Chapter 10: After

AFTER

“Decaf cappuccino and a brownie?” the server calls, and then, when there’s no response, “Half-fat decaf cappuccino with cinnamon, and a hazelnut brownie?”

“Oh.” Hannah shakes herself out of her reverie. “Yes, that’s me, thank you. Sorry. I wasn’t paying attention.”

The boy puts the coffee and brownie down on the table along with the receipt. Hannah picks up the cup and takes a sip. It’s good—the coffee at Cafeteria always is—but when she glances at the bill, she puts the cup down. Seven pounds forty. Was Cafeteria always so expensive? Maybe she shouldn’t have ordered that brownie. She isn’t even hungry.

Her phone rings, vibrating its way across the table with a suddenness that makes her jump. It’s probably another bloody reporter, calling from an unregistered number. Picking up the caller that morning was a mistake—she would never have done it if she’d been paying attention.

But when she digs the phone out of her bag, the caller ID gives her a jolt of surprise.

Emily Lippman.

She picks up.

“Em! This is unexpected.”

It is. She hasn’t heard from Emily for… maybe two years? It’s not that they haven’t kept in touch, exactly. They’ve been Facebook friends since uni, so Hannah knows about Emily’s flourishing academic career—she and Hugh are the only ones who really lived up to the promise of those early days. She’s read the impenetrable academic maths papers that Emily posts with a faux casual So… wrote a thing that belies the intense ambition Hannah remembers from Pelham. And for her part, Emily responds to Hannah’s infrequent posts with what seems like genuine affection. Let me know next time you’re down south! she wrote, last time Hannah posted a picture from Dodsworth.

But posting on Facebook is a false kind of intimacy, and in real life they haven’t seen or spoken to each other for a long time—not since Ryan’s wedding. In fact, she wasn’t even sure Emily had this number, though she remembers passing it round last time she swapped.

“Well, I saw the news,” Emily says now. Her disconcerting directness at least hasn’t changed, and that realization gives Hannah a reassuring feeling of familiarity. “You okay?”

“Yes,” Hannah says, with more certainty than she feels. “I mean it was a shock—but yes.”

“And I heard from Hugh that you’re pregnant. Congratulations!”

“Thanks.” The news that Emily is still in touch with Hugh is somehow a surprise. She’s never thought of them as firm friends. “I didn’t know you kept up with Hugh.”

“Just occasionally. He came down to an alumni carol service last year. Seems like he visits Oxford quite regularly—he said you and Will never come?”

“No, well, I mean, Edinburgh to Oxford is a long way,” Hannah says, though she knows the excuse must sound feeble, particularly since Hugh also lives in Edinburgh. “It’s a trek.”

“Yeah,” Emily says, but not like she’s fooled. You don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to figure out why Hannah might not want to return to Pelham.

“Did you go to the Gaudy last year?” Hannah asks, more to divert the conversation than because she really wants to know. Personally she can’t think of anything worse than hanging around with their former classmates, reminiscing about the “best years of their lives.” What would she say? The truth? That April haunts her like an unquiet ghost? That her short time at Pelham ended in a long nightmare she’s spent the rest of her life trying to wake up from?

“No,” Emily is saying. “Hugh did, I think, but I’m not really into the whole reunion thing. But I have been back to dine a couple of times. Not often, I find the whole alumni deal unbearably smug most of the time. But I thought since I was back in Oxford I should show willing. You know, work the old network a bit.”

“Oh…” Memory comes back to Hannah, something Will said last year. “I forgot you weren’t in London anymore. You’re a fellow at Balliol College, is that right? Is that a step up from Pelham?”

“Yes, practically come full circle.” Emily’s voice is dry. “As for a step up… I don’t know. Balliol would probably try to say so, but as far as I can see, the only difference is the wine cellar at Balliol is better.”

“What’s it like? Being back?”

“Um… weird, to be honest. At first, anyway.”

She stops. There is a long silence. Hannah is just trying to think what to say when Emily finally speaks, her voice quieter than before.

“Han, are you really okay?”

For a moment Hannah can’t reply. She closes her eyes, pushes her glasses up her forehead, and digs her fingers into the bony hollows on either side of the bridge of her nose.

“Yes,” she says at last. “And no. I mean, no, I’m not okay really. But I’m not not okay. Does that make sense?”

“Yes,” Emily says. She sounds sad. “Because I feel the same.” There is another silence between them, and for a moment Hannah has the strangest impression that no time has passed at all—that the two of them are back at Oxford, phoning room-to-room, and for a sharp, piercing moment she wishes it were true—that she could run down the corridor and tell Emily she’s going to the JCR, and does she want a coffee. Then Emily speaks again, her voice stronger this time. “Oh, hey, I meant to ask—has a reporter called Geraint Williams been trying to get in touch with you?”

The name gives Hannah an odd prickle, coming so close on the heels of the email. She nods, forgetting Emily can’t see her, and then says, “Yes. I mean—he emailed me. But I didn’t reply. I didn’t even really read it. How come?”

“I don’t know. He’s been after me to talk to him. I said no, of course, but… I don’t know. He’s a friend of Ryan’s, apparently.”

“Of Ryan’s?” It’s a shock. Hannah’s not sure why, except that Ryan, out of all of them, is the person she feels most guilty about abandoning after college.

“From his days at the Herald. He said it was Ryan who got him interested in the case. Have you seen him?”

“Geraint?”

“No, Ryan.” Emily sounds impatient.

“No. Not since his stroke.” Hannah bites her lip. “Have you?”

“Only once, when he was first released from hospital. It was so awful I kind of couldn’t bear to go back. But from what Geraint said, he’s in a better place now.”

“Oh. I mean, I’m glad,” Hannah says uncertainly. It is what she feared, and part of the reason she never plucked up the courage to visit. Not just the memories it would have stirred up, but the memories it would have erased—the image in her head of the laughing, handsome, mocking boy overwritten by a slurring wreck.

“Geraint said his memory still isn’t great, and he’s in a wheelchair—but he’s had a lot of physiotherapy and apparently his speech is pretty good now. Plus he’s able to feed himself and stuff, which must make a huge difference to someone as independent as him. I could see how much he was hating being dependent on Bella. And he’s writing again—I haven’t read any of it, but Geraint said he’s able to type, and that must be a huge release.”

“I’m glad,” Hannah says again. And then, because the question is niggling at her, “So, what did he want? Geraint, I mean. Just the usual?”

The usual.Soft focus, syrupy memories of April and her potential. Sad-faced pictures of her friends and family pondering all they’ve lost. Anecdotes about punting and May balls and bright futures. And then some spicy detail, just to add a prurient kick to the piece—a hint of scandal, maybe. A student rivalry. A sniff of drugs, or promiscuity, or some other act of disreputable behavior, to give the reader a frisson of disapproval and the safe knowledge that this would never have happened to them. That they, or their kids, or their grandchildren, are far too responsible ever to get lured in by a predator and strangled in their own room.

She hates them. The journalists. The podcasters. The thought of what it must still be doing to April’s parents, after all this time. She hates them all.

“Not the usual…” Emily says slowly. “At least… not The April I knew, by Emily Lippman bullshit, if that’s what you mean by the usual. No, he…” She stops. Hannah knows that she is trying to find a way to put something potentially upsetting into words, and she sets down her coffee cup, bracing herself for whatever Em might be about to say.

“He thinks Neville was innocent,” Emily says at last. “He thinks… he thinks they made a mistake.”