Chapter 27: Before

BEFORE

“You’re coming? You’re definitely coming?”

It was the opening night of April’s play, and for the first time since they had met, almost eight months earlier, Hannah was seeing what April looked like when she was really and truly nervous. She was pacing around the room, vibrating with a tense energy and muttering lines under her breath, cursing when she missed her own cues.

“Hannah!” she barked now, when Hannah didn’t answer immediately. “I said, do you promise you’re coming?”

“Yes!” Hannah said, exasperated, and then she felt mean, and added, more gently, “Yes, April, I promise. I said so, didn’t I?”

“I know, but everyone’s so wrapped up in bloody prelims. I’m worried they’ll all be revising. I practically had to force Hugh to say he’d come. I can’t think of anything worse than looking out over an empty auditorium on the first night.”

“It won’t be empty. I’ll be there—and Emily said she’s definitely coming too.” Was Will? She didn’t know, and couldn’t quite think how to ask. Something had not been right with April and Will for a while, but it had become increasingly impossible for Hannah to find out what. She was too afraid of what April might tell her—or of giving something away herself. “I’m sure the other cast members will bring friends. Someone even put a flyer up in the bar—I’m sure you’ll have loads of people. What time are you supposed to be there?”

“Six,” April said, and then looked at her phone. “Shit. I need to leave now. The makeup takes ages. Swear you’ll be there, yes?”

“Yes, I’ll be there. Front row. I swear. Now go!”

After April had left, Hannah rang Emily.

“Em? I hope you’ve remembered about tonight. She’s having kittens.”

“Tonight?” Hannah could feel Emily struggling to remember.

“Yes, tonight. April’s play, remember? At the Burton Taylor.”

“Shit.” There was a pause. Hannah could hear Emily clicking stuff on her computer diary. “I’ve got an exam tomorrow.”

It was the last fortnight of term, and they were deep into end-of-year exams, the first ones that really counted.

“Em, you have to come. She’ll lose it. She’s already incredibly nervous about playing to an empty house. If we’re not there—”

“I told her I’d come, and I’ll come. But I’ll have to leave on time.”

“No worries, I’ll have to get back too. I’ve got to revise.”

It went without saying at this point. Only the lucky few whose prelims were already over weren’t burning the midnight oil and cursing their carefree, Michaelmas-term selves for not taking better notes.

“How does April do it?” Emily said. “I mean, I know she doesn’t go to the lectures, and I haven’t seen her in the dining hall for about three weeks. She’s been rehearsing nonstop and now they’re playing every evening this week, aren’t they? Is she doing any work?”

“I honestly don’t know,” Hannah said. She had wondered the same thing, as April came in night after night at 11 p.m., wired and full of nervous jubilation. “I think she’s barely sleeping. I got up to go to the loo at four a.m. the other night and she was still there, typing away at something.”

“Fucking hell,” Emily said. “Well, whatever she’s on, I want some. At this point I can hardly remember my own name.”

“Me too. I’ve only got one paper left, but it’s the worst.” Hannah thought of the Anglo-Saxon translations lying on her desk, scored over and over with her attempts at remembering the complicated grammatical declensions. She could barely do a passable translation with a copy of A Guide to Old English sitting in her lap. How she was going to manage in a closed-book exam was anyone’s guess.

“Well, hokay…” Emily said now, with the air of someone ending the conversation. “Better get back to the grind. What time are you leaving?”

“The play starts at eight and I should think it’s probably a fifteen-minute walk… so maybe say half seven? Are…” She paused, trying to think how to phrase her question. “Do you know if anyone else is coming?”

“Will must be. I don’t suppose April would let him off the hook. And I assume Hugh, given he always does whatever April tells him to. Ryan tried to get out of it, said he had some rugby thing, but I said if I was suffering through it, the least he could do was support me. I’d better text him and check he’s remembered. He’s going straight there.”

“So… we’ll walk over together?”

