The Most Difficult Thing. Charlotte Philby
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I would not discuss Meg behind her back but knowing deep down that I just did not want to think about it.
And then, one day, the blinkers were torn off.
I was sitting at the table in the kitchen of our flat, typing up a piece on monochrome accenting. Behind me, a single panel of wall was lined incongruously with illustrations of botanical branches: a single roll of statement wallpaper which I had plucked from a box of samples at the office, with Clarissa’s encouragement; one of a number of disjointed acquisitions with which I had started to embellish the flat over the past months. I was squinting at the computer, trying to block out the churn of Camden High Street filtering in through the sash, when Meg walked through the front door, slamming her keys onto the counter, pulling open the door to the fridge and closing it again.
‘Where have you been? Are you OK?’
It had been two or three days since I had last seen her, only an unfinished cup of coffee on the counter when I woke that morning offering any sign that she had been home at all.
She looked odd, changed somehow, in a way that I could no longer ignore: her fingers scratching at her thighs, front teeth chewing her bottom lip. There was a darkness that had taken hold, its shadow stretching beneath her; an anger, barely contained, slowly tightening its grip.
‘Why?’
‘You just seem a bit … I tried to call.’
‘I’m fine, I’m tired. Work’s full on …’ Her eyes skittered around the room as if in search of an answer.
‘David rang, a minute ago, wanted to know if we were going to his party.’
Even as I said it, I knew I was setting myself up for a fall. Harry was away on a job, and although house parties were not my scene, especially not without Meg there to create a distraction, something had made me say yes.
‘Can’t, there’s something I’ve got to do.’ Meg’s voice was distant.
‘What is it?’
It stung that I even had to ask.
‘Just something for work.’
She walked out of the kitchen, and even though her bedroom stood directly on the other side of the wall, she could have been on the other side of the world.
When she came back out, half an hour later, her expression had softened slightly.
‘Sorry, I’m not myself at the moment, it’s just a lot of pressure.’
She held my gaze for a second before snapping her face away again. Without looking me in the eye, she stepped forward and kissed my cheek. There was a flicker of electricity between us and then she turned, the door slamming shut before I had time to reply.
The bus stop stood opposite our flat on the high street, illuminated in a sickly streetlight. Fifteen minutes later I stepped off the bus at South End Green, where the road veered right towards Hampstead Heath station.
Keeping the pub on my left I followed the right fork which led up to the Heath.
In all the years David and I had known each other, I had never been to his London house. After leaving halls, he had his own apartment in Brighton, on one of the smarter Regency squares, a very different proposition to the house we had shared the year previously.
The flat had been bought for him by his father, he let slip one afternoon. We were lazing on the nobbled rectangle of grass that stood between a U of buildings, sharing a bag of chips from soggy newspaper, the sea lapping at the shore on the other side of the main road. Back then, David still told himself he was uncomfortable with the level of wealth his father had started to accrue as his business grew from small-time independent to leading international trading company TradeSmart. The irony of his faux-liberal university lifestyle, banging on about the importance of fair trade while snorting lines of cocaine from supply chains involving child exploitation and murder, paid for by Daddy’s money, was not so much lost on him as ignored.
He had been the first person I met, the day I arrived at Sussex. Freshers’ Week, Falmer campus. Summer had stretched on that year, grass lining the lazy knolls that formed a ripple in front of the university, swarming with bodies, snatching up the final rays. Morcheeba drifting across the hills. Endless drum’n’bass.
My halls were on the far side of campus, just before rows of housing melted away into fields.
‘So, this is your room,’ explained the self-assured young man who greeted me at the door. He had watched my eyes for a reaction as I scanned the room with its worn carpets and fireproof doors.
‘Sorry, I’m David,’ he had added, stretching out his hand. ‘I’m your RA. This is my second year so I’m here to, you know, make sure you have everything you need …’
‘I’m Anna.’ I smiled self-consciously, trying out my new name for the first time.
‘What are you studying?’ His eyes were trying hard to catch mine.
‘English Literature.’
‘Cool, I’m doing Business Studies … Are your parents bringing the rest of your things later?’
I paused, shaking my head, and kept walking. ‘It’s just my dad but he’s abroad. RAF.’
I could hear the hesitation in my voice, but David never questioned it, and why would he?
As David continued talking, my eyes settled on a blur of hills rising to meet an expanse of blue sky, through the window, unaware of the dark clouds looming in from the edge.
The light was fading as David’s road came into view, in an enclave of North London reserved for old money and increasingly new.
The house was a four-storey Victorian semi-detached, three times the size of my parents’ home, chequered tiled steps leading up to the entrance. It was beautiful, the house a child might draw, plucked straight from a ghost story.
I took the stairs to the house slowly; light and voices emanated from the hallway through the open front door, music spilling over the wall from the garden.
David was there, waiting for me, a smile stitched across his face as I tentatively pushed at the open door.
‘You came!’
He kissed my cheek, his skin soft and grateful, my proximity to him reassuring.
‘This is your house?’
‘This is it.’ Leading the way, past a sweeping staircase with double-height ceilings and down through the kitchen, David paused to pour me a drink.
‘So here we are.’
We were standing in the garden, which was not much smaller than the ground floor of the house. The lawn stretched down to a red-brick wall with an arched doorway leading out onto the Heath.
On the terraced area, where we now stood, there were paper lanterns punctuating the view from one side of the house to the other. In the middle of the garden someone had attempted to create a pit and amidst the ash, a fire licked at the air. A group of people I didn’t recognise were sitting around it, flicking joint roaches into the flames.
‘Anna, I’m …’ Watching my face turn back to his, David took a step forward, a look stirring in his eyes. Ever since that night at the club, something had shifted between us and aside from the gifts that passed between us like relentless peace offerings, he had been careful not to push.
‘Meg couldn’t come,’ I changed the subject before I could stop myself, immediately feeling like a traitor to my friend for raising the subject.
‘What’s with her at the moment?’ David’s face changed. ‘Every time I see her recently she’s …’
‘She’s just, you know, work.’
David raised his eyebrow. ‘I don’t know, it seems like more than that. We’re all busy …’
‘How is