Chapter 25: Before

BEFORE

Hannah was cold and wet by the time she got back to Pelham. It was also gone nine—she had heard the clocks striking as she turned onto the High Street—and the porters began locking up the back entrances at 9:00 p.m. She had been planning to slip through the Cloade gate on Pelham Street, in order to avoid going past the Porters’ Lodge at the main entrance. Now she might have no other option. Still, it took them a while to get round, sometimes. It was worth a try.

As she turned into Pelham Street she heard the quarter past chime from the chapel bell tower, and she quickened her step. She could see the dark arch of the gate in the long wall just a few meters ahead. “Don’t be locked,” she found herself whispering under her breath. “Don’t be locked.”

And, amazingly, it wasn’t. The wooden door was still open. Inside there was nothing but a metal grille with a card reader cutting off the general public from the quad.

Hannah’s fingers were cold and numb as she fumbled in her pocket for her Bod card, wondering all the time if she would see the figure of John Neville lumbering across the courtyard to lock up, but at last she found it. She swiped the card, held her breath, and when the lock clicked back, she pushed open the heavy metal gate and slipped inside.

The rain-soaked quad was crisscrossed black and gold, with light from the warm bright windows of the rooms in Cloade’s reflecting back off the rain-soaked flags, and as she passed in front of the building, Hannah couldn’t help turning to look up at the third floor, where Will’s room was.

His curtains were open, his window a glowing amber square, and even through the rain Hannah could see him, hunched over his desk, writing. As she watched he raised a hand to rub his eyes tiredly, and she turned away, feeling like an intruder, and ducked beneath the cloisters.

Why?she asked herself as she walked away, forcing herself not to glance back over her shoulder. Why did she torture herself like this? Watching Will unawares, finding her gaze tracing the line of his jaw over breakfast, or the shape of his broken nose as he stared up at high table during formal hall. He was April’s boyfriend, completely off-limits, even if they broke up. You couldn’t date your best friend’s ex. It just wasn’t the done thing.

And in spite of everything, that’s what she and April were. Best friends. In spite of the differences in their backgrounds and personalities, in spite of the fact that right now this second April was drinking Vespers in a private members’ bar, while Hannah trudged home in the rain. They had been thrown together by the simple expedient of being roommates, and out of that had grown an improbable but genuine affection.

She couldn’t betray that. Not now, not ever.

New Quad was quiet, no sound apart from the pattering rain as she stepped out from under the shelter of the cloisters. The gravel path crunched beneath her feet as she crossed the quad. Under the arch of staircase 7 she folded her umbrella, shook off the worst of the water, and made her way slowly up the stairs. Behind each door was a different sound. The silence of study; the laughter of friends congregating; the quiet thump of someone’s music, the volume just slightly too low for Hannah to recognize the song.

When she turned the corner of the last landing, she stopped. Dr. Myers’s door was closed. But the one opposite—the door to their set—stood ajar. Had April beaten her back? Taken a taxi, maybe?

Frowning, Hannah put her hand to the wood and pushed.

And then there was the sound of her umbrella falling to the wooden boards with a clatter and a flap of wet fabric, and her own shocked gasp.

“What are you doing here?” The words that came out of her throat were oddly low and guttural, uttered in a voice that didn’t sound like her own.

“And a good evening to you too.” John Neville straightened from where he was bending over the coffee table in the middle of the room. She could smell him—that faint musty scent of BO that made all her nerves shudder.

“What are you doing in my room?” she demanded again, her voice rising in spite of herself.

“Well I like that,” Neville said. He was fully upright now, a foot taller than her, his head almost touching the delicate ceramic chandelier April had fitted over the regulation light fitting. His shape threw a long shadow over the room. His broad face was a picture of injured innocence, and he held up something wrapped in brown paper. “You had a parcel, wouldn’t fit in your pigeonhole so I thought I’d do you a favor and bring it up. If this is the thanks I get, I won’t bother next time.”

“Thank you,” Hannah said in a strangled voice. She held out her hand for the parcel. She was shaking, but she hoped the fact wasn’t perceptible to Neville. She had only one thought. Get him out of her room. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m very tired.”

“Where’ve you been anyway?” Neville said conversationally. “You look like a drowned rat. Catch your death in that little raincoat.” He was making no move to leave, or to hand over the parcel, and Hannah had a sudden panicked thought. What if he didn’t go? What if he just—stayed? She couldn’t physically make him leave.

Suddenly, she couldn’t do this anymore. She pushed past him to her bedroom, opened the door, and walked inside, locking it behind her, and then she stood with her back to the solid oak, feeling a strange light-headed sickness.

She was shivering with a mix of shock and cold, and now as she looked down at herself she saw herself as Neville must have seen her—her sodden jeans, her thin top clinging to her skin where the rain had soaked through her coat and dripped from her hair, the wet cotton cleaving to every rib and every seam of her bra. She felt impossibly, unbearably exposed.

Her handbag was still clutched in her left hand, and she pulled out her phone, staring at it as her teeth chattered, wondering who she could call. The Porters’ Lodge was the de facto security for the college. Even if there was another porter on duty tonight—which she doubted, evenings were usually quiet—she could hardly ask one porter to bounce another.

