The Most Difficult Thing. Charlotte Philby
before the doors had finished opening. Turning left into the smoking room, there were plastic chairs edging the walls, rectangular metal tubs strategically placed across the blue carpeted floor.
Meg leaned down to grab a copy of the morning’s paper from a pile by the door, before crossing the room towards a seat by the window.
The room was airless, years of nicotine clinging to every surface.
Silver bangles jarring against one another on her wrists, Meg pulled out a ten-box of Marlboro Lights, drawing one out for herself and another for me. The cigarette was thick between my fingers as I leaned into the flame, holding back my hair, which had recently been cut from waist to shoulder length in an attempt at sophistication.
‘That’s a fucking scoop,’ she said, pressing the fag between her teeth as she pulled her phone out of her pocket.
My eyes moved over the front page of the paper. Below the headline ‘Exclusive: Leading Charity in Cahoots With Arms Dealer’, my attention was drawn by a small black-and-white headshot of a young man with thick, dark hair grazing his neckline. Next to his face, there was the name of the reporter on the piece – Harry Dwyer.
Beside me, Meg’s phone beeped again, but I was distracted by the man’s face, the arch of his nose, the full curve of his lips.
‘It’s David. He’s started his job at that bank in Canary Wharf … wants to know if we’re up for a drink after work … Oi, are you listening?’
It took a moment for Meg’s words to register and when they did I felt the familiar dull ache in my chest.
There was nothing more daunting than the prospect of going out and spending even more money I didn’t have, before running to catch the last train home. Nothing apart from the prospect of home itself – the deafening silence a constant reminder of the person who wasn’t there.
‘You know David will be throwing cash around,’ Meg laughed, reading my mind. ‘Why don’t you stay with me at my cousin’s flat after? She’s not going to be there. Save you going all the way back to your aunt’s house?’
I smiled, flushing at the memory of my lie.
‘Sweet.’ The silver ring in Meg’s nose rose up as she smiled, typing furiously into her phone.
Pressing ‘send’, she stood. ‘Right, I’m going to have a piss before we start. You coming?’
‘Yeah, I’m just going to finish reading this. I’ll see you up there.’
Something about the story, the man’s face, wouldn’t let me go.
Following an extensive year-long investigation, this newspaper can exclusively reveal that members of a leading social justice charity accepted a series of bribes from arguably the world’s most prolific warmongers …
After a moment, I stood and pulled the front two pages of the paper, Harry Dwyer’s piece in its totality, from the rest and folded it neatly, careful not to make an impression along the image of his face, as I placed it in my bag. Unaware of the chain of events I had, without the slightest comprehension, just set in motion; the wheels that were gaining traction, preparing to spin dangerously out of control.
David was waiting for us outside the pub, when we arrived later that evening.
‘Jesus, man, what are you like? Couple of weeks in the City and this happens?’ Meg ruffled his hair, where the undercut from just a few weeks earlier had been replaced by an expensive barber’s take on short back and sides. ‘Still haven’t lost the leather bracelet though, I’m glad to see …’
‘What? I thought you’d be into it?’ David raised his eyes as he pulled her into a bear hug, the flame of the outside heater licking against night air. He paused before moving to me, his expression shifting into something softer.
‘Anna.’ He took my hand, gently, pulling me towards him, holding me as if I was something that might otherwise break.
‘Right – drink, bar!’ Meg slipped her arms through mine and David’s, squeezing gently, the three of us falling into rhythm as we moved through the pub door, and I squeezed back, grateful that we were simply there, all three of us. Knowing, in my bones, even then, that it was too good to last.
‘What have you done with my lighter?’ Meg was scrabbling around the empty glasses and crisp packets an hour or so later, in the pub garden, when I spotted him, seated with his back to us at one of the far tables.
Despite the angle, I recognised him instantly – even from where I was sitting, which meant I could only see a sliver of his face, the same face I had studied on the front page of the paper that morning.
He would not believe me when I told him this later. How is that possible? he would shake his head and laugh, though not unkindly. Maybe he was right. Maybe what I felt then was something deeper; not so much recognition as a sense of foreboding.
Meg spotted him a moment later. I stayed where I was, rooted to the ground as she circled towards Harry Dwyer, in search of a lighter. I couldn’t see his expression as he held out the flame towards Meg’s face, but after a moment she pulled back, as if to get a better look, and as she spoke, a small smile curled at the edges of her mouth.
‘I’m Meg.’ The words blew off her lips, like kisses. My palms burned as he accepted her outstretched hand.
‘Come and join us.’ She was drunk, though she would have done the same thing sober.
‘Don’t be like that.’ I did not hear his reply but after a moment he stood reluctantly, his thumb scratching his cheekbone as he followed Meg back towards our table. His eyes were red and he looked tired. I wanted to hold his hand.
‘Guys, this is Harry. Harry works at the paper …’ Meg leaned into him, laughing. ‘He’s quite the star reporter, don’tcha know?’
Harry muttered something I could not make out. He was drunk too, and weary. When he smiled, I could see he wanted to leave. I could hardly look at him and yet I could not look away; there was something so powerful in my response to him that I could not trust myself to speak. But then I did.
‘Do you want a drink?’ My voice was louder than I had expected.
He paused, looking at me for the first time, before nodding, his mouth breaking gently into a smile as the moon behind his head disappeared into a cloud.
In those early London days, the office was a bus ride from the flat Meg and I shared, a boxy two-bed above a kebab shop on Camden High Street. It was Meg’s cousin’s flat really. Although she had not lived there for months, Lucy’s presence was etched across the living room in cheap, colourful wall-hangings from her travels in Asia; ineffectual attempts to distract from the grubby off-white walls and the draught which rattled in from the road below.
To the outside world, it was a dive. To me, it was home. Mine and Meg’s.
It was a Friday night when Meg announced that Lucy had decided to stay on in Sydney with her boyfriend, leaving the flat in Meg’s care. The very same night that Harry landed back in our lives, like a bomb.
The two events, unconnected on the surface, squeezed me in from either side.
We were sharing a bottle of wine – my treat, courtesy of my new job – in the pub on Arlington Road, around the corner from Meg’s flat. As was her style, the offer for me to move in was presented not so much as a proposition but as a fait accompli.
‘How could you say no?’ She paused halfway through pouring my glass. ‘Even if the prospect of living with me isn’t enough on its own, which it obviously should be, then just think how much you’ll be saving on