ll teach you to do drugs. Let’s forget it.’ Adam gripped her elbow more firmly.

‘No,’ was all he got out before—

‘Let’s do the Happy Birthday,’ Miles called, ‘it’s not gonna let up out there.’ It was a short-running but important tradition at Dell Road that any renditions of Happy Birthday take place in the garden, apparently snow, or no snow. Nicky – from what Harriet could see from across the room – looked a little pallid and tired but agreeable enough.

Several of the guests made a dash for the coat hooks in the hall, although most of the boys seemed willing to put their trust in their beer jackets. Leigha handed Harriet her coat as she passed back through the kitchen towards the back door, grabbing her by the hand and pulling her along as she went.

Harriet glanced back at Adam as she allowed herself to be piloted by Leigha and the rest of the gathering away from him and out into the garden, pulling her arms hurriedly through her coat as she went. She was barefoot though, Adam noticed, bright orange nails appearing and disappearing under the hem of her jeans as she walked. He moved against the flow of people, into the hall, inspecting the vast collection of shoes discarded between the front door and the foot of the stairs. The noise of the house dulled away as the stragglers made the journey into the garden.

Hastily Adam grabbed at a pair of tan Ugg boots, which he thought he recognised as Nicky’s, but – whatever – they looked warm and of an okay size for Harriet.

It took him a minute to locate Harriet in the garden; she wasn’t where he expected her to be – with her laughing housemates in the centre of the snow-frosted lawn – but stood instead, acceding to her exposed toes, on the strip of patio near the garden fence, absent-mindedly rubbing one bare foot over the other. Adam manoeuvred his way over to her and wordlessly held up the boots. Harriet received them with a grateful murmur, steadying herself with a hand on his shoulder as she pulled them on. From the grass, the first hesitant strains of Happy Birthday carried across to where they stood. As Harriet opened her mouth to join in, Adam bent his head, so close to her that he felt the brush of his bottom lip against the softness of her earlobe.

‘You know you said let’s forget it?’ he murmured. Harriet nodded, gaze focused doggedly ahead on Nicky, who was laughing and putting her hands over her face with the universal embarrassment of being sung to. ‘That’s fine. That’s good, in fact. But I don’t want you thinking I’m some total dick. Even though I was wasted, I want you to know that I meant what I said. I think you’re…’

He couldn’t even bring himself to finish the sentence. Harriet dropped her eyes from the spectacle on the lawn, studying her fingers intently. ‘But most importantly,’ Adam rushed to continue, ‘you’re a mate. A really good mate. So can we… you know, forget the former and… focus on the latter?’

Almost as if on cue, a cheer and a smattering of applause broke out from the people in the garden; the song was finished. The colder members of the company started to drift back inside. Harriet didn’t immediately say anything. Adam stood awkwardly, head still bent to hers, watching her face as she in turn watched her housemates twirling on the grass, Leigha laughing, with one arm around Nicky, the other arm flung out to the sky.

‘Adam,’ she said, finally, and the sound of his own name had never been so alarming. ‘Let’s get out of here. Let’s go for a walk.’

‘A walk?’ he repeated, dumbly. Harriet nodded and – for the first time during the whole conversation – looked up and met his eyes.

‘Why not?’ she said, ‘I don’t think we’ll be missed.’

Harriet’s nerve lasted her the journey around the side of the house, clumsily rolling the wheelie bins out of their way, emerging into the front garden. Wordlessly she hopped the low and crumbling wall and led the trailing Adam around the corner and on to Hatcher Road, coming to an abrupt halt the other side of her house’s garden fence.

Adam took her sudden pause as an invitation to speak. ‘Look, I don’t want for this to be a big deal,’ he implored, catching up to her and running his hand down the snow-damp arm of her coat. ‘The last thing I want to do is make you uncomfortable, but when you were angry with me about the whole Leigha thing I couldn’t bear it, I can’t have you angry at me again. I don’t deserve it. This time.’

Harriet’s mouth twitched into a smile. ‘Oh Adam it’s just… a bit awkward, you know? I can’t… ‘

‘Don’t, don’t,’ Adam cut her off, panic rising in his voice. ‘Don’t say whatever you’re about to say.’ Harriet looked at him inquiringly.

‘What is it you think I’m about to say?’ she asked; she barely knew herself.

‘I don’t know,’ Adam replied, ‘but I’m sure it’s not good. How could it be good? I only want good things for you, Harry, and for you to think good things of me, but I keep fucking you off. Please, I’m begging you. Let’s draw a line, like we did about the me and Leigha thing. Let’s pretend it never happened. Let’s have a blank slate; please?’

And in that moment, Harriet realised what it was that she wanted.

