The Best Thing I Never Had (23 page)

‘You wish?’ he pressed, in an odd voice, after her silence had dragged on too long.

‘I wish that maybe we’d just stayed as friends,’ she said finally. Adam’s gaze grew more intense.

‘So that you would have been able to keep friends with everyone?’ he asked, voice strange, and her stomach pranged in guilt that – despite all her best efforts – she was obviously hurting him again.

‘So that I could have kept you,’ she said, simply. ‘Hindsight, huh?’

Adam didn’t answer. The crunching of their shoes in the gravel of the car park they were cutting through was clumsy and over-loud. The pause grew uncomfortable, and Harriet considered making a joke, but Adam’s muteness was too overbearing. They walked the rest of the way to their rooms in silence, listening to the rhythm of the conversations going on ahead and behind.

It was now – literally – only hours to go until the wedding, but still Adam couldn’t sleep. Harriet’s words scratched at him like the cheap linen of the hotel bed. The years had stripped away all the bluster and the immediate sharpness of pain and Harriet had, in one short conversation – probably even without meaning to – made him remember that underneath the foundations of his own pain, his own hurt, there had first been hers, and how desperately sorry he had once been for her.

He toyed with his iPhone, restlessly turning it over and over in his hand. He remembered long ago nights where he would lie awake like this, his head too full of Harriet to allow him any rest. He remembered that he used to text her at silly hours, toyed with the idea of knocking on her bedroom door, felt a little relieved that he didn’t have her mobile number anymore.

She had always been so easy to talk to. He wanted to talk to her now. He wanted to ask her why she’d always been so funny about Leigha, even before Leigha had told her that they had slept together. Leigha had always been a giant self-destruct button, but he wasn’t sure if it was Harriet or himself who had pushed her.

But tomorrow was not the venue for such an ugly conversation. Tomorrow, Adam would stand side-by-side with Harriet in countless photographs, smile through the Best Man and Maid of Honour dance, quite literally walk down the aisle with her; after tomorrow, he would never see her again. Over and over his phone went in his hand.

‘I think Nicky is racist,’ Sukie said, in a tone of all seriousness, squinting at her reflection. Leigha’s brows knit together in concern and she hurriedly plucked hairpins from between her teeth in order to answer.

‘Why the hell do you say that?’

‘Yellow? On a Japanese girl?’

‘Oh, for crying out loud, behave.’ Leigha stuck the pins back in her mouth and returned her attention to crafting her elegant up-do.

There was the most tentative of tentative knocks on the door. Leigha and Sukie exchanged glances in the mirror.

‘It’s open,’ Leigha called, her words distorted around the hairpins.

As anticipated, it was Harriet. She held the neckline of her dress bunched in one hand, holding it close to her collarbones; it flapped loose at the back like a pair of stunted yellow wings.

‘Hi,’ she said, in an overly cheerful voice. ‘I need some help, this bow thing…’ Her voice trailed off, but Leigha knew what she meant.

‘Yeah, you can’t do it yourself,’ Sukie agreed, still facing towards the mirror. Leigha removed the hairpins from her mouth again, hoping her hair was secure enough for the moment.

‘Spin round,’ she ordered Harriet, who dutifully obeyed. Leigha turned her fingers to the intricate corsetry bow that fastened the back of the bridesmaid dress, aware of how cold her hands were against the warmth of Harriet’s back. ‘There,’ she said, stepping back as she finished.

‘Thanks,’ Harriet said, still with that fake little tone of breathless cheer. She started to back out of the room.

‘Wait,’ Leigha commanded. ‘Nicky has told us that we need to have matching hair.’

‘Matching hair?’ Harriet echoed.

‘Yes, matching hair.’ Leigha studied her. ‘Lucky thing you decided to grow your hair long really, isn’t it.’

‘Er, I guess,’ Harriet said slowly. ‘How is it I have to have my hair?’

‘Half up, half down and tonged,’ Leigha said edgily, gesturing at her own not-quite-finished do.

‘You can use these tongs, I’m finished with them,’ Sukie said, pushing the hair appliance across the vanity table without looking up.

‘Thanks.’ Harriet moved nearer to them and tested their heat with a light touch of her palm.

‘Pin it up first, then tong the rest,’ Leigha said, impatiently. Harriet’s reflection eyeballed her.

‘Thanks, I know.’

‘Well, you may not have,’ Leigha said, patting the back of her tightly pinned hair self-consciously. ‘Not used to long hair and all that.’

‘I’ve had long hair for about three or four years now,’ Harriet informed her obnoxiously. Leigha just jammed another grip into her hair and didn’t respond. She watched the backs of Harriet and Sukie as they shared the space in front of the mirror.

‘Demi seems really nice,’ Harriet offered, almost timidly, after a moment’s uncomfortable silence. Sukie met her eyes, surprised.

‘Yes, he is,’ she agreed, with a little happy smile. Leigha stood, locked between their profiles as the old friends smiled shyly at one another.

