Falling Fast - L.S

16

Three weeks passed. Harry and I met up as often as we could. After rehearsals and at the weekends. Most of the time we were on our own, though sometimes we hung out with Gigi and Zayn.

Harry never joined in the rounds of drinks that were bought. He occasionally let me or Niall buy him an orange juice - but he was always careful to buy drinks back for us afterwards.

I lost count of the number of times I watched him, hunched and brooding, counting out his coins in the palm of his hand before he went to the bar or agonising over weather he could afford a packet of crisps or a last cup of coffee.

I'd never spent time with somebody who watched every single penny like that. I mean, don't get me wrong - none of us were loaded. Except Taylor, of course. Everyone else had to be really careful about what they spent.

But with Harry it went deeper. Like he was wrestling with his conscience every time he bought something. As more time went by, I began to understand why he hated not having money so much.

It dominated his whole life. Everything he did. Everything he planned to do in the future.

We talked more about his ambition to become a lawyer. I felt deeply uncomfortable that he didn't seem to be in the slightest bit interested in law. Just in the money he would be able to make. The respect he would be able to buy.

It kind of went against everything I'd been brought up with. I tried to say this to Harry, but he got angry, accusing me of not understanding him. Again.

I half wanted to talk to Dad about it, but I hadn't seen him since the potato-digging day. I'd refused to go up to the commune the last few weeks. Lottie and I usually went on Sundays - but now Sundays were the days I spent time with Harry.

Mum hated me seeing him. When I got home that first Sunday, hours after she'd thrown him out of the house, we'd had a long talk about our relationship - Harry's and mine. She kept going on about how intense he'd seemed, how angry.

"I've seen boys like that before," she said. "Pushing against authority all the time. He's trouble, Louis."

"God, Mum, stop being such a bitch," I snarled at her. But I knew she was partly right. Harry did push against authority all the time. He was always slagging off the adults where he worked. And how often had I seen him be breathtakingly rude to Mr Nichols?

I half expected Mum to forbid me to see Harry. But I think she knew coming down hard on us would only make me more determined to be with him. So she kept quite, hoping we'd lose interest in each other.

Harry refused to come round to the house again. I could tell Mum was relieved about that. To be honest, I think Harry scared her a little. I think he scared most people.

The scruffy school uniform he wore, the brilliant way he acted in the play, his lack of money and, above all, his whole not-drinking thing - all of these things set him apart. But, despite being different, he wasn't ridiculed or ignored like most people would have been.

Instead, he was admired and feared. Not liked particularly. I had to admit it. He was too much of a loner for that. And i could see that though most people thought that sometimes he could be a laugh, only Niall actually considered him a friend.

I liked seeing them together - there was something about Niall's bumbling, kindly manner that seemed to rub away Harry's hard edges. They spent a lot of time discussing boxing and football - neither of which I was remotely interested in.

I occasionally saw Harry's older sister, Gemma, when I went with him to pick her up from her hairdressing job. What I'd initially taken to be the hostility turned out to be crippling shyness.