Page 29 of Unwanted
“Says you in your castle, Lady V.” Lady V was what most people called Verity at school, given her hereditary title which was common knowledge at the time.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about, hedgy,” she said, but her smile had faded just like it did anytime I mentioned where she came from.
I wish back then I’d pushed more aboutwhyshe always shut down, but I was just a stupid teenager and all I wanted was to make her smile. So, I’d changed the subject to her housemaster’s latest facial hair choice and coaxed her back to smiling, when I should have been coaxing her into opening up about something that was clearly painful. But that was then, and this was now, and I wasn’t going to miss any opportunities again, even if I had to grab them in the shittiest pub I’d been to for a good long while.
I wasn’t sure that even the dives we used to frequent at uni compared to this place. There was actual sawdust on the otherwise suspiciously sticky floor. The bar only offered a selection of local ales and had no facility to take any payment other than cash. When I questioned this policy, the owner (an extremely grumpy gentleman called Fergus who looked to be at least a hundred years old) growled at me saying, “You’re not from round here are you, boy?” I hadn’t been called a boy for over a decade. “If you’ve no cash you can bugger off.” He’d emphasised his point by waving his stick in the air and narrowly avoiding my face. A laughing Verity had had to step in then. She offered him cash. Great. I was finally in a position where I might be wealthier than this woman and I couldn’t even buy her a sodding drink. Then, to my surprise, she kissed the grumpy Fergus on the cheek. He looked no less grumpy, but I did catch the corners of his mouth turning up, the sly old devil. Verity proceeded to tell him he’d have to forgive me as I was a “city boy” and not used to how things worked around here.
Fergus had grunted something about “Fancy city ways,” and shuffled off through the crowd. Which was another thing I did not understand about this place – it was absolutely packed. Every one of the dank tables and chairs were bursting with people, and the bar was a crush to get served.
“V! Over here!”
Verity and I turned to see Heath’s wife Yaz standing on her tiptoes and waving frantically at us. She was at a table with Max, Mia, Heath and a younger bloke I didn’t recognise. Verity waved back then set off in that direction with me trailing after her, carrying my beer and wincing at the sticky nature of the floor – I dreaded to think when this place had last been professionally cleaned. Max had rustled up two extra chairs around the cramped table, and after Verity had kissed and hugged everyone we both negotiated our way into them. I muttered a few “heys” and gave a few chin jerks but my reception was lukewarm at best, and, not being the most adept at social situations, I probably came across as a right surly sod.
“Hazza, good to see you, man,” was Heath’s surprisingly warm greeting. He even slapped me on the back as I sat down. The rest of the table were frowning at him in confusion. Clearly, he hadn’t got theHarry’s a bastardmemo. Then again, Heath had quite a lot of making up to do where I was concerned. I managed to acknowledge him with another chin jerk, but it was beyond me to smile – I still held way too much resentment for that.
“This is Teddy, my stepson,” Max put in and I looked at the younger man sitting next to him. He was looking between me and Verity with his eyes slightly narrowed. “Teddy, this is Harry York. He’s the chap funding that bloody great monstrosity in the big smoke V and I are working on.”
“Oh, soyou’rethe guy,” Teddy said unsmilingly.
“Yes, I’m the guy,” I muttered, absorbing the waves of teenage annoyance directed my way. Clearly, some of my recent less-than-stellar behaviour had filtered through to him, likely from Max, and it had been obvious from the hug Teddy had given her that he cared about Verity.
After the awkward bit of silence that followed my introduction, the conversation moved on. Unfortunately, I’d never been very good with this sort of thing. Structured interactions where the rules were clear, like business dinners or meetings, I was fine with. Unstructured social things like this, unless it was with the extremely small handful of people I was close to, I found stressful and impossible to navigate. Typically I came across as grumpy and stuck up. My last girlfriend told me I was a complete and total fun sponge (this only came out after I dumped her – apparently, she was willing to put up with a fun sponge just as long as he was a suitably rich fun sponge.) So, whilst Verity and her friends were bantering back and forth, with Mia and Heath making the effort to try to draw me into conversations, all I seemed to be capable of was short one-word answers and the occasional grunt. I could tell by their expressions and shared looks that it was starting to piss them off, but I didn’t know what to do about it.
