Chapter 30: After

AFTER

“So,” Ryan says, with another of his lopsided smiles.

They are sitting in his living room, nursing cups of tea that Hannah has made under his direction.

“What brings you here, then?” He puts on a plummy accent quite at odds with his normal one and intones, “Rumors of my death have been much exaggerated.”

Hannah laughs at that, she can’t help it. He’s still Ryan, still stupid, piss-taking, sarcastic Ryan, even after everything he’s been through.

“I can’t believe how well you look,” she says, and he grins.

“Aye, well, you should have seen me a few years ago. Adult nappies, surgical hoists, the whole shebang. Pretty sexy it were.”

“And how’s Bella?”

“She’s grand. She’s been my lifeline, her and the girls.”

The girls. Of course. She had almost forgotten that Ryan has two little girls now.

“How old are they?”

“Mabel’s almost four and Lulu’s two. Mabel was born right after I had the stroke. Bella always said I couldn’t stand to share the”—he pauses, frowns infinitesimally as though searching for a word, and then his brow clears and he finishes—“limelight. Had to make it all about me.”

“Will and I are expecting,” Hannah says. She pats her stomach, feeling like a performative fool, but she still can’t quite get over it—the fact that it’s there, their baby, a melting pot of her and Will growing inside her. “Did you know?”

“Aye, Hugh said. Congratulations. They’ll pull your life apart and stick it back together with vomit and shit, but it’ll still be more beautiful than you ever thought possible.”

Hannah smiles at that, and Ryan smiles back, a little sadly this time. Maybe he’s thinking of how their own lives were ripped into little pieces after April’s death.

“I didn’t know you kept up with Hugh,” she says, as much to change the subject as anything.

“Yeah, it’s funny, I wouldn’t have put us down for pen pals neither, and I never heard from him much after college. But he got in touch after my stroke. He’s been a good mate.”

Better than you and Will. The words hang in the air between them. Ryan doesn’t say it—he wouldn’t reproach them like that, and Hannah knows it—but it doesn’t stop it from being true.

Hannah swallows. She needs to bring it up—she can’t stand the way they’re both dancing around her betrayal, not mentioning the years of silence, the lack of visits.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “Ryan, I’m really sorry we never came to see you. And I know Will feels bad about it too. It was just—I don’t know. I was running from everything about Pelham for so long. It’s why I ended up in Edinburgh. And I don’t want you to think Will and Hugh and I formed this cozy little clique up there, it wasn’t like that. Will came to find me. I don’t think I would ever have sought him out off my own bat—it was all just too painful. And Hugh…” She stops. She has never thought about why Hugh ended up in Scotland. “I guess Hugh followed Will,” she says finally. “Or I think he had some kind of surgical residency there at one point—maybe he just liked it there. But I never meant to drop you the way I did—or Em. It was more like…” She stops again, groping for the words. “More like I was just trying to survive.”

“It’s okay,” Ryan says softly. He puts out his good hand, touches hers, very gently. “We’ve all been a bit rubbish. I mean, how often did I call you before my stroke? Once, maybe twice? And that was only to tell you about the wedding—way to make it all about me, huh. And yeah, I’m not gonna lie, things have been a bit shit here. But it’s not like you were having a great time either. It’s not just you—I’ve barely spoken to Em since uni. We let each other down. We all did.”

Hannah nods. There are tears pricking at the backs of her eyes. She wants to tell him how much she’s missed him, how often she’s thought of him and Em, but she can’t find the words.

“Do you think it was because of April?” she manages at last. “The stroke, I mean? I’ve always wondered.”

“What, the…” Ryan pauses as if he’s searching for a word. “The stress, you mean?”

Hannah nods. Ryan shrugs lopsidedly, one shoulder rising more than the other.

“Maybe that contributed, but only in terms of my own behavior. Bottom line, I was drinking too much, smoking too much, eating shit—my blood pressure was bad… all of that was my choice. Well, not the blood pressure.” He laughs. “That’s genetic. But I should have got it treated instead of burying me head.”

Hannah bites her lip. She doesn’t want to think about that.

“So what brings you down here?” Ryan asks again, this time with the air of changing the conversation. Hannah takes a gulp of tea—remembering how much she hates PG Tips—and then a deep breath.

“Do you know a reporter called Geraint Williams?”

“Ger?” His face is a little surprised. “Yes, course I do. He’s a good bloke. We worked together at the Herald. How come?”

“He came to see me, at the bookshop. You probably heard John Neville died?”

“I did. Hard to miss it, to be honest. It was all over the news.”

Hannah nods.

“Well, Geraint came to see me afterwards. He’d been working on a podcast, with Neville’s cooperation, or at least that’s what he said. And he wanted my side of things.”