“Sure. Half seven at the main gate?”

“Actually—” Hannah began, and then stopped. She didn’t want to tell Emily the truth—that she almost never used the main gate now, unless she couldn’t avoid it. Neville never seemed to leave the Porters’ Lodge, and every time she came through the arched entrance he would appear out of the little back office and stand in the doorway of the lodge, arms folded, his eyes fixed on her all across the Old Quad, until she passed out of sight to the Fellows’ Garden. Hannah never looked back, never acknowledged his presence, but walking across Old Quad with his eyes fixed on her retreating back made her skin crawl, and each time she found herself fighting the urge to run.

The problem was, there was so little she could put her finger on. Since the night in her room he hadn’t said anything directly to her, but his silent surveillance was almost worse. And it wasn’t just the lodge. The other night, as she had been getting ready for bed, she had heard something outside. When she went to the window, there was a figure standing in the center of the quad, staring up at her. It was impossible to make out a face in the darkness, but it was hard to mistake that tall, broad slab of an outline for anyone else, and Hannah was sure in her heart that it was Neville, watching her as she got ready for bed.

She had torn the curtain across with shaking hands, making the curtain rings screech and rattle against the pole, wishing that April were home instead of out rehearsing. Since then she had kept her curtains closed, even in daylight. It’s like a tomb in here! motherly Sue, the scout, had said the following day when she came in to clean, but Hannah had just shaken her head and switched on the overhead light.

“Yes? No?” Em prompted now, breaking into her thoughts.

“Actually… let’s go out via the Cloade gate. It’s a bit closer.” That was more or less a lie, but if Emily thought so she didn’t call Hannah on it. “I’ll come and pick you up, shall I?”

“Okay,” Emily said. “Seven thirty. See you then.”

---

WHEN THEY ARRIVED AT THEtheater, Hannah saw that April’s fears about playing to an empty room had been unfounded. With a quarter of an hour to go, the little auditorium was already almost full, and her promise to April to sit in the front row was going to be impossible to keep.

She was scanning the rows, looking for two seats together, when Emily nudged her and pointed to the far side of the room.

Hannah turned and saw Ryan standing up, waving an arm to and fro, pointing with his free hand to a couple of empty seats. Beside him was Hugh, bent over a textbook, presumably squeezing in a few extra minutes’ revision, and beside him—but here her stomach flipped.

Since the kiss last term, she had avoided Will’s company as much as possible. It hadn’t been easy, making sure she didn’t eat in the dining hall at the same time as him, or swerving away from an empty desk in the library when she saw him, head down, at the adjacent table. But this term it had become easier. Everyone was revising hard for prelims, and April’s rehearsals had meant she was almost never in their shared rooms, and so neither was Will.

Even when they were forced together—at formal hall, or for celebrations she couldn’t get out of—she had made sure they were never in close proximity, and she’d had the sense that Will was doing the same. Now, with Emily pushing past rows of people to the seats Ryan was saving for them, it seemed that there was no escape.

“Hey,” Ryan said as they made their way through the throng. “About bloody time. It’s been murder keeping these seats free.”

“Sorry,” Emily said, though she didn’t sound apologetic. “You know how it is, Coates. Places to go, people to see.”

She squeezed past Will and Hugh into the free space next to Ryan, and with a sinking feeling Hannah realized that the final free space, the only one left for her, was next to Will.

They looked at each other, and she could tell that he was having the same misgivings as she—and coming to the same realization: that there was no plausible reason to rearrange the seating, at least not without raising eyebrows. The free seat was one in from the aisle, between Will and Hugh. Even if Hannah pretended that she had forgotten something or needed the loo, the only logical rearrangement would be for Will to move up one next to Hugh and leave her with the aisle. There was no possible excuse she could find to move herself farther down the row.

Will gave a small resigned smile, and she knew that he had just gone through exactly the same mental calculation, and was trying to signal that it was okay. That they could still sit next to each other. The theater wouldn’t burn down around them if they sat a few inches apart for a couple of hours.

