The Best Thing I Never Had (19 page)

Leigha smiled a tight smile. She wondered if Roddy knew her well enough to recognise that this smile was her cynical one. He probably did; she didn’t care.

‘Me too.’

It was late when they left the bar, and raining, so there was no chance of getting a taxi. The walk from Kensington to her flat on Gloucester Road wasn’t so terrible, even in heels, so they hunkered down under Roddy’s golf-sized umbrella and headed south. Leigha was feeling more companionable towards him after the better part of a bottle of wine and hooked their arms, pressing her cheek into the side of his shoulder.

A waitress stood leaning against the wall of an Italian restaurant, sheltering her dampening cigarette with her free hand. She exhaled her mouthful of smoke, purple and blue in the darkness, and watched the couple pass. Roddy talking away happily in a low baritone, the thin heels of Leigha’s shoes hitting where the water was collecting in the mortar lines of the pavement, sending splashes like little sparks up behind her as she walked.

I bet you wish you had my life, Leigha found herself thinking to the anonymous girl.

Roddy excused himself to the bathroom as soon as they got in. Leigha went straight to the kitchen, taking a bottle of red at random from the rack and uncorking it with a practiced jerk of the corkscrew. She felt agreeably blurred at the edges. She didn’t feel like calling it a night just yet.

She sensed Roddy in the doorway and turned around. He took up most of it, had his arms up holding on to the top of the frame, affection for her as ever in his eyes. Leigha turned and reached for two wine glasses.

‘What’s your magic number?’ she asked, with her back to him.

‘What, is that like a favourite number?’ Roddy moved nearer, taking the bottle of wine from the side and pouring two generous glassfuls.

‘No, it’s how many women you’ve slept with,’ Leigha clarified, taking her wine from him and dandling it in the crook of her thumb. Roddy gave her a sideways glance.

‘You’re not going to ask for some sort of STD test paperwork now are you?’

Leigha barked a short laugh. ‘Just curious.’

‘Why, what’s your ‘magic number’?’

‘I asked first.’

Roddy took a slow sip of his wine. She could tell he was deciding whether or not to lie, and if so, whether it would be more impressive to revise up or down. ‘Seven,’ he answered, finally.

‘Oh, so innocent!’ Leigha smirked.

‘Oh yeah?’ Roddy frowned and took another drink. ‘So what’s yours?’

‘Let’s just say I’m in double figures,’ Leigha teased. Roddy frowned harder.

‘Yeah? But double figures like, ten? Or double figures like, ninety-nine?’ Leigha burst out laughing, kicking off her shoes and hopping to sit on the kitchen worktop.

‘Like fourteen,’ she assured him. ‘But that’s still double you!’

‘Well, it might be more than seven for me actually, I’d need to think about it properly,’ Roddy blustered. Leigha grinned, pulled him closer by hooking her leg around his hips.

‘Well, let’s not think about it now, hey?’

Roddy, however, seemed to be stuck on the topic. ‘How old were you when you lost it?’

Leigha wasn’t expecting that. She reached behind her for her wine to stall her response, then decided she had nothing to be ashamed of.

‘Twenty,’ she answered, meeting his eyes defiantly, as if daring him to make comment. He didn’t, but his face betrayed surprise. ‘A little late to the party, maybe,’ she joked.

‘Well then,’ was all he said, plucking her half-finished wine from her hand. ‘We’ve got lots of making up for lost time to do.’

Usually Leigha slept well when Roddy stayed over, the heavy weight of his arm or leg thrown across her body a comfort. That night her mind just wouldn’t settle.

Her first had been Seth. It was the only real secret she had ever kept from Harriet. Even though it was after the two of them had broken up, she knew it looked bad – a definite breach of friendship ethics.

She imagines that Seth would argue, if pressed, that it didn’t count; at least, she’s pretty sure that she’s not included in his ‘magic number’. A combination of alcohol and misery over his recent break-up had unmanned him. He’d gone in, breaking her open, but then – almost immediately – he started getting softer and fell out of her before a whole minute had passed. He had pulled completely away and sat on the edge of the bed with his head in his hands as she quickly dressed and left. To this day she associates the loss of her virginity with the smell of that room, warm with blood and rejection.

