Chapter 28: After

AFTER

After she leaves the Bonnie Bagel, Hannah finds herself wandering, aimlessly, through the drizzly streets of New Town, her mind buzzing with thoughts of April and Neville. She’s walking the cramped aisles of a Tesco Express, more to get out of the rain than because they really need anything, when her phone goes.

“Hey!” It’s Will. “Have you booked anywhere, or should I?”

Shit. Date night. She had completely forgotten, and now the thought of sitting opposite Will for two hours in a restaurant, no phones or TV or work emails to distract them or fill the gaps in conversation… she’s not sure if she can face it.

“I thought maybe Mono,” Will is saying now. He’s clearly on his lunch break; she can hear the hubbub of a sandwich bar in the background. “But do you reckon we’d get a reservation at such short notice? Or there’s always Contini’s, but we go there so often. I don’t know. What do you think?”

What does she think? She has no idea. She only knows that the question of which restaurant to go to seems painfully insignificant in the aftermath of Geraint’s bombshell—and that she can’t have that conversation here, in the supermarket. She swallows.

“Look, would you mind if we didn’t go out tonight? I’m just—I feel like we ought to be saving money.”

There’s a short silence.

“Sure,” Will says. His voice is crackly on the other end of the line, but she can still hear the faint puzzlement. “But, you know, we don’t have to go fancy, we could just get fish and chips.”

“I know,” Hannah says. She picks up a bag of organic rice, looks at the price, and then swaps it for normal. “But it’s not just that—I’ve got the midwife again tomorrow, and I feel like I should be putting my feet up.”

“Of course,” Will says, and now the puzzlement has been replaced by concern. “Are you not feeling great?”

“I’m feeling fine, honestly. I just want a quiet one in front of the TV. Is that okay?”

“Of course,” Will says again. “Quiet one it is, then. Love you.”

“I love you too,” she says, and then Will hangs up, and she is left standing there, staring at the pasta, Geraint’s words ringing in her head.

April was pregnant. April was pregnant? If it’s true, it changes everything. It opens up a whole mess of motives and possibilities that have nothing to do with Neville. There’s Ryan, of course—the supposed source of this information. If it’s true—if April really did tell him that she was pregnant, and Ryan really did believe her—Hannah can think of only one plausible explanation, unlikely though it is on the surface: Ryan must have been sleeping with April. Why else would she tell him first, out of everyone in their group? April didn’t even particularly like Ryan, so the prospect of her picking him as a confidant is totally outlandish. But apparently she did choose him. And when she really considers it, Hannah can imagine April sleeping with Ryan. Or sleeping with someone, at least.

Because it wasn’t just that one morning, when she found Will in the dining hall when he should have been in bed with April; there were other times. Nights when she heard footsteps padding across the sitting room followed by hushed whispers and giggles floating across the hallway. Afternoons when she caught a scent of cigarettes that Will didn’t smoke coming from April’s room. Mornings when she found shoes that weren’t his by the front door as she headed out to early lectures.

And there was always something between April and Ryan. Not friendship, definitely not. But it is all too easy for that prickly antagonism to mask a very different kind of attraction. Hannah remembers the strange electrical charge that crackled between them the night April pranked Ryan, and the weird energy the first night of April’s play, and she does not find it hard to believe that Ryan was sleeping with April. Not at all.

But if that’s the case, it’s not just Ryan who is implicated—and this, this is why she is distracted and why her answers to Will are short and strained. Because if it’s true… if it’s true it gives someone else a motive too.

Will.

It’s absurd, of course—she knows Will like she knows her own heart. But if this comes out—and if Geraint is digging, it still might—it would destroy Will. She has caught glimpses of them—the articles on the internet making snide references to De Chastaigne—who is now married to April’s college roommate—as though their happiness were somehow bought at the cost of April’s death. It’s always the boyfriend is a cliché, but clichés are clichés for a reason. With this new information, the internet gossip boards would go wild. Her and Will’s life would once again become a misery of paparazzi doorsteppers and newspaper speculation.

How can she keep this from him? It feels impossible—but then, asking him whether he knew and concealed something so momentous feels equally impossible. It would be like asking him whether he has lied to her all their relationship—and admitting to him that she thinks he may have done so. How do you ask someone something like that? And what if he tells her—

Her phone pings and she looks down, realizing that she is still frozen in the middle of the aisle, holding it out like a compass. It’s a text from Will.

Han, I’m sorry I hadn’t remembered about the antenatal appointment. I’m a horrible husband. Please don’t stress—I’m sure it’s all fine. Our baby is fine. I love you x

A wave of guilt washes over her as she realizes what she has just done—she has used this appointment, used their baby, as an alibi for her own stress over Geraint.