“Right,” Ryan says. He’s frowning slightly, but not like he’s contradicting her, just like he’s trying to see where this is going.

“We had coffee, and he… well, he thinks Neville is—” She swallows a gulp of scalding tea, trying to force herself to say the words. “He thinks Neville might have been innocent.”

To her surprise, Ryan doesn’t recoil. He only nods slowly.

“Aye, well, he’s not the only one. With a defense like that, there’s bound to be questions.”

“What do you mean?” Hannah asks, and now it’s her turn to frown.

Ryan gives a sigh and lifts himself slightly in his chair, as if the pressure of the seat hurts him. He can only really use one hand, Hannah’s noticed. He picks up his cup with that hand, operates his chair, now he lifts himself sideways on one arm, and then slumps back down with a squeak from the wheelchair’s brakes.

“Look, you’re not part of that circuit, you wouldn’t have known. But journalists—we talk to lawyers a fair bit and, well, there’s a fairly widespread—a fairly—” He stops, his expression frustrated.

“A what?”

“A—oh shit, what do you call it.” His face is twisted in annoyance. “When everyone agrees on the same thing. An acceptance, that’s the word I was looking for. Sorry—since the stroke, it’s like things have fallen through the gaps. Words, names, faces. It’s getting better, but it comes back when I’m tired. What was I saying?”

“A widespread acceptance,” Hannah prods, and Ryan nods.

“That’s it. An acceptance that his defense didn’t do a very good job. I mean basically what did it boil down to? You saw him coming down the stairs. That was it. Not much to lock a bloke up for life.”

“But the stalking,” Hannah says. She feels suddenly nettled, as if Ryan is accusing her of something. “All the stuff that came out at the trial about the other girls he’d spied on. It was part of a pattern of escalating behavior, isn’t that what the judge said?”

“He did, and there’s an argument that half of that shouldn’t have been ad—” He stops, pounds his hand down on his knee in frustration. “Fuck it, it’s gone as well.”

“Admissible?” Hannah ventures, unsure of the etiquette of filling in for him, but Ryan nods in relief.

“Yes! Thank you. Admissible. It prejudiced the jury and none of it spoke to him being a murderer, did it?”

“Ryan, he attacked me!”

“Or he did his job and stopped someone he’d seen breaking into college,” Ryan says, and then holds up his hand as he sees her begin to protest. “Look, I’m not saying you were in the wrong—you said what happened, and the rest was down to the jury. It wasn’t up to you to make Neville’s defense. I’m just telling you why some people have a problem with the verdict. But it’s too late now.”

She nods, thinking. It is too late now, that’s true. She can’t bring Neville back. But at the same time, she knows that she can’t let this rest either. Not if there’s even the slightest chance that Geraint is right.

“There… was something else…” she says, very slowly, and then stops. She’s not sure how to say this. It’s not the same as asking Will, the man she loves, the man she’s married to, April’s boyfriend. But it is still an accusation of a sort.

“Spit it out, pet,” Ryan says, but kindly, as if he knows this is hard for her. Hannah takes a deep breath.

“Geraint said… he claims that April told you—” She stops again, swallows, feeling the blood pounding in her throat. This can’t be good for the baby. “He said that April was pregnant,” she finishes in a rush.

Whatever Ryan was expecting, it wasn’t that. His face goes white beneath the dark beard. But he’s not surprised, or not as surprised as he should be, if the accusation were news to him.

There’s a long silence. Ryan raises his cup to his lips, takes a slow, painful swallow, and then sets it down and gives a shaky nod.

“It’s true?” Hannah asks. Ryan shrugs, one shoulder lifting higher than the other.

“Who knows. You know what April was like.”

“You think it was a prank?”

“I still have no idea. We…” His face twitches and he looks away from her, not meeting her eyes. “We were sleeping together; you probably knew that already.”

Hannah exhales. She’s not sure what to say. It’s weird to have her suspicions confirmed.

“I—I didn’t know for sure,” she says at last. “Not then. But looking back… I’m not completely surprised. How long?”

“Most of that year,” Ryan says. His mouth twists unhappily. “The first time was before I knew she and Will were an item—I wouldn’t have done if I’d known they were official; least, that’s what I tried to tell myself. When I found out, I felt like a complete prick. But I’d already done it once, so…” He shrugs again.

“What about Emily?” Hannah says. Her throat is tight, thinking of Em and this serial betrayal. April was never Em’s friend in the way that she was Hannah’s friend. There was always something a bit antagonistic there, a little mistrustful. But they were friends, in the meaning of the act. They hung out together.

“Yeah, I felt like a prick to her too. More than a prick. But that was the problem—once I’d done it the first time, April had me over a barrel.”

