The Most Difficult Thing. Charlotte Philby

his successes, allowing myself to live vicariously through them, even if just for a moment.

      Admittedly, it was a long way from the life I was living now. If you were to line up our achievements side by side, and draw lines between them – a habit I found impossible to break – you would notice a distinct distance between where I was now – commuting four hours a day to transcribe other people’s interviews and make endless cups of tea – and where Harry had been at the same age. But a lot could change in a year; I was dependent on that possibility. Though of course back then I couldn’t have known quite how much.

      There was a stirring on the stairs, and instinctively I sat upright, pressing open a new tab on my web browser. Though I need not have bothered; as always I heard the footsteps speed up as they passed my door, despite my father’s attempts to make his feet lighter in the hope that I wouldn’t notice him, urged forward by his terror of being made to look me in the eye.

      Refusing to give my father another thought, I returned to the previous tab. With another click of the mouse, I was met by a brief journalistic profile of Harry and his time as a reporter at the paper, alongside the same byline photo that had first caught my eye on the front page that morning in the smoking room. And then, with another simple click, there it was, on the second page of Google, a brief mention in the media pages of a rival paper:

       Harry Dwyer was unceremoniously sacked today, just hours after his most recent scoop. The paper’s editor, Eddy Monkton, is believed to have seen off the Irish-born writer in characteristically pithy style, telling his former star reporter, ‘Dwyer – you’re fucked’. A talented self-starter, Dwyer rose through the ranks after dropping out of school and taking a job in the canteen of his local paper. Monkton refused to comment on the parting of ways.

      But … how? My mind searched for answers to the impossible question of how this could be. How our lives could have intersected as they had and then, just like that, have been torn apart again. This had to be wrong. Determined to prove it so, I continued to trawl for clues until long after the light in the hallway had been clicked off – but there was nothing else to be found. No other mention of his being sacked, and no further explanation.

      It is a visceral memory, the sadness I felt in that moment; I can still feel it, the deflation at knowing that if this brilliant, beautiful man no longer worked for the paper, there would be no chance of bumping into him again. It was real, that memory, it is impossible to believe it was not – and yet I will question it later, just as I have learnt to question everything. In the darkness to come, I will ask myself if I could have felt so instinctively connected to him at this point – or was I simply retrospectively filling in the details to suit the version of events that I needed to create in order to justify what I had done?

      In any case, the sight of him in the Crown and Goose that night, his arm propped against the bar, a pint in front of him as he scanned the pages of the Evening Standard, seemed not so much astonishing as merely confirmation of the connection I had felt in the beginning.

      Of course, what I should have asked myself was, what were the chances of him turning up like that in our local pub? And the real question: if I had known the answer, would I have run for my life?

      ‘What are you staring at?’ Meg turned, following my gaze, a smile creeping over her mouth as she spotted him too.

      ‘No way.’

      I could not be sure if she was smiling for herself or for me. Despite the special connection I felt to Harry, it was clear I was not the only one to notice his rough impression of beauty. It was hard to ignore the looks he elicited as we all sat together in the bar that first night, the flutter of eyes noticing him as Meg stood and moved towards him, seemingly unfazed.

      When he looked up, an amused smile formed at the edge of his lips. It was a struggle to pull my eyes away. After a moment, I heard the scrape of a bar-stool and when I looked up again he was standing above me.

      ‘You remember Anna?’

      ‘Of course.’

      Harry reached down and for a moment I thought he was going to kiss me, but instead he drew out a chair and sat.

      ‘We’re celebrating,’ Meg announced, leaning a hand casually on his shoulder, the intimacy of her movements making me wince.

      ‘Oh really, why’s that?’ It was David’s voice this time. Arriving straight from work, he was dressed in a Barbour coat and navy scarf, his shirt untucked. A matter of months since leaving university, the mutation had already subtly begun, the sartorial shift from trustafarian to trust-fund manager made in incremental steps. At this stage, he was still a boy doing a poor impression of a man.

      ‘Anna has just agreed to move in with me.’ Meg raised her eyes at me, flashing a smile and leaning in to kiss David’s cheek.

      ‘Cool. Well if we’re celebrating we better have champagne – and shots.’

      David laid his coat on the chair beside mine before turning to acknowledge Harry. Something in his face shifted; I can’t have been the only one who noticed.

      ‘Hello again, I didn’t realise …’

      ‘Nice to see you.’ Harry held out a hand, his self-assurance filling the room.

      David paused, a moment too long, before accepting it, briefly, and then moving towards the bar.

      By the time we left the pub, Camden High Street was a heaving mass of bodies and light, the smell of lead clung to the air. We were moving in a line, a marauding army stumbling towards an unknown threat. Unaware that the enemy already lay within.

      ‘Where are we going?’ David’s voice followed Meg and me as we stepped into the road, the sound of horns blaring across the street.

      ‘Fuck knows!’ Meg called back and we fell sideways, in unison, our bodies crippled with laughter, the sound of us, warped and distant, blowing back at me as if from the other side of the street.

      ‘Watch out.’ Harry’s hand hooked under my arm, guiding us across Parkway. Only once we had reached the phone box outside the pub did he let us go.

      Meg whispered something to David, linking her arm in his before turning back briefly to the pair of us.

      ‘We’re just going to get something,’ she winked.

      ‘Are you sure you don’t want to come with us, Anna?’

      David’s eyes held onto mine.

      ‘She’ll be fine.’ Harry’s voice was assured, the sound of it steadying me.

      I leaned back against the phone box, my eyes straining to keep him in focus, the sound of a bottle smashing in the forecourt of the Good Mixer pub, followed by a wave of laughter.

      When he looked down, I turned my face away, self-conscious despite the sambuca, wary of how I must look under the sharp streetlight. Hoping that if I didn’t meet his eye, maybe he wouldn’t see me so clearly.

      ‘Why are you doing that?’ He seemed amused.

      ‘What?’ I laughed awkwardly, aware of my teeth.

      ‘That thing,’ he laughed, mimicking me, ostentatiously sweeping his head to the side.

      ‘I’m not.’ I pushed my hand out to quieten him and my fingers landed on his chest, the breath clamming up in my throat as he leaned slightly into my palm.

      There was a moment’s silence then, the lights from the high street casting a golden haze that warmed the sky above our heads. The movement on either side of us slowed until it was just us, my face finally settling into perfect stillness under the softness of his gaze.

      ‘Sorted!’

      Meg’s voice cut across us, and it was Harry who looked away first. Pulling my hand back, I turned to see David, his pupils black and bulging.

      Within seconds of David and Meg reappearing, Harry had peeled away from me towards a door to the left of a bar with no signage, taking centre-stage