Still, it was with a sense that she was doing something very stupid that Hannah slid into the seat between Hugh and Will. She sat there mutely, listening to Ryan and Emily bickering good-naturedly farther up the row, and Hugh muttering his revision notes under his breath. And all the time she was horribly conscious of her cardigan-clad arm just millimeters away from Will’s shoulder. He had his hands pressed between his knees, as if to make his body as small as possible and keep his hands as far away from her as he could, but the seats were narrow, and Hugh was unselfconsciously man-spreading on her other side. It was all Hannah could do to keep her arm from touching Will’s, her knee from grazing his, and as the lights went down and the auditorium fell into silence, the sense of intimacy only increased.

She had never been so conscious of her body, of the heat of someone else’s skin, of the sound of their breathing and of every minute movement they each made. As the hush descended and the darkness enveloped them both, Hannah found that she was holding her breath in an effort to keep every muscle strained away from Will, and she was forced to let it out with a shaky rush.

“Are you okay?” Hugh whispered beside her, and she nodded.

“Yes, sorry. Just a—a sneeze that didn’t go anywhere.”

It was a stupid excuse, but Hugh seemed to accept it for what it was. Still, Hannah wanted to kick herself.

A single spotlight came up on the stage, and as it did so, she felt something—the lightest, gentlest touch on her knee, the knee closest to Will. It was only for a moment—and so softly that under other circumstances she would have thought she’d imagined it—but with every muscle attuned to his presence, she knew she had not, and it was all she could do to stop herself from jumping.

She knew what it meant, though. What Will was trying to convey.

It’s okay.

She shut her eyes, pressed her fists against them. It’s okay. It’s okay. It will all be okay.

And then she opened them—and a girl was there, standing in the narrow pool of light. It wasn’t April—it was someone Hannah didn’t know—but she leaned forward, glad of the distraction from her own thoughts.

“I wish to God that ship had never sailed.” The girl’s voice rang clear from the stage, and the production had begun.

---

“BLOODY HELL,” RYAN’S VOICE, RAISEDover the hubbub of the intermission bar, was grudgingly impressed. “She’s pretty amazing. Did you know she was this good?” He turned to Will, who shook his head.

“No, I mean—I knew she was good. She was in a couple of plays at school, I didn’t see them but my girlfriend at the time was in them and she always said April was a good actress, but I had no idea she was this good.”

Gooddid not begin to cover it, Hannah thought. April was not good. She was electrifying. Hannah could not even have said why—it wasn’t her looks. The director had gone with the strange choice of making the cast up to look like characters on a Greek urn, with jet-black wigs, terra-cotta skin, and heavy kohl eyeliner, so physically it was actually pretty hard to tell the actors apart onstage. It wasn’t her technique, although that was fine. There were people in the cast who delivered the lines better, and more accurately, with more expression and animation.

It was something else. When she was onstage it was impossible to tear your eyes from her, even when someone else was speaking. When she left, she left behind a hole that made you unable to forget her absence, and Hannah found herself looking eagerly at the wings, wondering when she would next come on.

Most of all, it was that April was Medea. She radiated Medea’s anguish, betrayal, and rage. Every line simmered with it, and she made what could have been a stiff, classical portrayal into something utterly human and believable.

They were finishing up their intermission drinks when a voice from behind them made Hannah swing round.

“What’s up, maddafakkas?”

“April!” Emily threw her arms around April with an uncharacteristic lack of reserve. “What are you doing out here? Shouldn’t you be backstage?”

“Ah, rules, schmules,” April said with a wave of her hand. “But never mind all that, I came out to hear what you think of the performance.”

“April, you don’t need me to massage your ego,” Emily said with a grin. “But if you want to hear me say it—you’re a bloody revelation, woman!”

