Chapter 24: After

AFTER

Hannah arrives home at the same time as Will. She’s looking through her handbag for her key when she hears the low growl of a motorbike coming up the mews, and turns to see him, blindingly bright, driving towards her. He comes to a halt, kicks out the stand, and unbuckles his helmet.

“How was your day?” he asks. She’s still trying to think of what to say, how even to begin, when he turns aside, pulls his work bag out of the bike’s rear pannier, and heads towards the front door.

Upstairs, she sinks into an armchair with a sigh, watching as Will peels off his leathers and shakes his folded suit jacket out of its creases.

“Let’s get takeaway,” she says, ignoring the brief twinge provoked by the thought of the cost. “I can’t face cooking.”

“Bad day?” Will asks, looking up, and Hannah nods, and then regrets doing so. She doesn’t want to talk about it, but now she’ll have to. She’s always going on at Will for buttoning things up; she can’t very well do the same. Plus she has to tell him about the midwife appointment. It’s his baby—it wouldn’t be fair to keep that stuff from him.

“I had high blood pressure at the midwife appointment,” she says at last. “My own fault. I ran there.”

“Okay…” Will says slowly. He sits down on the arm of the sofa next to her, his face puzzled. “Is that a big deal?”

“It can be, apparently. It can be a sign of this thing called pre-eclampsia, which is pretty serious, though they don’t seem to think it’s that. But they want me to come back next week for another check.”

“Next week?” Will’s face doesn’t betray much emotion, but Hannah knows him well enough to read the flicker of alarm beneath the surface. “Well, that’s annoying for you. Seems pretty stupid they didn’t just wait for it to go down and try again.”

“They did,” Hannah says reluctantly. “But it was still high. I think I’m just stressed—oh God, I don’t know. She told me to go home and relax, so that’s what I’m doing.”

“Stressed?” Will says. He has picked up on the word immediately, and Hannah wants to kick herself. “Stressed about what? Is this still about Neville?”

Hannah says nothing.

“Han, love, we’ve discussed this. It’s over. Neville is gone. It’s time to move on.”

It isn’t over, Hannah wants to say through gritted teeth, if I made a mistake. It isn’t over if Geraint Williams is correct and my evidence left the wrong person to rot in jail. If all that’s true, it’s very, very far from over. But she doesn’t say that. She can’t. She can’t bring herself to say those words aloud, to make the possibility real.

“I really need a cup of tea,” she says at last, and Will nods, jumping up, glad to have something to do, a way to be a good husband in all of this.

As the sounds of the kettle boiling and Will moving cups and containers in the kitchen filter down the corridor, it comes to her like a reluctant realization—she has to tell him the truth about the encounter in the bookshop. Anything else would be a betrayal. It’s just a question of how.

“Will,” she says at last, when they’re both settled, him on the sofa with the takeaway menus, her curled up beneath a fluffy blanket with a mug of peppermint tea warming both hands.

He looks up.

“Yes? I was thinking pizza—what do you reckon?”

“Pizza’s fine, but listen, there was something else. Something happened today.”

“At the clinic?”

“No, at work. This—this guy came into the shop. The journalist I told you about, the one who emailed—”

“He came into the shop?” Will puts down the menus and turns to face her. His expression takes her aback—this is exactly why she didn’t want to tell him, out of a fear that he would overreact. But his face has a fury in it that’s even more out of proportion than she was expecting. Will knows what she’s been through with the press over the years; he’s watched her change her number and her appearance and even her name. He gets angry on her behalf, angry enough to swear at reporters who call the house, even threaten them sometimes, but that doesn’t begin to touch what she sees in his reaction now.

His face is still, almost unnaturally still, but there is a contained rage in it that frightens her, and a vein beating in his temple that she knows is a sign that he’s very close to losing his temper. Will doesn’t lose it very often—she can remember only once or twice in their whole relationship. But when he does, he really loses it. She can remember him hitting a man once, late at night, on their way home from the pub. The guy had been catcalling a woman in a headscarf with horrible racist innuendo, and when Will called him out, the man refused to apologize and then took a swing at Will.