“What, you mean she was forcing you into it?” Hannah doesn’t try to keep the skepticism out of her voice. This is all a little bit too convenient for Ryan—and April didn’t need to emotionally blackmail people into sleeping with her. She would have had candidates queuing up around the block if that was what she’d wanted.

Ryan’s face is unhappy.

“I know. I know what you’re thinking. And yeah, a’ course the truth is that I could have stopped it anytime I wanted. I had a choice—every time she called or texted or sidled up to me at chucking-out time saying Will’s busy, I could’ve turned her down. I know that. I’m just saying, it’s fucking hard to say no to someone who’s got your girlfriend on speed dial. I knew I was being a shit, but… yeah, I’m not going to lie. I wanted to shag April. So I did. I knew she din’t want to get found out any more than I did.”

His mouth twists, and Hannah can see the self-hatred still in his eyes, but there’s another kind of loathing there too, and now she understands… or she thinks she does. Ryan’s antipathy to April was real—but it wasn’t because April was rich and beautiful and had life handed to her on a plate. At least, it wasn’t just that. Ryan had hated her because of what they were doing together.

“What about the pregnancy, then?” she asks. Her throat is dry, and she takes another sip of tea. It’s cooler now. “When did that happen?”

“I’m not sure. I didn’t see her those last couple of weeks, she was so busy with rehearsals and everything. But she texted me the morning after the first night of the play. The text just said, Look in your pigeonhole. So I looked. And there was a Jiffy bag containing a pregnancy test—two lines. I texted back saying, Is this a joke? And she replied back, Positively not.”

“Shit.” Hannah doesn’t know what to think. It’s the kind of prank April would pull—but at the same time… “Did it look real?”

“How the fuck should I know?” Ryan says bluntly. “I’d never seen a pregnancy test. She could have drawn those lines on with a… a—” He screws up his face, searching for the missing word, and Hannah bites her lip, trying to stop herself jumping in. “With a biro for all I knew. But… yeah, if I’m being honest, it looked real. Enough to send me into a tailspin, anyway. I spent the rest of the week panicking and alternately crapping myself and telling myself that it probably wasn’t mine—and then—and then—”

He breaks off. Hannah sees there are tears in his eyes. And then April was killed.

“Why didn’t you say anything?” she says gently.

Ryan gives a short, barking laugh and runs his good hand through his hair, making it stick up like a porcupine’s spines. “Why do you think? Because she’d been strangled and I knew that if I told them about the test it would be me and Will in the firing line. And because I didn’t know. I had no idea if it was just one of her stupid fucking pranks. I thought if it was true then they would find out at the—the medical thing, autopsy, that’s it, and it would all come out without me having to admit I knew anything. I waited and waited for days and then weeks—but the call never came. And then they arrested Neville and I thought—” He stops. His eyes are filled with tears and there’s a muscle ticcing in his cheek. Hannah can see he is tired, exhausted in fact. She feels a stab of remorse.

“I was so fucking thankful, you know?” he says. His voice breaks on the last word. “It was just April’s sick joke. But later… later on I started to wonder.”

“I’m sorry,” Hannah says. She stands up. “I’m really sorry, Ryan, I shouldn’t have dug all this up. Listen, I should go, I’ve kept you talking too long, and I have to get back to Edinburgh be—” She stops, stumbling over the last words. Before Will gets home is what she had been going to say, but she doesn’t want to admit to Ryan that she’s here without Will’s knowledge. “Before rush hour,” she finishes uncomfortably.

Ryan nods.

“Fair enough. Look, take care of yourself, okay? And if you want any baby clothes—”

He waves a hand at the living room, which is strewn with the plastic detritus left by two small girls.

“As you can see we’re due a clear-out. And I don’t think Bella’s up for any more kids.”

“Thanks,” Hannah says. She smiles. It’s a relief doing so after the seriousness of the last half hour. “I’d like that. And you take care of yourself too.”

“I will,” he says. He wheels with her to the door and unlatches it. Then, on the doorstep, he beckons her to lean over, and somewhat to Hannah’s surprise, he plants a kiss on her cheek. His lips are soft, and his beard even softer, much gentler than Will’s occasional three-day stubble when he forgets to shave. “You didn’t deserve this, Hannah Jones. Remember that, a’right?”

“I’ll remember,” Hannah says. She swallows, finding her eyes suddenly hot with unshed tears. “Thank you, Ryan. You—”

She doesn’t know what she wants to say.

You’re a good man.

You’re a better friend than either Will or I had any right to expect.

You didn’t deserve this either.

But she doesn’t find the words. Instead she just kisses him back, his beard soft beneath her lips, and then she picks up her bag and heads off towards the train.