She wanted Adam to kiss her, grind his mouth into hers hard enough to bruise, dig his fingernails into the skin of her back, hold her so tightly she couldn’t breathe. The surprise of it avalanched into her stomach, colder than her cheeks on that snowy February night, colder than the tip of her nose.

And it must have all shown so clearly on her face because only half a breath passed before Adam kissed her, balling his hands into tight fists inside the fall of her hair, tugging at her scalp. It was like rum burning down her throat, a rush to her extremities. She could hear Leigha’s voice carry from their back garden – hear her laughing as she twirled with her arms outstretched, catching snowflakes on her tongue – and a panic rose and fluttered in her chest like a trapped bird. As if he could feel it, Adam drew back, still holding the sides of her head.

‘Tell me if you want me to stop,’ he said gruffly, his face anxious, but the whole thing was so wonderful and insane.

And – for probably the first time in her life – Harriet stopped worrying about Leigha, and kissed Adam back.

February 2007

Harriet awoke lying on her stomach, disorientated, with her face pressed into her pillow; it smelt fusty from where she’d laid her damp hair upon it the night before. She heard the soft rush of her door against the carpet and the soft click as it was closed. The rattle of the handle as it had been opened was what had roused her.

As she raised her head she saw a pyjama-clad Sukie, repositioning the desk chair closer to the bed before sitting on it.

‘So he didn’t stay over then?’ Sukie asked as soon as she saw Harriet was awake, her voice as stiff as her posture.

‘What?’ Harriet said, still half-asleep and genuinely confused, rolling into a sitting position and pulling the duvet up higher against the chill of the room.

‘I saw you.’ Sukie looked at Harriet sharply, as if challenging her to continue playing dumb. ‘I came upstairs to put my coat and shoes in my room.’ The one room in the house with a view of Hatcher Road.

Harriet felt sick. She was awake now. ‘Don’t tell Leigha,’ she blurted, immediately. It was the only thing she could think of to say.

‘Fucking hell, Harry,’ Sukie hissed, showing how dearly she wanted to be shouting instead, ‘what do you think you’re playing at?’

‘I was drunk,’ Harriet answered immediately, the easiest, most understandable lie. ‘And, you know, I was feeling…’ – she cast around for an innocent enough word – ‘mischievous.’

‘Mischievous?’ Sukie echoed, incredulous. ‘You’re not a fucking elf.’

‘I know, I’m sorry,’ Harriet cringed. ‘But, look, I know Leigha would be pissed if she’d seen, but do
you
have to be on my case? Consenting adults, lapse in concentration, no big deal.’ Harriet mentally crossed her fingers that Sukie had just glanced from her window, as she couldn’t imagine her standing there staring down as she and Adam had talked and kissed in the snowfall for two hours. Two hours! Harriet hadn’t quite believed it herself when she’d slipped back into the house and seen how much time had passed.

‘The guy is a total prat,’ was Sukie’s blunt assessment. ‘I don’t want him messing with you like he did with Leigha.’ Harriet felt that prickle and flutter again, doubt and shame. She wondered what words Adam had whispered to Leigha as they’d pressed together against the front door.
Tell me if you want me to stop,
the Adam in her head murmured against Leigha’s pulse, as his teeth nipped at her throat.

They both froze at the sound of a door opening on the landing; Nicky’s bedroom being downstairs, it had to be Leigha. A second later, they heard the slide of the deadbolt on the bathroom door and the sound of running water.

‘You won’t tell Leigha?’ Harriet repeated, voice pitched quieter; she’d meant for it to be a statement but it still came out sounding like a question.

‘Of course I won’t, but seriously,’ Sukie frowned, ‘the next time you get a weird… horny little elf urge… warn me, or something, and I’ll point you in a better direction!’ she smirked.

Harriet swallowed down the nasty feeling that her deception was giving her, and smiled at her friend.

‘Deal.’

‘Okay,’ Sukie said, rising from the chair and hitching up her baggy pyjama bottoms. ‘Tea?’

‘Oh, yes please!’ Sukie nodded, apparently pleased with the outcome of this early morning intervention, and left the room. After a moment or two Harriet could hear her conversing cheerfully with whoever was downstairs, the pressured rush of water from the tap into the kettle.

Harriet quickly threw the covers back and jumped from the bed, snatching up a hoodie from the back of the desk chair to pull on over her vest top. Urgently she inspected her face in the mirror hanging above her desk. Was that faint redness stubble-rash from kissing, or just where the pillow had been pressing? She rubbed away the black flecks of mascara from under her eyes and exhaled tensely through pursed lips.

Her mobile phone sat quietly on the desk next to her, set to silent, but the little green LED flashing showed that at some point during the night she’d received a text message.

