The Most Difficult Thing Read online

  ‘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 work?’ It seemed fitting to change track.

  ‘Good, yeah, I mean it’s banking, it’s not exactly … But it’s good, you know, doing something for myself, making my own money.’

  I nodded, wondering how much David earned. Not that he needed money of his own, clearly.

  As if reading my mind, he continued, ‘My dad wanted me to go into the family business but … I don’t know, I want to do my own thing. The idea of just following my father’s footsteps …’

  He blushed, shrugging.

  ‘Good for you.’ Discreetly, my eyes cast their way up the back of the house, the vast wooden shutters, creepers growing up the walls. The top-floor windows gazed out with hollow eyes over the black expanse of Hampstead Heath.

  ‘So this is the house you grew up in?’

  David took a swig of his drink.

  ‘Yup. My grandparents bought it in the 1950s, and when they died, my dad inherited it.’

  ‘And he doesn’t mind you having a party …?’

  ‘He doesn’t live here any more. He’s got a flat in town, but he’s away most of the time, so it’s just me.’

  ‘How come?’

  ‘Work. He’s mainly working in Africa and Asia at the moment. His company has an office over here, but mostly it’s …’

  The music stopped suddenly, as if someone had lurched the needle from the record, followed by a wave of indignation from the crowd. Behind David’s shoulder I could see more people spilling into the garden as the music started again, something soulful this time.

  ‘If you ever want to come over …’

  ‘Thanks.’ I smiled, not sure what else to say as I watched the party from a distance, David’s guests’ uplit faces devoid of features, like apparitions passing under a cloud.

  It was nearly 1 a.m. by the time I left the party. David had called me a cab, his hand lingering on mine as I ducked into the car, his eyes following me down the road.

  Within minutes of driving, the wide open streets of Hampstead gave way to Malden Road, sprawling council blocks obscuring my view of the sky. Camden High Street, with its all-night bars and the endless roar of the night bus trundling along tarmac scarred by hidden potholes, faded to a reassuring throb as I pressed closed the door from the street.

  A strip of light gently glowed above the tatty carpet at the top of the stairs, warm and inviting, but when my feet reached the upstairs landing, something already felt wrong. I pushed open the front door to find the room darker than I had imagined. Meg’s body, her back to me, was unnaturally taut at the table, an open bottle of wine beside her.

  In another life, I would have called out to her. I would have watched her turn to me, holding up the bottle, signalling for me to bring down a glass. Now, though, her body was still. For a mome
nt I felt my joints freeze, imagining the worst, but then she moved, a small, almost imperceptible intake of breath, and my chest loosened, just enough.

  Not knowing what else to do, I went to the counter to pull down a mug, waiting for her to make the first move. Holding the cup under the tap, I discreetly glanced at the window, catching an outline of her silhouette.

  Taking a gulp of water, I turned to face her. From here, she looked pale and still.

  ‘Meg?’

  When I ran towards her, her head collapsed into my chest, her body heaving with silent tears.

  ‘Sshh, what is it?’ It was the first time I had ever seen her cry. The first time in my life that I had been alone with someone in tears, whom I was allowed to touch.

  Meg shook her head.

  ‘Anna … I …’

  The words dried up after that. I briefly tried to speak, to fill the silence with the sounds she needed to hear. I wonder now how different things might have been if I had. But my throat clammed up. Instead, I led her to her bed and pulled the blankets around her neck, lying down beside her, my arms wrapped in hers, until her breath slowed into sleep.

  Meg was standing by the counter when I emerged in the kitchen the following morning. She was facing the window, the glass streaked with rain.

  ‘I have to go.’ She did not look at me as I pulled a mug from a pile on the draining board.

  ‘OK, I’ll be off soon, too. I’m going into the office to catch up on a few things.’

  Clarissa had assured me there was no need to work this weekend, but we had a big commercial pitch coming up and I knew she planned to go in and crack on – and I knew how much it would please her to see me there as she arrived, perched in front of my computer, notes neatly stretched across my desk. If I was going to climb the ladder the way I needed to, I had to show how keen I was, how much more I was capable of than endless admin.

  ‘I’m leaving London.’ Meg turned away from me, her voice matter-of-fact.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I’ve been offered a job in Bristol.’

  Finally, she turned back to face me, her skin bare, free of the heavy eyeliner she always applied within minutes of showering.

  ‘What? When?’ My eyes scoured her face for signs of something I could hold onto.

  ‘I can’t talk now. This flat, it’s—’

  ‘Bristol?’

  ‘You can stay on, if you can cover the rent on your own, or … It’s paid up until the end of the month. We’ll talk later. I’ve got to go.’

  ‘Meg, what the fuck? Where are you going?’

  I followed her to the front door, willing her to turn around as she gripped the handrail, her free arm raised defensively as she reached the bottom of the stairs.

  But I didn’t follow her. Instead, I went to the office, rather than waiting there in the flat for her return, making the effort she would have made to stop me from leaving, had the shoe been on the other foot. If I had, could I have saved us all?

  Harry’s phone was off when I tried it at lunchtime, on my way to the noisy coffee shop where I ordered a salad box for Clarissa before heading back to the office. Again, I was met by the monotony of his answerphone as I wrestled with the front door later that evening, the smell of frying meat following me in from the kebab shop, my voice struggling to remain light.

  ‘Harry, it’s me, just seeing how you are. I’m at the office but I wondered what you were doing tonight, or tomorrow. Call me …’

  I paused before I hung up, slipping the phone back into my pocket, darkness descending as I shut the door against the street.

  Even before I reached the upstairs landing, something felt different. In the dark, fumbling for the light switch, my key turning quietly in the lock, I pushed the door open with a nervous hand.