That weekend she’d pulled in the Union, brought the guy home, got it over with, sent him packing. Almost like a business transaction; they both certainly got what they wanted. Before the guy was even through the front gate, Leigha had headed straight into Harriet’s bedroom, had shaken her awake.

‘Just did it,’ she told her, and the satisfaction in her voice was real. ‘It was great.’

Harriet hadn’t said anything, just sleepily made as much room in the single bed as she could and let her friend slip in beside her.

Harriet had nursed two small glasses of wine successfully until last orders.

‘Down it,’ Annie instructed cheerfully, reaching down for her handbag. ‘Bit of a way back to the tube.’

‘No, I’m fine,’ Harriet said, pushing the glass away from her with her fingertip. Annie shrugged and reached across for it.

‘Waste not, want not,’ she said, before downing the little that remained. ‘Eurgh,’ she winced, closing her eyes in distaste. ‘Warm…’ Harriet ignored her, shrugging into her coat and wrapping her long knit scarf around her neck three, four times. By the time she’d finished with it Annie too was coated up, and moved around the table to link their arms and lead her towards the door.

‘You need to chill out,’ was her sage advice, as they passed from the wine bar out into the wintery drizzle. Harriet rolled her eyes. She hated that phrase and Annie knew it. ‘It’s just a wedding. You should be looking forward to it.’

‘I just can’t relax. It’s there, looming.’ She wiggled her fingers theatrically. ‘It’s a bit like exam dread. Or waiting to have surgery.’ Now Annie rolled her eyes.

‘For crying out loud. You’re building them up to be so much scarier than they are. They probably won’t even look at you. They’ll probably just move rooms to avoid you whenever you’re near.’

Harriet winced. ‘Thanks. That sounds almost worse than a confrontation.’

‘Listen to me, nothing –’ Annie paused to tap her index finger to Harriet’s forehead, ‘– will be worse than whatever you’re picturing in here. That I can promise you. And then, it will be over and you can all go back to pretending each other doesn’t exist.’ Harriet frowned. ‘Just keep your smile on,’ Annie continued, ‘go easy on the free bar, oh – and no relapsing and snogging that bloke on the dance floor, okay? I think that might be a bit of a flashpoint,’ she laughed, unlinking their arms to fetch her Oystercard from her coat pocket as they neared the entrance to the Underground.

Harriet felt a throb of anxiety travel through her whole body and settle in the soles of her feet. The thought of even just being in Adam’s eyeline again made what little wine she had had churn hot in her stomach.

‘Oh sweetie, please don’t look like that!’ Annie hurriedly linked arms with her again. ‘I’m only winding you up.’

‘The last time I saw him, I slapped him,’ Harriet mumbled dolefully. ‘And,’ she winced at her twenty one year old self’s sense of drama, ‘told him that I
never wanted to see him again
.’

‘Well then,’ Annie led her firmly down the steps into the Underground. ‘He’ll probably be avoiding you too, then.’

In the evenings her two sisters ensconced themselves in their bedrooms, but Sukie – more than a little starved of companionship some days – preferred to sit in the lounge with her father, who usually was doing two things at once, most commonly listening to the news whilst reading on his Kindle. Sukie always marvelled at this; although she had been brought up to be bilingual – indeed, her father only spoke to his daughters in Japanese – she certainly couldn’t concentrate on reading kanji whilst BBC newsreaders prated on in clipped Home Counties accents in the background.

She had a Kindle too, somewhere upstairs; her father had bought a set for a whole family when they were first released. Sukie had never gotten on with it, preferring the realness of a printed book against her skin, even if she always felt the silent reproach of her father when he saw her with one in hand as opposed to the gadget.