‘Tea’s up!’ Sukie yelled from downstairs. With her customary great timing Leigha emerged from the bathroom, the smell of sweet steam accompanying her and wafting in through Harriet’s slightly open door.

‘Hope there’s one for me?’ she called down. ‘And some paracetemol! Please?’

Harriet grabbed frantically for the phone as if Leigha were about to randomly charge into the room and snatch it up.

Adam Chadwick, 04.51

I can’t sleep. I am smiling so much my cheeks hurt J !! xx

Harriet deleted the message before setting the phone back down on her desk, then grabbed it up again – double checked it was set to silent, then slipped it into the pocket of her hoodie. Downstairs, Nicky’s voice grew louder as she moved down the hallway.

‘So, we don’t need anything but bread?’ she called back to Sukie in the kitchen. There was a moment of silence after Sukie had replied, before – ‘Has anyone seen my boots?’ Harriet shot an alarmed look at Nicky’s ankle-height Ugg boots, discarded at the foot of her bed. The last thing she needed was someone else’s’ attention brought to the fact she’d been outside last night. She was already anticipating Leigha’s interrogation on where she’d been for the later hours of the party.

There was a thud as Leigha dropped something over the banisters. ‘Wear mine,’ she called down to Nicky, ‘and hurry up! I need some carbohydrates in me.’

Harriet felt a phantom vibration against her stomach. Even though she knew it was her imagination – the phone was set to silent, not vibrate – she couldn’t help but pull it out of her hoodie pocket to check it.

‘Moooorning,’ came Leigha’s languorous voice, her head appearing round the door, towel-turban balanced insecurely on her head. Harriet gave the most obvious of guilty starts, hand tightening around her mobile phone. Leigha put a hand to the back of her hair towel, steadying it; she didn’t seem to have noticed anything amiss. ‘I am
hanging
,’ Leigha continued, ‘what about you?’

‘Not really,’ Harriet answered, before immediately realising that she, of course, would be dreadfully hung-over if she had been as drunk as she’d persuaded Sukie she’d been. ‘I mean, I probably would be, but I went to bed earlier than you guys. I felt a bit sick.’

‘Oh, I wondered where you’d gone to. At least you feel better today. I’m good for nothing but perhaps a DVD and a mid-afternoon nap.’ As if on cue, Leigha yawned widely.

‘Let’s get some caffeine,’ Harriet said, moving towards Leigha in the doorway, slipping her phone back into her pocket.

‘Nicky’s boots,’ Leigha said suddenly, her eyeline having come to rest on them as she finished her yawn. Harriet felt a strike of that ridiculous panic again. Leigha shook her head affectionately. ‘Dappy cow, better bring them downstairs so she’ll see them.’ Adjusting her towel again, she turned and went down the stairs. Snatching up the incriminating footwear, Harriet followed.

Johnny’s bare feet made a satisfying scuffing noise against the cold linoleum of the kitchen floor. He’d already groggily reached up and opened a cupboard before noticing that he wasn’t alone in the room. Adam sat at the small circular table, a box of Cornflakes and a pint of milk in front of him, turning his mobile phone over and over in his hand.

‘Morning,’ Adam grinned, when he saw that Johnny was aware of his presence. Johnny shut the cupboard door.

‘And what are you doing up so early?’ Johnny demanded, more than a little piqued at having his typical morning solitude invaded.

‘It’s more like, what am I doing up so late? I haven’t slept, so afraid this doesn’t count as getting up early, mate.’ Adam used his hand to scoop Cornflakes into his mouth, washing them down with milk drunk straight from the carton. Johnny frowned.

‘Good, for a minute there I thought you were giving up the habit of a lifetime.’ Adam turned his mobile over in his palm again, bouncing the bottom of it off the table.

‘That better not be the only milk.’ A bleary Miles scowled from the doorway. Johnny turned to him in surprise. Miles had stayed behind to sleep in Nicky’s bed, which he did more often than not anyway. He must have come home after them.

‘Everything alright?’ Adam asked, alarmed, obviously coming to the same realisation. Miles brushed past Johnny into the room, opening the fridge.

‘Yeah. Nic and I had a little spat. I think she had too much to drink. I’ll go round and see her later, maybe.’ Johnny and Adam exchanged a look; this was unheard of.

‘Okay,’ Johnny said, tentatively. ‘Cool. Lads’ day, then. Who wants to go outside and build a snowman with a huge cock?’ His ribaldry had the intended effect; Miles straightened from the fridge with a laugh and a groan, holding more milk. He pretended to consider the option

‘I don’t think there’s enough snow settled for a
huge
cock.’

Adam’s phone thumped irritatingly against the table top again. ‘The girls have got a garden,’ he announced, as if this was new information. ‘We could go round there?’

‘Not much of a lads’ day,’ Johnny commented in a neutral tone.