‘Yes, well,’ she jeered, leaning between them to grab hairpins that she didn’t need from the packet on the vanity table. ‘Don’t be getting any ideas now, Harriet. Although I presume you don’t still sleep with other people’s boyfriends?’

The malice in her own tone exasperated her; she’d have much rather come off sounding cool and unconcerned. Harriet blinked, her jaw hanging slack and stupid, obviously wondering what to say. For a second, just a brief moment, her eyes flickered to Sukie, on some old instinct that expected comfort and defence from that corner. Sukie’s eye contact slid away; she focused again on applying glue along the spine of one of her fake eyelashes.

Harriet’s eyes dropped and she busied her hands with hairpins; the room lapsed into silence, only broken by the hissing burst of hairspray as Leigha coated her hair with it.

Leigha had come into this weekend with every intention of being polite and civil. She’d decided to treat Harriet as if she were a stranger, some friend of Nicky’s that she’d never met before, out of deference to it being Nicky’s special day, and not wanting to rock any boats. But seeing Harriet – being near her – it filled her with a lava of anger and humiliation. Even now, still, she had Adam fawning all over her, walking practically arm-in-arm with her back from the restaurant, Sukie’s boyfriend gossiping and laughing with her all through dinner, Johnny’s girlfriend hanging on her every word.

Nicky had told her, last night, that Harriet’s best friend was Iona’s elder sister – completely by chance, apparently. God, that girl pervades absolutely everything, Leigha thought bitterly. In the end, everything comes back to her; especially the things that should come back to me.

The idea of Harriet even having a ‘best friend’ had struck Leigha as queer. She tried to picture Harriet and this faceless woman, trading chat in the steam that rose off mugs of tea; walking places with their arms hooked together, close enough to each have one earphone from the same iPod; sharing the one single bed on nights where things were hard and heartbreaking, all four legs in a tangle. The images wouldn’t stick; they harder she tried to focus on them, the faster they slipped away.

Harriet had already pinned half of her hair up effortlessly and had reached for the tongs again. If she was at all distressed by the cruelty of Leigha’s comment, or the oppressive silence that had followed it, her hands were steady and didn’t betray her.

‘How much time do we have?’ Sukie asked. Leigha tapped at a button on her Blackberry to wake the screen.

‘Forty-five minutes,’ she answered.

‘Where the hell is Nicky?’ Sukie huffed. ‘Seriously, Miles is not the sort of guy that would take kindly to being kept waiting at the altar if she’s not ready in time. I think he’ll melt into a puddle or something in panic.’

‘I knocked for her, before I knocked here,’ Harriet admitted. ‘She’s either not in her room, or she wasn’t answering.’

‘Maybe she’s stuck in the dress,’ Leigha snorted. ‘By all accounts it is a bit of a meringue.’ She trailed off guilty as there was another knock on the door.

‘Come in!’ called Sukie, padding her fingertips onto a baby wipe to remove any excess eyelash glue.

The rumours of the meringue proved to be true; Nicky entered the room sideways, like a crab. The three bridesmaids fell into a loyal and appropriately awed silence. Leigha was the first to break it.

‘Nic, you look… stunning,’ she told her. And she did; it wasn’t particularly a dress to Leigha’s taste, but on tall, well-boned Nicky it had an air of Disney Princess. A creamy off-white colour with a sweetheart neckline and little cap-sleeves, it was classic and beautiful, which was how Nicky looked in it.

Nicky’s hair was still unstyled, hanging limp and loose over her shoulders and collarbones. In her hands she fiddled with the little clip-on veil that was to be fastened last at the back of her head. The pale colour of the dress was blanching her skin tone even more than usual; she’d always been a girl who needed liberal amounts of bronzer. Sukie reached across for Nicky’s fingers and squeezed them.

‘Come on, let’s finish you up, gorgeous,’ she said. ‘Ley, you’re on makeup. Harry, you pin, I’ll tong.’ Harriet obediently snatched up a handful of paler coloured hairpins and the three bridesmaids set to work on their bride.

Miles’ head whipped up at the sound of a knock at the door. For one strange, terrible second he thought that it was Nicky, come to call the whole thing off; but that wouldn’t, that couldn’t be. He cleared his throat.

‘Come in!’ he called. From where he stood, across the room, fumbling with his cufflinks, Adam watched him apprehensively. Did he look that edgy? He couldn’t, because – of course – he wasn’t nervous in the slightest. Johnny appeared in the frame of the door, looking as casual as a tuxedo allows, holding in one hand one of the squat tumblers from the rooms’ bathrooms and in the other, a bottle of Disaronno.

‘Here comes the groom,’ Johnny sang, tunelessly, to the familiar rhythm of the ‘Wedding March’. ‘Here, have some booze!’ He plonked the glass down unceremoniously on the bedside table and began grappling with the awkwardly square lid to the bottle of liqueur as he hummed the remainder of the song.

‘It’s eleven thirty in the morning,’ Adam laughed. Undeterred, Johnny poured a generous stream of the dark golden liquid into the tumbler.