She had never been very academic or literary; her degree had been in Drama and Theatre Studies and it had suited her to be ‘doing’ rather than ‘reading about’. But nowadays, stuck in the house all day, most days, waiting with a perverse impatience for the washing machine to finish its cycle so she could transfer the load to the dryer, she found she had a lot of time on her hands for reading.

Her mother used to take her to the local library when she was very young, when her middle sister was just a nuisance in a pushchair. The elder Mitsuki, unlike her husband, had embraced life in Britain wholeheartedly and never stopped trying to improve her written and spoken English. To that end she checked out several books a week and back home in her sunny kitchen had read them haltingly aloud to her two little daughters.

So it wasn’t very surprising that Sukie, fresh from graduation, newly motherless, jobless, found herself gravitating to that pleasant, solemn building and just sitting a while, some days, in the quiet. Eventually she registered for a membership and started to read, firstly, just classics she vaguely remembered her mother enjoying, then anything that struck her fancy. Three times a week at least she’d visit the library in the quiet of the early afternoon, sinking down into one of the scallop-edged reading chairs and losing herself for a few hours.

One day, unusually, the reading chairs in the fiction section were all in use and so Sukie had wandered through travel and into non-fiction and reference, past the bank of computer desks and to a free chair.

There had been a man, hunched over a book on the nearby desk, the heels of his palms pressed into his temples, the unmistakeable stance of a student in last minute revision peril. His black jumper had been carelessly thrown over the arm of the reading chair. Not wishing to interrupt his cramming session, Sukie had silently folded the jumper and placed it on the desk in front of him. The man had jerked in surprise and Sukie smiled apologetically, gesturing at the chair before sinking into it, opening her book and forgetting all about the student with the jumper.

Two hours later she’d stretched and craned her neck to see the nearby wall clock; she really should go to the shop, get some food in, before the girls were due home from school.

The student – still there – had pushed for her eye contact, smiling affably. Olive skinned and dark-haired with a good broad frame, Sukie had felt a ripple of immediate interest; he was just the sort of guy she used to go for at Uni. Perhaps he sensed this, as his smile had broadened and he’d part-mouthed, part-stage-whispered: Want to go for a coffee?

Demetrious was studying Law on the Open University and was, in all ways, a ray of sunshine into her life: warm and glorious, achingly temporary. He lived just off the high street with his boyfriend Rob, who worked in the City, doing something neither Demi nor Sukie pretended to understand.

‘All the cute guys are gay,’ Sukie had laughed, that first day, holding her coffee mug high to her face to hide her genuine disappointment. Demi had just tilted his head and looked at her playfully, an expression she would get to know well.

‘I’m not gay,’ he had clarified, matter-of-factly.

‘Living with a boyfriend called Rob doesn’t sound very straight!’ Sukie had pointed out.

‘Labels!’ Demi had scorned, with one of his characteristic and very Greek hand gestures. ‘I fall in love with the person, not the gender.’

Sukie didn’t know if he fell in love with her or not, but within a month they were going straight from a perfunctory visit to the library to exchange books, then straight back to his flat and into bed.

The closest Demi ever came to suggesting that he might leave Rob had come quite recently. Sukie had finished in the shower and with great frustration was trying to pull her tights up over her still damp legs. Demi had quietly watched her from where he sat on the edge of the bed.

‘Doesn’t it bother you,’ he said suddenly, ‘that I’m sleeping with someone else?’

‘What, you mean Rob?’ Sukie asked, momentarily non-plussed. Demi had rolled his eyes.

‘Yes, of course Rob, how many other people do you think I’m having it away with?’

‘Well, you know, I hear such things about dirty Greeks!’ Sukie replied, laughing.

‘No, seriously,’ he’d persisted. ‘I would…
hate
it, you know, if I knew you were sleeping with someone else,’ he admitted. Sukie finally got her tights into place and leant momentarily against the wall, regarding her lover thoughtfully.

‘As long as you didn’t have another girl,’ she answered, finally.

‘I would never,’ Demi had assured her emphatically, and there was enough respect in his eyes to make her believe that he was sincere.

