The Most Difficult Thing. Charlotte Philby

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СКАЧАТЬ the grooves where his body had been, I briefly wondered if I had imagined it all.

      My sense of unease grew when I called his phone later that morning, and the next day, only to reach his voicemail, the recorded message playing a jeering loop against my ear. When he re-emerged, a few days later, he was apologetic but reassuring. There was a job he was doing, which had pulled him away unexpectedly. He was sorry he couldn’t be in touch.

      ‘You know what it’s like.’

      It took everything I had to play down my disappointment, but I knew better than to let the extent of my feelings show. So instead I nodded along – even agreeing when he insisted that we could not tell anyone about us, swearing myself to secrecy.

      The case against him was ongoing, he offered by way of explanation. If the defence found out he was dating a former intern – and that was how they would frame it, he said – then they would have a field day.

      I was a consenting adult, it was ridiculous. But maybe something about the situation suited me too. It was not as if I was leading David on, exactly, but he had done so much for me already and the idea of him knowing I was with someone else … It would not have been fair.

      What bothered me most, though, was how unjustly Harry had been vilified, how quick his colleagues had been to turn against him.

      ‘But you didn’t do anything,’ I raged one night as he reminded me once more of the charges he could be up against. My counter-arguments were always weak, and he looked at me like I was a child he cared for but who knew nothing of the world.

      ‘Oh, Anna, of course I didn’t sleep with her – but do you really think that means anything?’

      He shook his head despairingly.

      ‘The girl who made this claim against me, or rather the girl whose parents made this claim … They don’t care that she had told me she was twenty-one. They don’t care that she was the one who duped me.’

      To be honest, I could have contested him on that point if I had wanted to. He was the investigative reporter; it was he who had infiltrated the organisation, using whatever means he could to extract the information he wanted. Even if that meant earning the trust of a young woman who believed he was after her, rather than what she could do for him.

      Yet how could I say any of that without sounding unsupportive? Harry did not need another person rallying against him. More importantly, I understood why he did it. What he did, it was about the story, the pursuit of truth and justice, regardless of the cost. That was simply the person he was.

      The threads in my stomach pulled tighter as I stepped off the bus that morning in Bethnal Green, on my way to his flat for the very first time. My breath in the January air was a curling finger of smoke drawing me forward, as I followed the directions he had sent, past the coffee shop with the couples in beanies sipping hot drinks on a terrace makeshifted out of old wooden crates; young men with bloodshot eyes sucking on roll-up cigarettes, already weary of the winter that still had some way to go.

      Hidden on the other side of a scruffy communal garden was a square of grand red-brick houses, stained black where they met the pavement by centuries of tar and a drift of pigeon feathers. Adjoining it, an elegant Victorian mansion block curved and disappeared towards the next street. Harry’s flat was on the second floor, that much I knew, and with that tiny detail I had already drawn a picture in my head, instinctively filling in the gaps.

      So many times our evenings together had been curtailed by a sudden phone call that would see him downing his pint and standing to pull on his coat, leaning in to kiss me, reluctantly, his lips hovering over my mouth, telling me he wished he could stay. In those moments, I would picture him coming back to this flat, to the bedroom I imagined filled floor-to-ceiling with books, photos of his childhood stacked precariously on a mantel, shirts thrown over the back of an easy chair. But never did I question where he went in the intervening hours. Maybe I told myself it did not matter, or maybe I was scared what the answer would be.

      On the doorstep, I took a moment to gather myself, a row of numbered buzzers in a panel on my left, drawing a deep breath before pressing the bell. There was a moment of silence then a crackle and Harry’s voice.

      ‘Hello?’

      ‘It’s me.’

      He paused and then his breath lightened. ‘Hello you.’

      The sound of his feet drumming against the stairs echoed my heartbeat. When he opened the door, his face broke into a smile. Neither of us spoke as I stepped inside the hallway, which was even colder than the street.

      He laced his fingers in mine and led me past piles of post and folded buggies and bikes, our feet quietly moving up the stairs.

      It was another hour before we let each other go long enough for me to take in his flat.

      The hallway, where our clothes now lay discarded, was tall and white, uncluttered by pictures or coat-hooks. At the far end of the hall, there was a kitchen, with a little round table and four chairs. Just enough cutlery and cups, a single frying pan and a sieve. Everything with its own place and purpose.

      The only thing that was out of place was a single box of condoms, which he had gone to lengths to dig out; his ability to think so cautiously, even in the heat of the moment, pricked at me once it was over. At that moment, entangled in his arms, I would have risked anything never to let him go; it was the first clue, if only I had been willing to see it, as to how uneven the balance of power between us was.

      ‘Must be a reaction against my house, growing up,’ Harry said, watching my eyes react to the sparseness of it all, the precision. It was the first time he had mentioned his childhood and I stayed silent, willing him to carry on.

      We were moving through to the living room now, my eyes scanning the original fireplace, unused; just a few books neatly stacked over purpose-built shelves. Hungrily, I drank in any detail I could latch my eyes upon.

      Comparing the scene before me with the image of the flat I had created in my mind, I found my imagined version already slipping away.

      ‘When you’re one of six and there are other people’s things everywhere, I suppose a kind of efficiency grows out of craving your own personal space,’ Harry said.

      I thought of the silence of my parents’ house, the endless space.

      ‘You grew up in Ireland, right?’

      ‘Galway.’ He turned to the door, the look passing over his face telling me he’d had enough of this kind of talk, and I was happy to follow him back to safer ground. Any question I asked him was liable, after all, to be turned back on me.

      ‘And this is my bedroom.’

      Harry had moved across the hall and was standing in the doorway of the final room. There was a small double bed against one wall, a desk against the other, piled high with papers.

      His eyes followed mine, over the bed, which was low to the ground, the sheets white and nondescript. Beside it, on stripped wooden floorboards, there was a square alarm clock and a notebook. Nothing else to betray the details of a life.

      Moving towards the desk, my eyes trailed the papers neatly covering the surface.

      ‘So, what is it you’re working on?’

      He СКАЧАТЬ