Chapter 13: Before

BEFORE

By the time the Michaelmas term drew to a close, just eight weeks after it started, Hannah found it hard to remember a time when she had not been a Pelham College student. The labyrinthine corridors and golden stone cloisters were as familiar to her as her old school halls back in Dodsworth, and outside the high walls of the college, even Oxford, with its off-putting patina of strangeness, was starting to feel like home. She had learned to call exams collections, the Thames the Isis, and that people studying the classics were taking Greats. She knew the difference between rectors, provosts, and wardens, and the place of Pelham’s own Master in that subtle pecking order. She had her favorite pubs and curry houses, and was beginning to figure out the shortcuts and winding back ways that students used for slipping between colleges and making their way to the Bodleian, when the college library didn’t suffice.

She let Emily drag her around the Saturday morning flea market, and Hugh take her to the History of Science Museum. She went to Oxford Union debates with Ryan, followed by furious political discussions in the pub after, and she adopted the weary tolerance the older students displayed towards the ever-present tourists, with their iPhones and their selfies.

She even got used to April—to her constant Instagram snaps, to her face staring out of the Tatler gossip pages, to the half-drunk bottles of Veuve Clicquot crowding the minifridge, and the scent of her strange, heavy perfume. After a few weeks it felt normal to find a Vivienne Westwood coat discarded underneath the sofa, or a Vera Wang camisole crumpled up with the laundry. Her trainers tangled companionably with April’s Jimmy Choos in a pile beneath the coffee table.

Only two things she did not get used to.

One was John Neville—who remained a constant, disquieting presence, hovering at the edge of her perception. She found herself taking the long way to the library to avoid passing the Porters’ Lodge, going in to collect her letters when she guessed he would be off shift, and entering college by the back gate to avoid passing through the main entrance.

The other was Will.

Somewhat to everyone’s surprise, it appeared that April and Will were now an item. It was never spoken, never articulated that April was anything as pedestrian as Will’s girlfriend, but from that first night when they had played strip poker together, Will became a semiregular overnight guest in April’s half of the set, and it was not uncommon for Hannah to wake to the sound of his deep voice coming through the wall, or to leave her room in the early morning, long before April usually awoke, to find him on their sofa, drinking coffee and looking across the dew-drenched quad.

The first time Hannah had woken to find Will sitting alone in the set, he’d jumped like a guilty person, caught doing something he should be ashamed of.

“I’m sorry,” he’d said quickly. He stood up, crossing his arms over his bare chest. He was wearing nothing but jeans, and she had to force her eyes up, away from his lean, muscled body and the fine ribbon of dark hair that arrowed to his belt buckle. “I’m really sorry, I didn’t think you’d be up yet—I didn’t want to wake April. I’ll go—”

“Hey, it’s fine,” Hannah said. She focused on a point just past Will’s right ear. “You don’t need to go. Finish your coffee.”

“Are you sure?” He looked at her doubtfully. “I don’t want to take the piss—I mean, this is your room. I don’t know how I’d feel about a stranger hanging around uninvited.”

Hannah found herself laughing at that in spite of herself, and for the first time she found herself able to look Will in the eye, sympathetic to his awkwardness.

“Will, first, you’re hardly a stranger. And second, you’re not uninvited. April invited you.”

“But you didn’t,” he pointed out.

She smiled.

“Okay. I invite you, Will de Chastaigne. Is that better?”

“Okay,” he said, and then his face broke into a grin. “Vampire rules, you know. I’m over the threshold now, you can’t get me out.”

“Don’t suck my blood,” she said lightly.

There was a moment’s charged pause, then Will coughed, breaking the tension.

“Still, I’d better get a shirt on. Pretty sure vampire rules don’t entitle me to lounge around half-naked.”

“Don’t worry,” Hannah said. “I was heading out for a run anyway. I like to go in the morning, before the river path gets too busy.”

“Sounds nice,” Will said. And then he smiled, and Hannah realized that she wasn’t having to force her gaze away from his chest, because her eyes were locked on his face, on the way the lines at the corners of his mouth crinkled, on his crooked nose and the shape of his lips. “I’ll probably be gone by the time you get back,” he added, and she nodded and made herself look away.

“Sure.” Her voice sounded croaky in her own ears. “See you later, then. Maybe at breakfast?”

“Maybe at breakfast,” he echoed. And she laced up her trainers and left, taking the four flights at a run.

But he wasn’t gone when she came back. Not completely at least. He was gone from the living room—an empty coffee cup the only sign of his presence. But as she opened the door to the set, the sound that greeted her from behind April’s door was the unmistakable one of two people having sex.

Hannah found herself wincing as she tiptoed across the living room to her own door. Once safely inside her bedroom she shut the door and turned on the radio, a notch louder than necessary.

She had been planning to take a ten-second shower, then work on an essay in her room. Instead she showered, left her towel hanging on a peg in the communal bathroom, and went straight down to breakfast with wet hair and scrubbed face.

But to her surprise, when she walked through the door to the Hall, Will was there, eating a full English.

He saw her as she came in and waved a fork.

“Hannah! Over here!”

He had nearly finished, she saw, and as she moved across to him, frowning and trying to figure out how he had gotten down here so fast, let alone finished the best part of eggs, bacon, sausages, mushrooms, and beans, he swallowed a mouthful and spoke.

“Could I be cheeky and get you to grab me another coffee if you’re going up?” He held out his empty cup.

Hannah took it, feeling slightly dazed.

“Um… sure.”

She had turned half away from the table when she remembered something and turned back.

“Sorry, how do you take it again? I should know but—”

“Black, no sugar. Thanks.”

Hannah nodded and moved away to join the queue at the hatch, but she could not shake the feeling of unease as she stood there, Will’s still-warm cup in her hand, waiting to be served.

Had she been in the shower longer than she thought? Or…

But no. That was ridiculous. Will was… well, if not April’s boyfriend, at least a significant fixture in her life—and she had seen him going into April’s room herself that very morning. She had made a mistake, that was all. Just a silly mistake.