They hadn’t mentioned it since, but that night, stretched out on the couch, opposite her father in his customary armchair, Sukie couldn’t help but wonder what it would be like to see Demi in the evenings, watch television with him, talk back to the news, eat a dinner that they’d cooked together. Literally shaking herself from this chain of thought, Sukie stood and went to put the kettle on, dropping a kiss on the head of her silent father as she passed him.

He was doing that maddening thing, where he looked at her with something a bit too close to pity in his eyes.

‘There’s always your sister-in-law and your cousin,’ Miles tried again. Nicky expressed her displeasure by banging the pans she was washing up perhaps more than was necessary. ‘Or, you know, it’s quite cool and modern not to have any at all, nowadays.’

‘Honey –" she cut him off, ‘just leave it now, alright? Those girls were my family, before I met you. I love them.’

‘Yeah, but the point is that they don’t love each other.’ Miles flicked the tea-towel he was using to dry up with distractedly. ‘They haven’t been under the same roof in like, what, five years? Last time I heard Su mention Harry, she said she wished she would die in a fire!’

‘She was joking!’

‘It’s not funny!’

Nicky frowned as she concentrated on a particularly stubborn bit of burnt-on sauce.

‘They’ll bottle one another or something. They’ll ruin the whole day. Please, pet, reconsider this.’ Miles reached out to take Nicky’s dishwater wet wrist. ‘It’s meant to be about us, about the future, not about ancient history.’

‘Yes, but my bridesmaids are meant to be about
me
.’ Nicky took back her hand and continued to scour the saucepan resolutely. Realising that they were dangerously close to argument flash-point, Miles dropped the tea-towel to the worktop and stalked out of the kitchen.

Nicky glanced at her reflection in the microwave; she looked about as frazzled as she felt. Giving up with the pan and leaving it to soak, she dried her hands on her pyjama bottoms and began stacking what Miles had already dried back into the cupboards distractedly.

Her memory lit upon the arguments at Dell Road about the washing up. She and Sukie, the only two who usually bothered, had gone on strike to see what would happen. She remembers coming into the kitchen one day to see Leigha and Harriet doggedly attempting to share a quiche using a chopstick and cake slice for cutlery. She remembers how she laughed; it was just one of countless moments during the two years they had all lived together that she imagined this is how the closest of sisters would be.

Slipping the last plate into place in its cupboard, Nicky straightened with a sigh. She could hear the television blaring out some sort of sports commentary in the room beyond, blue flickering light thrown from it against the far wall and in through the kitchen door. Her head was still too full of a life once lived in a bright, welcoming house where all the walls were painted as yellow as the sunshine – to go and sit beside her fiancé in the dark; but theirs was a studio flat, after all – and she knew full well she had no place else to go.

The communal heat in Annie’s building was always up way too high; being in the lift was stifling. Harriet tried awkwardly to unbutton her coat with one hand whilst trying to hold the paper bag of takeaway cartons steady with the other.

Annie was waiting impatiently at her open flat door, having buzzed Harriet in from the street.

‘I come bearing Chinese food as requested,’ Harriet announced as the lift doors opened and she caught sight of her friend. ‘Now
what
is so important?’

Annie stepped aside and beckoned her friend indoors. ‘Let’s eat first,’ she said ominously, ‘I don’t want to put you off your dinner.’

‘Literally can’t eat anymore,’ Harriet groaned, putting a half-eaten spring roll back on her plate as if to illustrate her point. ‘Now this had better be good.’

Annie raked her fork through her uneaten rice while she collected her thoughts. ‘You know my sister?’

‘Which one?’ Harriet asked.

‘Iona.’

‘The one studying at Goldsmiths?’

‘Yeah, that’s the one. Anyway, I was talking to her today and it turns out that she’s going to this wedding too.’

‘Oh!’ Harriet blinked. ‘Nicky and Miles’? How does she know them? Wow! What a small world!’ she laughed.