April? Not the way they had left things—and anyway, she was in a bar halfway across town, and probably drunk by now.

Dr. Myers? He was the closest—and the nearest thing to authority. In fact, if she was going to tell anyone about Neville’s behavior, it would probably be him—as her tutor, he was supposed to be her first port of call for pastoral matters. But Hannah felt a strange compunction about dobbing Neville in to the college authorities. What could she say? He brought me up a parcel. It didn’t sound exactly convincing. And besides, she didn’t know Dr. Myers’s number.

She was still standing, paralyzed, trying to figure out what to do, when there was a knock from outside, making her jump, her heart skittering uncomfortably in her chest. Her first thought was Neville, trying to gain entry to her bedroom, but it sounded too faint for that—the knock had not been on her door, but somewhere farther away.

She held her breath, trying to stop her teeth from chattering as she pressed her ear to the door, trying to hear whether Neville was still out there.

There was no sound at all, not even the creak of a floorboard, and then the knock came again, shockingly loud in the silence. It must be someone trying to get into the set. Did that mean Neville had gone?

Slowly, trying not to make a sound, Hannah turned the latch and opened the door to the sitting room. The overhead light had been turned off, but a lamp burned in the alcove by the fireplace, illuminating the room just enough to show that it was empty. The door to the corridor was closed.

Then the knock came again, one final loud thump, and with it a voice.

“April? Hannah? Are you in?”

Will.

Hannah almost flew across the living room to the door, her numb fingers fumbling with the lock. When she finally got it open, Will was standing there.

“Your light was—” he began, but something in her face must have told him everything was not right, because his expression changed almost immediately. “Hannah? Are you okay? Where’s April? Did something happen?”

Hannah couldn’t speak. She could only shake her head, No, I’m not okay, no, nothing happened. Both were true, after all. Will shut the door behind himself and led her across to the sofa. Then he sat her gently down.

“Hannah, you’re shaking. What happened? Do you need me to get someone?”

“No,” she managed, “I’m okay. I’m sorry, I—”

And then she burst into tears.

Before she really realized what had happened, Will’s arms were around her, and she was sobbing into his shoulder, feeling the warmth of him, the softness of the skin at the crook of his neck, breathing in his scent of laundry detergent and body wash and warm skin.

“You’re okay,” she heard his voice, strangely intimate and close, felt the heat of his breath on her ear as he said it over and over, “You’re okay. I’ve got you. You’re okay. It’s okay. There, there. I’ve got you.”

She could feel the shaking subsiding, feel her breathing getting calmer, and she did not want to move. She wanted to stay here, in the circle of Will’s arms, feeling his warmth and protection. Her lips were pressed into his T-shirt, in the hollow below his collarbone. It was not a kiss—but it so nearly could have been. And suddenly she knew that if she did not pull away, she was going to do something very, very stupid.

“I’m sorry,” she managed at last. She sat up straighter. Will let her go, although—was it her imagination?—there seemed to be something a little reluctant in the way he released her, and he kept his arm along the back of the sofa in a gesture that was close to an embrace, even though they weren’t actually touching.

Hannah coughed, pushed her hair back, and wiped her eyes, thankful that the lights in the sitting room were low. Her red eyes and puffy face would not look as bad as they really were.

“Do you want to tell me what that was about?” Will asked. His voice was quiet. Hannah swallowed. Not really was the honest answer. The truth was that now that Neville had left, she wanted nothing more than to pretend the whole thing never happened, but that was impossible with Will here. There was a long silence as Hannah tried to think up the right words, part of her hoping that Will would fill in the blanks, or else maybe just stand up and say, Right, I’ve got to go. But he did neither. Only sat there in a charged silence. She was painfully aware of his arm along the spine of the sofa, of the fact that if she leaned against the cushions, his bare forearm would be touching the back of her neck.

“It was nothing,” she said at last. It was a lie, and a transparent one at that. But she had the sensation of teetering on the edge of a precipice—and that to tell Will the truth would be to jump, setting in motion events she might not be able to stop. “I was being stupid. It’s this porter, Neville, he’s been really weird with me ever since I arrived. Nothing I can put my finger on but just—and then I came back and found him in my room. He didn’t do anything—” she said, hurriedly, seeing Will’s face. “It was just a shock, that’s all.”

“He was in your room?” Will said, ignoring the last part. He seemed not so much angry as incredibly confused. “I’m sorry, but what? Since when do porters hang around female students’ rooms? Any students’ rooms, for that matter?”

“He brought up a parcel.” Hannah felt like she was making excuses, but it was the truth after all. He had brought up a parcel. It was there on the coffee table in front of them. “It was too big for the pigeonhole.”

“Okay, but—” Will seemed momentarily lost for words. “But, that makes no sense. I mean, since when do porters do that? Surely the normal thing is to keep it behind the counter? They don’t take stuff up to students’ rooms, but even if they did, they shouldn’t be letting themselves into people’s rooms at”—he looked at his watch—“nearly ten o’clock at night, for God’s sake. You could have been asleep. And how did he even get in? Did you leave it unlocked?”