He missed. But Will hit him back, and his punch connected. And he didn’t just hit him once, he pounded him and pounded him, while Hannah watched in a kind of mute, frozen terror, unable even to protest, she was so shocked. Will came very close to being arrested for assault that night. He was saved only because two witnesses attested to the racist abuse and that the other man had swung first—that and the fact that the man had turned out to have a long record of racially aggravated offenses, which perhaps made the police more willing to overlook Will’s actions.

But Hannah has never forgotten that moment of watching her gentle, loving boyfriend snap. That moment when his mood turned in an instant, and he became someone capable of inflicting severe injury on another human being. Seeing his face now, she is reminded of that night, and a shiver runs down her spine.

“Hannah?” Will says, his voice very level, but there’s a sound in it like a warning, and Hannah swallows, and forces herself to answer.

“Yes. Apparently he said in his email that he might pop in.” She finds herself trying to make excuses, downplay her own shock and indignation at the invasion, in order to preempt his fury. “And when I didn’t reply, he thought that was a green light. Anyway, I told him—I told him work wasn’t the place for it and he’s going to email—”

“He’s what?” Will breaks in, his voice rising.

“Will, please calm down.” Hannah’s voice is pleading, and she hates herself for it. “He’s a friend of Ryan. I can’t just tell him to go away.”

“You can and you will!”

It’s that will that does it. If he’d said should, Hannah would probably have nodded. But that will, there’s an autocratic snap to it, like she’s not his wife but his employee, his servant. And it makes all her hackles rise.

Will’s parents didn’t want them to marry—too soon, too young was what they said, with a vague implication that Will was still traumatized by losing April, but to Hannah it had sounded very much like an unspoken too common formed part of their objections. Mostly she and Will don’t talk about that—they don’t discuss the fact that neither his parents nor his sister came to their wedding, and have never really welcomed Hannah into the family. They skirt round the fact that Hannah’s mum visits regularly and helps out, the fact that Hannah’s dad contributed most of the furniture when they moved in together and guaranteed the rent on their first flat, while Will’s family basically pretend Hannah doesn’t exist.

All of that Hannah can put up with, because it’s Will’s family, not him.

But that haughty you will is a bridge too far.

“I’m sorry?” she says now, putting down the cup and folding her arms. “I will? Is that an order?”

“I didn’t mean it like that,” Will says, and she can see him struggling to overcome his anger. He takes a long breath and says, more quietly, “I just meant—you’re really bad at putting yourself first, Hannah. I don’t see why you should feel beholden to some friend of Ryan’s you’ve never met, just because you feel guilty about what happened to him after college.”

“That’s not why,” Hannah snaps, but it’s not true, and Will knows it. They both feel terrible about Ryan; they were together when Hugh phoned, and Hannah remembers Will’s absolute devastation. Ryan? A stroke? But he’s so young.

Was it what happened at Pelham that caused it? The stress, the sleepless nights, six years of PTSD… If it hadn’t been for Neville, would Ryan be okay?

They will never know. But what they do know—both of them—is what utter shits they have been for not visiting. It’s been four years since Ryan’s stroke. Four years. Oh, they’ve sent cards, and Christmas presents, texted their congratulations when Ryan’s little girls were born, but it’s basically the absolute minimum. So Hannah’s denial rings hollow, and they both know it.

“Okay,” she says at last, “that’s part of it, but all I said was that he could send me an email. What harm can it do?”

“Well, the harm is this.” Will waves an arm at her, wrapped up in the armchair. “I don’t want you getting stressed out by this—stressed out by some wannabe hack’s conspiracy theories. So what if Neville never admitted his guilt. Plenty of people don’t. There doesn’t need to be some great undiscovered reason for that. And Hannah, you’re—”

He stops, and she knows why. What he wants to say is, You’re pregnant with my child, I want you to take care of yourself, but he’s holding himself back. He doesn’t want to make their baby into a stick to beat her with.

It’s the fact that he doesn’t say it that makes her capitulate.

She stands, goes over to where he’s sitting on the sofa, and putting the takeaway menus aside, she kisses him.

“I know. And I promise I’ll take care of myself. He’s only emailing—I’ll answer his questions and then make it clear that’s it. Okay?”

“Okay,” Will says. He smooths her hair back from her forehead, smiles up at her. “I love you, Hannah Jones.”

“I love you too, Will de Chastaigne. How did we get so lucky to find each other?”

“Right place at the right time?” Will says. But it’s only half-true, and Hannah knows it.