‘I’d prefer to give Nicky more time to cool down,’ Miles admitted. ‘She was pretty pissed off with me last night.’

Adam fell quiet. Johnny watched with interest as he sucked on the inside of his cheek, checking his mobile display before allowing it to bounce off the table again, as if in punishment for not heralding a message. A nasty feeling chewed inside his empty stomach. Adam had disappeared for a couple of hours last night. Johnny had eventually found him sitting on the front garden wall, face and ears pink with the bite of cold, looking indolently up at the flurries of white flake in the dark sky. If Johnny hadn’t been with Leigha for the entirety of the evening he’d think that –

Johnny physically shook his head, trying to rid himself of the ugly thoughts about his best friend, and the girl he thought himself in love with. Miles noticed the slight movement and gave Johnny a rueful smile, as if he could guess the line of his thoughts. Not that it would be difficult; Leigha was pretty much all he thought about, nowadays.

‘Bloody girls, ey?’ Miles said. Johnny smiled back, a little sadly.

‘Bloody girls,’ Adam suddenly echoed, with feeling, before crunching down on his next mouthful of cereal.

Exhaustion had stolen up on him in the late hours of the morning and Adam had welcomed it, retiring to his bedroom.

The sounds of children playing outside roused him several hours later, the room cast into shadow by the early sunset of a February day. Before his brain had even fully processed the action, his hand was scrabbling on his bedcovers for his mobile phone; there were no new messages displayed. Adam lay back on the bed-sheets warmed by his body and for one irrational moment wondered if the whole thing with Harriet had been a dream.

Resolve hardened in his stomach. This was ridiculous. He opened a blank text message, addressed it to Harriet. There was no point being coy now. Embarrassment lurched as he recalled the things he had murmured to her the night before – into her hair, into her mouth – things he’d never said before, things he hadn’t even realised he felt until he was telling her that he did.

Adam Chadwick, 17.03

Can u escape tonight? I think that we shd talk xx

Harriet stood in the kitchen in front of the sluggishly boiling kettle and read the short message over and over, trying to discern a subtext. Was he angry that she hadn’t replied to him earlier? Was he now sobered up, embarrassed and regretful? Nerves pitched in her stomach. Would she then have to pretend to be regretful, too?

Her silent phone began to flash insistently in her hand; startled, Harriet almost dropped it. Adam was calling her.

Abandoning the tea preparations, Harriet bolted for her bedroom, taking the steps two at a time. Her thumb pressed the call accept button as she was pushing her bedroom door closed with her other hand.

‘Hello?’ she said into the phone, immediately wincing at how breathless she sounded.

‘If you like piña coladas… and getting caught in the rain,’ Adam sung softly down the line. Harriet gave a surprised laugh. ‘Didn’t want to give you the opportunity to keep ignoring me,’ Adam told her, voice quiet and deliberately light.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, pitching her voice low to match his tone, ‘it’s just been mad here today…’ she lied.

Adam laughed. ‘So… come be alone with me?’ His tone was teasing. The silence that fell afterwards was tense. Harriet thought back to December, Adam laughing at himself, hoisting her purple book bag up high and over his shoulder: I’m going to the Armstrong. Want to come be alone with me?

And then she surprised herself – she only hesitated for a minute.

‘Do you need help with your Shakespeare coursework?’ she asked.

‘That was handed in before Christmas,’ Adam replied, confused. Harriet rolled her eyes to herself.

‘I know that – and thankfully you seem to know that – but I don’t think the others do, do they?’ Belatedly Adam grasped her meaning.

‘Oh I see. Yeah, no, I totally need for you to come over and sort out my… footnotes,’ he said, mock-serious. ‘It’s due in tomorrow and I’m… stressing out,’ he added, dead-pan. Harriet laughed.

‘Well, I can’t say no to that,’ she murmured. ‘I’ll be there in ten minutes or so.’

‘Thank you,’ Adam said quietly. Harriet laughed again.

‘What for? I’m not actually compiling any footnotes for you tonight, so don’t you dare ask…’

‘For coming round.’ Harriet couldn’t help but smile.

‘I’ll be there in ten minutes, ‘she repeated. ‘Bye.’

‘Harry!’ Adam said urgently, calling her attention back to the phonecall. ‘Wait.’

‘What?’

‘Do I…’ Adam paused; Harriet imagined that the tips of his ears were flushed pink. ‘How is this evening going to go?’ Harriet crinkled her nose in confusion.

‘Pardon?’

‘Well, you know…’ Adam paused to collect his thoughts again. ‘Will I be happy after you’ve left or… you know… shall I go on a quick beer run?’

‘I don’t drink beer,’ Harriet answered with a smile. She could hear Adam chuckle under his breath on the other end of the line.