“I—I don’t know.” Hannah was taken aback by the question. She hadn’t considered how Neville had gotten in. Now the idea began to creep her out. Did the porters have keys? Or was it possible she and April had left the door ajar? They had been in a hurry, and April had gone back to get her gloves. “It’s possible,” she said slowly, “but… I don’t think we did.”

“This isn’t right, Hannah,” Will said. He was shaking his head, and now he ran his hand over his face, like he was trying to rub something away, some kind of clinging dirt.

“It’s nothing,” Hannah said, almost pleadingly. A sense of panic was beginning to take over, as if events were spiraling out of her control. She had wanted Will to make her feel better about this—not worse. “Nothing happened.”

“It’s not nothing, it’s weird. Is he the one who told you he liked little girls?”

“What?” Hannah was taken aback. “Jesus, no. He said he liked polite little girls. But how did you even—you weren’t there that night.”

“Ryan told me. And does it really make a difference? Little girls? Polite little girls? It’s fucking creepy.”

“It’s creepy, but it’s not creepy like that.” Hannah found she was getting heated. “I mean, he didn’t say it like that. He meant he liked polite—oh God, this is stupid.”

“Yes, this is stupid, why are you defending him?” Will looked bewildered now, and angry. Out of the corner of her eye, Hannah saw the muscles in his forearms tense and relax as he clenched his fist against the sofa back and then forced himself to let go.

“I’m not, I just—” She felt her throat close with a mix of frustration and impotent anger. How dare Neville do this—come into her room, soiling everything he touched. And why was Will acting like this was her problem?

She felt the blood rush into her cheeks and stood up.

“I’m okay,” she said. She walked to the window, deliberately not looking at Will, unable to meet his eyes. Over in the window bay she swiped at the condensation on the panes, sending little runnels of water trickling down into the leaded grooves, and stared out into the night. Across the top of the cloisters she could see the stained glass windows of the chapel glowing bright, and the steeple rising into the night. The rain had stopped and the sky was clear and speckled with stars. She shivered, feeling the chill strike through the gappy old glass, and through her still-damp clothes.

“I’m not defending him,” she said at last. “I just—I think maybe I overreacted. I was shocked to find him in the room, but—but that was all.”

“Okay,” Will said. His voice was quiet, and she heard the rustle of fabric as he stood and cleared his throat. “Are—do you want me to stay? I could take April’s room… or the couch.”

Hannah closed her eyes. She wanted more than anything to say yes. She couldn’t bolt the set door—April would not be able to use her key to get in—and the thought of lying in her room waiting for Neville to return, however unlikely that was, was almost more than she could stand. But the other option, the thought of Will lying just feet away, no April between them… that was unendurable in a very different way.

“I’m fine,” she said, but her voice was so low that she wasn’t sure if she was really talking to herself. She heard Will’s footsteps creaking on the old boards as he crossed the room and stood behind her.

“Sorry,” he said, “I didn’t catch—”

As he spoke, he put his hand tentatively on her shoulder, his skin shockingly warm through the thin, damp cotton of her shirt. Hannah shivered uncontrollably, in spite of herself, and Will took his hand away as if he had been stung.

“Sorry, sorry,” he said again, and she realized that he thought it was a shudder of revulsion.

“No,” she said, swinging around, “it’s—”

And then somehow, and afterwards Hannah was never sure how it happened—whether she had leaned into Will, or he had pressed himself to her, or whether their bodies had just met in one of those stupid clumsy clashes when two people move in the same direction while trying to avoid each other—she never knew.

She only knew that somehow she was crushed against him, hip to breast, and he against her, and that she would not, could not move. And then their mouths were touching, lips and tongues, in a way that made something deep inside her melt into a liquid puddle of desire.

A sound escaped her, a kind of soft moan, and Will’s lips were on her throat, and his hands under her shirt, and she was pressing herself into him, feeling him against her, and she knew, she could feel that he wanted this just as much as she did.

And then something happened—a sound from the corridor—and they both broke apart at the same time, panting and horrified, staring at each other with wild dilated pupils and mouths still soft and wet from kissing.

“Fuck,” Will said. His face was white in the moonlight streaming through the window, and he looked suddenly much older than nineteen. He turned away, frantically tucking his shirt back in, shaking his head like he was trying to shake away the memory of her touch, the memory of what had just happened. “Fuck. God, what—I’m sorry—I’m so, so sorry—”

“Will,” Hannah managed. “Will, it wasn’t just you—we both—”

“Fuck,” he groaned again, and somehow she knew that it wasn’t only what he had just done, what they’d both done, but what it meant—the impossibility of them ever being together now, because their joint betrayal of April would surely destroy her.

She stood, watching him helplessly as he crossed the room, snatched up his jacket from the back of the sofa, and then stood for a moment in the doorway, looking back at her.

“Hannah, please—” he said, and then stopped. She wasn’t sure what he was going to say. Please don’t tell April? Please don’t hate me? Please don’t come near me again?

She waited. Her heart was pounding in her throat.

But he only shook his head.

“Take care of yourself,” he said at last. And then he left, closing the set door very gently behind himself, as though he was frightened to make a sound.