“So, Harry,” Yaz said gamely into the ensuing silence after my last one-word reply. “What is it that you do?”
I blinked. It was so rare that anyone actually asked me that. Either they already knew because they worked with me, or they’d read about me in various magazines, or, like my family, they just knew I did something boring in finance that made me a lot of money. Assuming she wanted a stock answer I said, “I work in finance.”
Yaz’s head tilted to the side as she studied me – it was a little disconcerting to be honest. “Okay you work with money – I get that. But what do you actuallydo?”
I cleared my throat and shifted on my chair. “Well, I manage wealth in a globally diversified and sustainable way to maximise growth.”
“Er… what? Break it down for me, big guy.”
“So, I take other people’s money and I invest it to make them more money. Then I take a percentage of the money I make for them.”
“So, you help mega-rich peeps get richer and that makes youmegarich.”
I cleared my throat and focused on my beer bottle, becoming very invested in peeling the label away. I could feel some heat creeping up into my cheeks, suddenly hyper-aware of the company I was in. Max and Verity built things – real tangible, beautiful buildings. Mia helped them do that. Heath saved lives. Yaz, no doubt, did something equally worthy. And I just made rich people richer.
“That’s enough,” Verity snapped. I glanced at her. She was sitting up straight in her chair and glaring at Yaz across the table. “Harry’sreallygood with numbers. Like genius good. He’s talented at what he does.”
“It’s okay, Verity,” I muttered, a bit shocked at her passionate defence of me. To be honest, I thought she would agree with Yaz wholeheartedly. “It’s not like I build anything,” I nodded to her, Max and Mia. “Or save lives,” I nodded at Heath. “Or er…” I looked questioningly at Yaz, who was now studying Verity closely. Her attention snapped to me, and I noticed a small smile on her face.
“I run a well-being centre and teach water sports.”
“Right, well. It’s not like I’m doing any of that sort of tangible, life-improving stuff or anything. Investing rich people’s money isn’t exactly the worthiest of causes.”
“Bullshit, Harry York!” Verity was properly angry now, her eyes flashing fire as her head whipped round to face me and her dark hair flipped over her shoulder. “The investments you make are only in sustainable and ethical businesses. None of the money you accumulate is dirty or hurting the world. Your foundation helps loads of worthy causes, it’s one of the most efficient and effective charitable organisations in the country. You change young people’s lives. You are not just making rich people richer. Don’t be so utterly ridiculous.” I opened my mouth to respond but she’d already whipped her head in the other direction and had started in on Yaz. “And you, Yaz, I thought better of you. Since when have you been so judgemental? All of you are behaving like total pricks. Harry’sshy. He always has been. But he’s great once you get to know him, and that’s not going to happen by acting like the Spanish Inquisition, or by judging his life choices. Mia’s shy and you guys haveneverbehaved like this with her.”
The heat was really creeping up into my cheeks now. Yaz’s eyebrows were practically in her hairline. Heath’s mouth was pressed together in a poorly suppressed smile.
“I’m sorry, Harry,” Yaz said with some genuine remorse. “I wouldn’t have pegged you as shy.”
“Well, he is,” Verity snapped and then shocked the shit out of me as she reached over and grabbed my hand. And I found that with her fingers around mine I didn’t mind so much that she’d announced to her friends I was shy. In fact, nothing bothered me at all in that moment.
“Welcome to the madness, Harry,” Mia’s soft voice said from across the table. When I looked up from my hand interlinked with Verity’s she was smiling. “Coming into this group as an introvert can be… challenging. Max also thinks that announcing I’m shy and looking like he’s going to rip the throats out of anyone who’s even vaguely mean to me is acceptable behaviour. Just roll with it.”
“I did not look like I was going to rip anyone’s throat out,” Verity snapped.