---

LATER, AFTER SUPPER, WHEN THEY’REsitting curled up watching a film on Netflix, Hannah’s phone buzzes with an email, and when she looks down, her stomach lurches. She glances at Will. He’s absorbed in the film.

“Just going to the loo,” she says lightly, tucking her phone into her pocket. Will looks up.

“Want me to pause?”

“No, it’s fine. I know this scene.” It’s Amélie, and she’s seen it half a dozen times. Will nods and turns back to the screen, and she slips out of the room and into the bathroom, where she sits on the loo and reads the email.

Hi Hannah, Geraint here. Really sorry again for ambushing you at the bookshop. Listen, I would love to meet for a coffee or a phone conversation—or whatever you feel happy with. I’ve spent the last five years investigating what happened the night April Clarke-Cliveden was killed and talking to John Neville, and, as I assume you know, he was absolutely resolute from the trial onward that he had nothing to do with her death—that he went to her room to deliver a package and she was absolutely fine when he left.

I totally understand that this opens up a can of worms for you that you probably don’t want to deal with, but I feel like he gave me a task—and that his death puts a responsibility on me to complete that task. Not to prove his innocence—I’ve got an open mind on that score. But to find out the truth and tie up some of the loose ends. Because there’s certain things that don’t add up. Why wasn’t any of Neville’s DNA found on April’s body? Why didn’t anyone hear a struggle? The two boys in the room below said they heard her walking around, but nothing like anyone fighting for their life.

I would love just a few minutes of your time to ask you some questions that have always puzzled me about that evening and the sequence of events. Obviously if you don’t feel able to help with that, I understand. You don’t owe me anything. But I feel like I owe John Neville something, and more importantly, I feel that I owe April something too. Because if it’s true that John Neville didn’t kill April, someone out there got away with murder. And I want to see that person brought to justice. I hope you feel the same way.

I’m up in Edinburgh for the next week and I’d be available any time for a coffee, or for a phone call at any point if this week is not convenient. My number is below.

Warmest wishes, and thanks again for your time,

Geraint Williams

P.S. Please do say hi from me to Ryan if you speak to him!

Slowly, Hannah puts down her phone and sits, elbows on her knees, staring at the shower cubicle opposite. She knows what Will would say. He would say Leave it alone. He would tell her not to open the can of worms Geraint referred to in his email. But that’s the problem—that metaphor is a little too close to the truth, and it reveals something she has refused to admit to herself for a long time. For there are messy, wriggling, unfinished ends putrefying beneath the surface of what happened that night—things that she has refused to think about and look at for a long time. And there should not be.

She cannot just leave this. However much she should. Because if she doesn’t find out the truth, Neville’s ghost is going to haunt her forever.

Will believes that Neville’s death has freed them—but Hannah is only just starting to realize that that’s not true. In fact, if what Emily said is right, if she has made a mistake, then it’s the exact opposite. Because while Neville was alive, he could fight to clear his own name. But now that he’s dead, that responsibility has passed to others. To her.

But she’s getting ahead of herself. Maybe what Geraint has to say isn’t new evidence at all. Maybe it’s just some conspiracy theory he’s spun out of thin air. If that’s the case, the best thing she can do is put it to rest—destroying his illusions and her own fears in the process.

She picks up her phone again, and presses the reply button on his email.

Dear Geraint, I have a day off next Wednesday. If you are available at 10 a.m., I would be happy to meet at Cafeteria, just off—

She stops, thinks, then deletes the last seven words. She isn’t happy to do anything, and she doesn’t want Geraint at the cafe she goes to every weekend with Will. No. Better to choose somewhere else. Somewhere she won’t be bothered about avoiding in the future if the meeting goes sour.

able to meet at the Bonnie Bagel in the New Town for a coffee and to answer any questions you might have. I can’t promise to give you the answers that you want—everything I said at the trial was true. John Neville engaged in persistent stalkerish behaviour for months before that night, and I saw him coming away from our staircase just moments after April was killed. He never denied being in our room, and he never explained what he was doing there—porters weren’t supposed to deliver parcels, so that part of his story was shaky from the start. The bottom line is this—I believe John Neville was guilty. I hope I can set your mind to rest on that point when we meet.

Hannah

Then she closes down her email, shuts off her phone, flushes the toilet, and goes back to join Will in the living room.