“Why thank you,” April said smugly. She didn’t quite say I know, but the inference was there. “How’s it hanging, my dudes?” She gave Ryan a punch in the ribs and he grinned and edged away a little awkwardly.

“A’right. You did okay, Cliveden.”

“Thanks. What do all you think of the wig?” She patted her hair. “I quite like it. Haven’t had long hair for years but I’m tempted to nick it after the run’s over. Hugh? What d’you reckon?”

“It—it looks charming,” Hugh said, blushing. Even after almost eight months eating, drinking, and socializing together, it was plain that April still made him nervous. “Very classical.”

“And?” April said. She was fishing, but Hannah couldn’t blame her.

“You’re absolutely superb, April.” Hugh took the hint obediently. These kind of old-fashioned courtesies were his comfort zone. “We should have brought flowers.”

“Sod flowers. You should have brought something stronger than that,” April said. “Just what the doctor ordered, am I right?” She winked at Hugh and tucked her arm possessively through his. Hugh blushed again, more violently this time, and Hannah had the strong impression he was forcing himself not to pull away.

“S-so what, then?” he countered. “Champagne?”

“I doubt they run to vintage here, but a double G and T would be a good start,” April said. Hugh nodded, unlinked his arm with an ill-concealed air of relief, and began threading his way through the crowd to the bar. April turned to Will.

“So? No congratulations from you, Will de Chastaigne?”

“You were very good, April,” Will said, but there was an edge in his voice that made Hannah look up. Apparently whatever it was, April heard it too, for she frowned.

“Very good? That’s it? That’s all I get?”

“Okay, you were great. Is that better?”

“What I want,” April said through gritted teeth, “is something a bit more effusive than great. If Hugh can come up with absolutely superb I think my actual bloody boyfriend could manage more than a one-line review. How about a congratulatory kiss?”

There was a charged silence, and then Will leaned down and kissed April dutifully on the lips.

Hannah knew she should turn away. She wanted to turn away, but instead she stood, hypnotized, as April threaded her hands through Will’s hair, pulling his head down to hers, forcing his mouth open into a long, wet-tongued kiss that seemed to go on, and on, until with a desperate kind of wrench Will pulled himself away.

He stood, his chest rising and falling, staring down at April without saying a word. There was copper-colored makeup smeared across his chest and face, and the black of April’s lipstick was on his mouth like a bruise. April stared back with something like triumph.

Then, without another word, she turned on her heel.

“Must go,” she shot back over her shoulder. “I’m straight on after the second act.”

And then she was gone, disappearing into the crowd, just a small black head bobbing through the sea of students.

“What the fuck was that all about?” Emily said with astonishment. Will shook his head. He touched his fingertips to his face and looked down at the makeup there.

“Has anyone got a tissue?”

“There’s paper napkins at the bar,” Emily said. She raised her voice to where Hugh was standing by the counter. “Hugh! Grab us a few paper towels, would you?”

“Everything all right between you two, mate?” Ryan said. His voice was uneasy and he rocked on his heels, his hands shoved in his back pockets as if he didn’t trust them not to betray something about his mood.

“Fine.” Will’s voice was short. Hugh had come back from the bar with a plastic cup of gin and tonic and a handful of cocktail napkins, and now Will took them and wiped his mouth and chin. “How do I look?”

“Hang on,” Emily said. She took the cleaner of the two serviettes and dabbed at the streaks of orange still on Will’s cheekbone and jaw. “There you go. There’s not much I can do about your T-shirt, though.”

“It’s fine,” Will said again, his voice tight as a snare.

It’s not fine, Hannah wanted to say. She stared at him, trying to understand what was going on. Had April found something out? Had Will told her?

She was opening her mouth, groping for what to say, when the interval bell rang, and they turned and began filtering back into the auditorium.

It was only as they took their seats that Hannah noticed something—or rather, someone. Someone she was sure had not been there in the first half. It was a man sitting about two rows back from the front, very tall and broad.

It was John Neville.