The Most Difficult Thing. Charlotte Philby

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 on the short strip of terraced buildings running the length of Inverness Street. David’s grip held me back as a young man, slumped over and supported by friends, his top flaked with vomit, wobbled precariously in front of us.

      ‘Sorry, babe,’ one of them called out as we stepped back to make way.

      Brushing past them as quickly as I could, I watched Harry and Meg disappear ahead of us into the club, Harry’s hand pressing against the small of her back as he guided her in from the street.

      He is just looking out for her, I told myself. There is nothing more to it than that.

      ‘Maybe we should go somewhere else, it looks crazy busy in there. I’ve got some …’

      David hesitated as we reached the entrance where little more than a handful of smokers gathered outside, hemmed in by a single rope. But I kept walking.

      ‘I don’t want to leave Meg,’ I replied without turning around.

      Down a narrow flight of stairs, the club was heaving with people, a dark warren of rooms, loud and airless, house music vibrating against low ceilings and windowless walls.

      The bar stood at the back of the central room, thick with bodies. The heat suddenly overwhelming, I wished I wasn’t wearing a shirt on top of my vest-top. David moved towards the bar, pulling me protectively by my waist. ‘What do you want to drink?’

      ‘Water,’ I called over the throb of noise, my eyes frantically weaving through the crowd, desperate to find Harry and Meg, but all I could see were strobe lights and contorted faces, spilling over one another.

      When David finally handed me my drink, I sipped gratefully before screwing up my face.

      ‘What is this?’

      ‘Vodka and soda … I …’ he called over the noise, which drowned out his voice as I pushed my head back, so thirsty I drank it all in one go.

      ‘Steady,’ he pulled the drink away from me, laughing nervously, but I pulled it back and drank the dregs.

      ‘You should pace yourself … How are you feeling?’ he asked a few minutes later, his mouth pressed against my ear.

      ‘Let’s dance!’ I shouted back as the whole room exploded with movement, a wave of euphoria rising in one endless swell of rhythm and sound. Pulling off my top layer, I turned, my arms stretched wide, my teeth grinding out of beat, and found David, his arm around my back, his breath against my face, the smell of sambuca on his lips.

      I cannot be sure how long we stayed like that, our bodies swaying in primal movements, before a sickness hit my stomach, acid rising, scraping at the inside of my throat, the walls suddenly pushing towards me.

      Stumbling backwards, my leg pressed against a leather bench which I had not been expecting and I sank back onto it, grateful but also unable to sit still, my skin burning and then cold, so that I pushed myself to standing. I could feel the strap of my top slinking off my arm, but there was nothing I could think to do to pull it up again.

      The room was a slush of noise by now, indistinct notes thrashing against one another as I felt my way along the wall towards the exit, my breath tightening as strangers’ bodies crushed against my own.

      Finally, my fingers curled around something cold and angular. It was another wall, leading away from the crowd and into a smaller corridor, which was dark and thankfully cool. It was quieter here and I was alone. For a moment I half-stood, half-crouched, my back against the wall, the breath slowing in my chest, before, from the end of the corridor, I felt movement and I knew that I wasn’t alone. With an animal sense, I recognised the presence of another person, even as my eyes still struggled to adjust. Then a shuffle of feet, and another, followed by a voice.

      ‘Anna?’