She is just trying to think what to reply when her phone buzzes again.

Why don’t you take a day off so you’re properly rested? Really put your feet up xx

You’re a LOVELY husband. And good idea, Hannah texts back. Love you x

She puts the phone away, picks up the rice, and goes across to the queue for the checkout, but the sinking feeling in her stomach tells her that this isn’t over. She has to find out if Geraint is telling the truth, if April really was pregnant, or she will spend the next ten years stressing about it. And only one person knows for sure.

She will take the day off tomorrow, as Will suggested. But not to put her feet up.

She will go to the appointment. And then she will go and see Ryan. And she will ask him about the rumors. But that means… that means she has to tell Will.

---

IT’S LATE—OR WHAT PASSES FORlate for Hannah these days. They are in bed. Will is scrolling through his phone, and Hannah is reading a dog-eared copy of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. She picked it up because she wanted a familiar comfort read, but she knows the clock is ticking and that she cannot put this conversation off any longer. She owes to it Will.

She puts the book down on the bedside table.

“Will…”

“Mm?” He barely looks up. She can see he’s on Twitter. He doesn’t tweet under his own name—they’ve both learned the hard way that’s not a good idea—but he has an anonymous account under the name Two Wheels Good where he retweets indignant blogs about poorly designed road junctions and articles about vintage motorbikes.

“Will… did you…” She swallows. Stops. Tries again. “Did you… did you ever hear a rumor that April was… pregnant?”

“What?” Will sits up straight, turns to look at her. The lazy postsupper, two-beer contentment is suddenly gone from his face, and his expression is wary and watchful. “I’m sorry, what did you say?”

“I… I heard a rumor… something on the internet—” Oh God, there it is, the actual lie she was trying not to tell, but now she’s said it she can’t take it back. “Someone said that April was pregnant when she died.”

“Ugh, what absolute bullshit,” Will says, and his face twists into something so shocked and unhappy that she wishes she had never brought it up, even though there’s a kind of comfort in seeing his surprise. “Of course she wasn’t. Where do people get this poisonous shit? More to the point, why are you reading it?”

“I don’t know—I wasn’t trawling conspiracy forums, it just cropped up,” she says, and that’s true in a way. Geraint did just crop up, out of the blue, like an unwanted Google Alert. “So you think it’s crap?”

“Of course it’s crap. Are they saying it came up at the autopsy but the coroner just—what—decided not to mention it to anyone?”

“No,” Hannah says, but Will’s words have cleared her head, blowing away some of the fog of stress and worry, because of course he’s completely right. If it were true, then of course it would have come up at the autopsy. “No, it wasn’t anything to do with the autopsy it was just this rumor, something about, she took a pregnancy test right before she died—but you’re right—that’s so unlikely.” She should have talked to Will about this earlier. She is feeling better already. She rolls over and puts her arm over his middle. “I mean, she would have told one of us for sure, wouldn’t she?”

“Of course she would. And anyway, it makes no sense. The idea that April would ever have touched John Neville with a barge pole, let alone had sex with him, God, people are fucking imbeciles. They’ll believe anything, however unlikely, if it makes a good conspiracy theory.”

Hannah says nothing. She only squeezes him tighter, and he hugs her back, and now he is the one who is tense, but not with stress and fear. As her arms tighten around him she can feel his anger, feel the sinews in his arms and shoulders as he strives to simmer down so as not to upset her. In a strange way, though, his fury is comforting. Because he has missed the point completely. He has failed to understand what Geraint was saying, the narrative of guilt and revenge that the pregnancy theory implies, and that somehow is more reassuring than almost anything else.

---

“WELL… IT’S STILL A BIThigh.” The midwife unstraps the band from Hannah’s arm, and Hannah feels a sharp pang of disbelief. She had been so sure that it would be fine. She had gotten the bus, arrived ten minutes early, sat there taking deep breaths in the waiting room trying to calm herself down. And now this? It feels like her body has betrayed her.

“How high?” she says in an odd, strangled voice.

“It’s hovering around the one-forty over ninety mark. Which… isn’t ideal. Have you noticed any swelling in your ankles? Any unusual headaches?”

“No, and no.” Hannah feels her cheeks flush with annoyance. “But hang on, one-forty over ninety, that’s not that high, is it? I thought anything below that was normal.”

“Clinically, yes, but pregnant women are a bit different.” The midwife’s voice is gentle, but there’s a slightly patronizing note that makes Hannah’s hackles rise. I’m not stupid, she wants to say. I know I’m pregnant. But she knows that she won’t be the first person to have had this back-and-forth with the midwife, trying to argue away figures that are right there on the dial in front of her, and that her anger isn’t really at the woman sitting opposite, it’s at herself.