‘Do you remember I told you when she got this older boyfriend?’ Annie asked, tentatively. Harriet’s heart suddenly hiccupped in her chest.

‘Not -?’ she began. Annie immediately caught her chain of thought and shook her head vigorously.

‘Oh no, not your guy. Someone called John? He’s a groomsman, so, I guess you know him?’

‘Johnny?’ After a moment Harriet laughed.

‘So is this someone else who will be avoiding you?’ Annie asked, ‘because that will be awkward for Iona.’

‘I’m just as likely to avoid him,’ Harriet rubbed her eyes tiredly. ‘I blamed him for what happened for years.’

‘Blamed?’ Annie picked up on the past tense immediately.

‘Oh, you know, in retrospect I realise that I put him in an impossible position,’ Harriet answered vaguely, waving her fork in the air as she gestured. ‘It was me against the girl he loved. I probably would have done the same thing.’

‘Well, well! Aren’t we magnanimous.’ Annie stood and carried the plates across to the bin, scraping the sticky leftovers straight into it.

‘Well, to be honest, I think he’s the one out of all of us who’s been caused the most pain,’ Harriet answered softly, passing her own plate to Annie.

‘I hope my little sister isn’t going out with some emotionally retarded prat,’ Annie frowned, scraping away at the second plate.

‘Believe me,’ Harriet said darkly, dropping their used cutlery into the dishwasher. ‘If he’s going out with your sister, he’s already ten times more emotionally healthy than he was the last time I saw him.’

‘I’ve met her a couple of times, like at Ann’s birthday drinks and stuff,’ Iona said, nonchalantly. Johnny put his palms flat on the desk and leant in nearer to the laptop, as if closer scrutiny would somehow change the image on the screen: Annie, a slightly plumper, blonder version of Iona, with her arm around a smiling woman with straight, dark hair.

‘Harry Shaw,’ he conceded finally, grumpily. ‘Small world…’

‘That’s what I said!’ crowed Iona, reaching for the mouse sensor pad and clicking through more pictures in her sister’s Facebook album. ‘How cool! At least I’ll know someone else at this wedding.’

Johnny frowned. ‘Yeah well, we haven’t really kept in touch. We weren’t that close.’

‘The way I hear it, you practically lived together.’ Iona’s tone remained jovial but her eyes hardened slightly. ‘You were the best of friends.’

Johnny scowled and scratched at the nape of his neck distractedly. ‘My best mate was shagging her,’ he said, dismissively. ‘That was about the extent of our relationship. Now come on. We’re going to miss the film.’ Johnny twisted to snatch his coat up from where he’d thrown it over the foot of Iona’s bed. Wordlessly, Iona turned back to the laptop, exiting the open browser and shutting it down.

‘Speaking of relationships,’ she said, in that same cheery tone, ‘when were you going to tell me that your ex-girlfriend was going to be at this wedding?’

Johnny froze, one arm in and one out of his coat. Iona breezed past him, grabbing her own jacket from the hook on the back of her bedroom door.

‘We’ll talk on the way to the cinema,’ she assured him.

Demi casually trailed paths between the moles on the back of her thigh with the tip of his finger. Sukie turned her face from where it had been buried in the pillow and smiled lazily at him. She felt so relaxed. Thank God for busy business men – both Demi’s boyfriend Rob and her father were going to be back late tonight and so for once she wasn’t rushing headfirst into the shower.

‘I’ll come,’ Demi said suddenly, lifting his hand from her thigh to brush her hair back off her face. ‘I’ll come to this wedding with you.’

Sukie laughed. ‘I haven’t asked you to, weirdo.’

‘I know, but I know you want me to!’ Demi grinned widely, his teeth Hollywood white against his tanned face. ‘And I want to see you all dolled up. I want to dance with you.’

Sukie visibly blanched. ‘If you’re coming, you’re coming as a mate, not a date…’

‘So you want me to play the gay best friend?’ Demi’s tone was playful, but his smile was stretched. Sukie rolled over and rested her head on her elbow.

‘Surely that’s not such a hardship?’