‘It’s his wedding day,’ he argued, thrusting the glass towards Miles. ‘And he didn’t even get a Stag Night.’ Adam acquiesced with a shrug and Miles gingerly took the drink, sipping its sweetness down on top of the creeping unease he knew he really shouldn’t be feeling.

Nicky hadn’t said anything, or changed, not as such, but she was being brittle where before she was undemanding, looked at him more often with something like impatience in her eyes. He couldn’t articulate it – and wouldn’t, not to anyone – but she just wasn’t as happy and glowing as a bride should be. Maybe he shouldn’t have been such a stickler for the campus chapel, he thought. Maybe they should have had a longer engagement. But, then again, the fact that the wedding was being held on their old campus was the one thing that Nicky seemed genuinely pleased with.

He’d just broken up with his girlfriend when he first met Nicky. It had been the first term of his final undergraduate year. Said girlfriend was a sweet, dark-haired Biomed student, also in her third year, quick and clever. They’d had a great summer term and break together, but the October nights were drawing in earlier and earlier; the library was calling and he had grown bored and annoyed with having to fit her in.

He’d given her the spiel about them having to focus on their work now, not having the time to spend with one another, and she hadn’t fought the point, not really, not like he’d egotistically thought that she would. So although the breakup had been his idea, that night Miles had found himself in the Armstrong, alone, nursing a dinner consisting of a limp Panini and sweaty-tasting pint of cheap cider.

But shrieks of laughter coming from a group of girls a few metres away had quite ruined his solitary funk. Miles had glared over at them sullenly whilst he lifted his glass to his lips.

They’d been playing pool; ‘playing’ being the operative word. They were whacking indiscriminately at the balls with the blunt edge of the cue stick, apparently seeing how many times they could make them bounce off the sides before they rolled to a rest. One of the girls had noticed him glaring and the humour immediately slid from her face. She’d given him a scowl that had made his glare look like a smile; Miles had hurriedly returned his attention to his pathetic dinner.

A haze of green had appeared in his peripheral vision; she’d been wearing dark jeans and a green jumper that night, he’d never forget. The blonde girl from the noisy group at the pool table had been standing there in front of him, her face flushed, holding one of the pool cues hooked in her arm like a warrior with a spear.

‘Do you want to play?’ she’d asked.

‘What?’ Miles had replied, stupidly, a little rudely. The girl had just laughed.

‘Do you want to play? Or you can teach us how you’re actually meant to play, if you want, if that will make you any happier.’ She’d tilted her head slightly to the side and surveyed him. ‘You look miserable as anything.’

And although he’d gone out that night precisely to be miserable and alone, and although it rather went against his instincts, Miles had allowed himself to be led by the blonde girl across to her waiting friends.

‘There’s a toll for this,’ one of the brunettes had told him, eyes sparking with mischief. ‘You’ve got to get a round in.’

‘Mine’s a Kopparberg,’ the other brunette had informed him.

‘Vodka and anything,’ from the girl who had given him the death glare.

‘I’ll come to the bar with you and help you carry,’ said the blonde girl, before Miles had had time to say anything. She’d still been holding his arm from when she’d fetched him from the table. Relinquishing the pool cue over to one of her friends, she’d pulled him over to the Friday-night busy queue for the bar.

She’d pulled back her hair to air her neck, just for one second, fanning her flushed cheeks by flapping her other hand. She’d smiled at him and pulled a face at how hot and stuffy the bar was. Miles had thought she was beautiful, the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen, and if you’d told him, in that minute, that he’d be in this beautiful creature’s bed that night, or that in seven years’ time he’d be waiting for her at the top of the aisle, he could never have believed you.

Lost to that night seven and a half years’ ago, Miles had slipped away from the conversation of his two groomsmen. Adam deftly plucked the tumbler from his limp grasp and – despite this earlier protestations – drank down a good measure himself before passing it back to Johnny who, without the need for instruction, replenished it.

‘Twenty minutes,’ Adam noted, adjusting his cummerbund nervously. ‘We’d better get moving soon.’

‘We’d better re-brush our teeth,’ Johnny noted wryly, having just finished his own generous swig of the Disaronno.

‘This feels naughty,’ Leigha giggled, ‘the four of us, like, hiding in a church.’

‘I wish I’d brought a hip flask,’ Sukie agreed.

Harriet exchanged a look with Nicky, that old, familiar ‘what are they like?’ expression. Harriet was holding up well, Nicky thought, considering that the giant elephant in the room must be slowly squashing her to death. Nicky knew she herself was not holding up quite so well. She had to intentionally will her hands quiet and steady, resting them on the slope of her dress.

The skin of her cheek felt dry and itchy where her stately and over-perfumed mother had just kissed it before slipping away to her spot on the front pew. Her father was so long-dead she didn’t even know him to miss him, but the prospect of walking down the aisle alone – whilst originally her choice – was suddenly terrifying her.

Through the door she could hear the rest of her wedding guests filing into the old Victorian chapel, pictured them smiling excitedly, finding their seats, repositioning hats and fascinators and squaring off ties, leafing through the Order of Service with civil interest.