  ‘Meg?’

  Inside, the flat was still and instinctively I knew.

  I called her name again, already knowing it was too late. Feeling it, the guillotine falling, severing the space between then and now.

  CHAPTER 9

  Anna

  It was October, that first year at university in Brighton, and a late burst of summer sun meant the city was awash with life: swarms of Italian tour groups smoking cigarettes in the grounds of the Pavilion; elderly couples walking in companionable silence along the shore, hands held behind their backs.

  The beach had been a heaving mass of bodies by the time I arrived late that afternoon. Walking across the pebbles, I was aware of the glances from a group of guys sprawled out by my feet as I made my way towards the pub where we had arranged to meet. It was less than a month into our first term and Meg had suggested a group of us have afternoon drinks before heading to a drum’n’bass night at the club on the sea front.

  Scared of getting it wrong, of being exposed for the fraud I was, I had spent the previous week watching the other students stumble along the path in front of my window, gathering hints about what to wear. In the end I had chosen denim cut-offs, a slick of pink lip gloss, hair pulled away from my face.

  David’s skin was lightly tanned and his sandy-coloured hair shaven, self-consciously, into a low undercut on one side of his head.

  ‘So, what are your plans for Christmas?’ he asked that afternoon as we sat opposite each other outside the Fortune of War, the two of us the first to arrive.

  I took a long sip of wine, watching his pupils dilate like two dark wells in the glare of the sun.

  ‘Not much. Studying. My dad’s still in Singapore, so I’ll stay with my aunt.’

  ‘You said your dad’s in the RAF?’

  I smiled, taking a sip of my drink.

  ‘So where do you stay when you’re in the UK?’

  ‘I have an aunt, in Surrey. It’s dull but convenient.’

  We were silent for a moment, him drawing lines with his finger on the sweat of his glass.

  ‘How about you?’

  He looked up again, a flicker of embarrassment immediately succeeded by pride.

  ‘Maldives, probably. My dad has lots of international clients and that’s where they … It’s work for him, but you know, could be worse …’

  My mind flicked to my parents’ dining room, the sound of my mother’s best cutlery scratching against our plates at the mahogany table laid for three – the empty chair filling every inch of the room.

  I had nothing to say, but needed to push the conversation on, away from my life.

  ‘So you travel a lot?’

  David shrugged. ‘We spend most of the summer between the South of France and Greece. My dad has a place on the edge of this island, in the Sporades.’ He looked at me, as if to ask if I had heard of them.

  I took another sip of my drink, waiting for him to continue.

  ‘It’s a few islands along from Skiathos. Our one’s much smaller, though, low-key.’

  ‘Cool.’ I nodded, working to suppress my jealousy as a cube of ice slipped down the back of my throat.

  By the time Meg arrived, followed by a stream of faces I didn’t recognise from campus, David had already bought three rounds, insisting he was closer to the bar whenever I made a half-hearted attempt to stand. The moon hovered precariously above the water as we made our way along the beach, hours later, towards Concorde 2.

  ‘Have you seen LCD Soundsystem live before?’ David asked, holding back as Meg and some of the others took off their shoes, screaming with laughter as they waded through the low waves, their voices drowned out by the thrashing beats as we approached the club.

  The temperature had dropped dramatically and I felt ripples moving across my arms and legs as I pushed my hands into the pockets of my shorts. David at once started to unzip his hoodie.

  ‘Take this.’ His eyes worked hard to hold mine as I went to take the sweater. His mouth opened to speak but then Meg appeared, her wet clothes clinging to her skinny frame. Without saying anything, she laughed, tugging the hoodie from his fingers and wrapping it around her.

  ‘Jesus, Meg,’ the disapproval in
my laughter was laced with awe, my envy of her total lack of inhibition so potent that I could almost taste it.

  Even as I pushed open the door to Meg’s room, the rumble of Camden High Street clattering through the glass, I knew she was already gone. Even before my eyes adjusted to the light, to the empty wardrobe, the bed stripped bare.

  ‘Meg, where are you? You can’t do this. You have to call me. Please.’

  My mouth pressed against the phone, tears streaming down my cheeks.

  Harry’s number went straight to voicemail. The urge to run to his flat might have been overwhelming if I had not already known what a false move it would be. As he said himself, he was hardly ever there, his freelance investigative career taking him off in far-flung directions that he refused to discuss. Besides, from the time we had spent together, it was clear he did not respond well to being needed, always preferring to be the one to give chase.

  Without Meg, the flat was too big and yet the walls seemed to press in on me, her absence everywhere I looked.

  Outside, Camden Town was a drizzling sky, illuminated grey pavements, Saturday night drinkers passing by in a sea of strangled faces, their corners smudged.

  I pulled out my phone. Other than work, there were four numbers in my past calls list. Harry, Meg, Mum, David.

  Leaning my back against the wall to steady myself, I pressed ‘call’.

  He answered after two rings. ‘Anna? What time is it …’

  ‘Hi.’ My voice broke then.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ I could feel him freeze whatever he was doing, his attention, as always, focused on me.

  ‘It’s Meg …’ The words caught in my throat.

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘I don’t know what to—’

  ‘Anna, just tell me where you are and I’ll be there in a minute, just tell me …’

  ‘I …’ But the words wouldn’t come; the lights on the street were too bright, a blast of noise exploding from inside the Irish bar along the high street as the doors swung open.

  David’s voice was calm and firm at the end of the line. ‘OK, look, just jump in a cab, OK? Find a taxi, I’ll stay on the line. Come to the house, I’m waiting. Everything’s going to be all right.’