“There’s no protein in your urine,” the midwife continues, “so I’m not too concerned, but any rise needs keeping an eye on, that’s all. What was it when you booked in?” She flicks back through Hannah’s notes, but Hannah already knows what the answer is. She can’t remember the exact figures, but it was normal to low. “One-fifteen over eighty, yes, that is a bit of a jump. Well, let’s not worry about it now, but we’ll have you back next week for a quick check. And in the meantime, if you get any sudden swelling, any headaches or flashing lights, then call the maternity unit urgently.” She’s running her finger down her appointment diary. “I have a slot at ten a.m. next Thursday if that suits? And try not to worry, it may be just one of those things.”

But Hannah’s not listening. She’s too focused on what the midwife said before that. We’ll have you back next week.

“I can’t,” she says without thinking. “I can’t take another morning off.” Even though that’s not true. Maternity checks are a legal right, and besides, Cathy is far too nice to make a fuss about something like that. She would be the first to tell Hannah to take the whole day off, no leave required, if she knew about this.

“If you need a note for your employer I’ll be happy to give you one,” the midwife is saying. “They’re legally required to let you—”

But Hannah is shaking her head. She doesn’t need a note. She just doesn’t want to be in this situation.

It’s only when she’s out in the street, her notes under her arm, the wind cooling her hot cheeks, that she realizes how true that is. It’s not just her blood pressure. She doesn’t want any of it—she doesn’t want to be here, now, still dealing with the fallout from a tragedy that dropped into her life like a bomb more than ten years ago. Why me? she wants to wail. But that is too selfish even to say in her own head, let alone out loud. Because, if it comes to that, why any of them? Why Will, questioned for hours by police, hounded on social media, forever trying to shake off the reputation of being the boyfriend of a murdered girl? Why Ryan, struck down by a stroke in his twenties, a bolt of bad luck so unfair it seems impossible that it could happen to anyone on top of what they suffered in college? Why Emily? Why Hugh? Why Pelham? And most of all, why April? Why beautiful, glittering April—someone with the whole of life stretched out at her feet? Why, why, why did she deserve to have that taken away from her?

But the answer was, of course, that she did not. That she never had. It was just one of those things.

---

THE TRAIN TO YORK TAKEStwo and a half hours, and Hannah has forgotten her book, so she buys one at the station, a Louise Candlish that Robyn recommended as particularly gripping, in the hopes that it will keep her from obsessing over the coming conversation with Ryan. It works for a while, but as the train draws closer to York she finds her nerves are taking over, and that she’s turning the pages without properly concentrating. Is she really going to do this? She hasn’t seen Ryan for more than five years, and since his stroke, she hasn’t spoken to him either—first because he couldn’t talk on the phone, and then… well… after that there was no excuse, really, apart from her own selfishness.

Now she wonders if she’s mad to do this—turn up out of the blue unannounced. What if he sends her away? He’s hardly going to be out, she supposes. She should have called. She should have made an appointment, cleared it with Bella, checked he was up to seeing people. But it’s too late for that. She’s on the train. She quite literally can’t turn back. No. She’s going to have to see this through—even if that’s only as far as Ryan telling her to her face that she’s four years too late, rather than by text.

When she gets to York she catches a taxi, carefully reading out Ryan’s address from the contact list on her phone. And then at last she’s there—standing outside a neat suburban house with a garage to one side and a little square of lawn in front.

Her heart is beating in her throat, and she can’t help thinking of her blood pressure, of what it’s doing to the baby, but she forces herself to cross the drive, step up to the blond wood front door, and ring the bell.

She’s not sure what she’s expecting. Bella, most likely, or perhaps a carer of some kind in a uniform. Whatever she thought, it’s not the person who opens the door, awkwardly wheeling his chair out of the way as he pulls it back.

“Ryan!” His name comes out without her even meaning it—a jolt of surprise. For a minute his face is blank and puzzled as he stares up at her, a frown between his brows. He looks older than she remembers, older than the years of water under the bridge would warrant. He looks far more gaunt and drawn than Will, who is his exact contemporary. But it’s not just that—there is something slack about the muscles of his face, a kind of lopsided stiffness beneath the dense, dark beard he has grown since college days. Then his expression clears and he smiles, one side of his mouth lifting more than the other.

“Well fook me, if it ain’t Hannah bloody Jones. What in God’s name are you doing here, woman?”

And it’s still him. It’s still the same Ryan. His voice is slightly slurred, his smile is slightly tilted, but it’s the same old Ryan.

Hannah just stands there, smiling nervously. She finds she doesn’t know what to say. Ryan is grinning up at her, enjoying her awkwardness just a little—he’s still got that knack for discomfiting people—but he’s pleased to see her, and that wasn’t a given.

“What took you so long?” is all he says.