Chapter 34: After

AFTER

On the walk back from the train station, Hannah calls Will.

“The baby moved!”

He’s in the street, she can hear the background noises, the sound of a fire engine passing.

“What did you say?” He raises his voice above the siren. “Who’s moving? Sorry, it’s really loud.”

“Not who! The baby. I felt it, Will, I felt our baby move.”

There is a split-second silence and then she hears his incredulous, joyous laugh.

“It moved? You really felt it?”

“Yes! Twice! I was on the way home and I felt it, Will, it was the strangest thing, like bubbles popping or something. It was so weird. Like, I’ve had things before where I wasn’t sure, but this—it was so alien. I just knew. I knew it was him.”

“Him?”

They haven’t found out the sex. It was Hannah’s decision more than Will’s—a kind of superstition, although she can’t put her finger on why she doesn’t want to know.

“Or her.” She blushes. “It just feels weird to keep saying it when he’s becoming a real person.”

“I really want to feel it,” he says, and she can hear the delighted grin in his voice. “Do you think I’ll be able to yet?”

“I don’t know.” She puts her hand over her belly now, as if to test, but of course it’s not moving. “I’m not sure. Are you on your way home?”

“Yeah, I knocked off early,” he says. His voice changes and he sounds suddenly weary and pissed off. “Work was a bitch. Do you think it’s normal to hate your boss?”

Hannah bites her lip. Poor Will. He never wanted to be an accountant. He wanted to change the world—but he fell into this when he moved to Edinburgh, and now he can’t afford to quit.

“I mean… I don’t hate Cathy,” she says, a little lamely.

“There aren’t many Cathys around, though,” Will says. “Not in accounting, anyway. And like my dad always used to say, if work was meant to be fun, people wouldn’t pay you to do it.”

Hannah laughs at that, but when they have talked about supper and said their goodbyes, she puts her phone away with a sinking feeling. Will has always been the main wage earner—accountancy just pays better than bookshop work, that’s all there is to it. But now it feels like the pressure of her impending maternity leave is getting to him. She just doesn’t know what to do about it.

---

“CAN I FEEL IT?Is it moving now?” Will has taken the stairs two at a time, and now he pulls Hannah into a big bear hug, his leathers cool against her cheek. Hannah shakes her head.

“I don’t think so. I can’t feel him at the moment, but even if I could, I don’t think you’d be able to tell anything from the outside. It’s too soon. I think the books said it’s normally about six months before the dad can feel any movement.”

“He moved,” Will says, as if trying out the words. He stands there, the huge foolish grin spreading across his face, like he doesn’t know what to do with himself, and then he kisses her, as if he cannot contain himself, his hands on either side of her face, his lips cool against her warm ones. “Our baby moved. Oh my God, Hannah, this is real. It’s really happening.”

I know, she wants to tell him, but she doesn’t, she just stands there, smiling back, feeling their shared happiness balloon between them, huge and fragile.

“What’s that smell?” he says now, breaking their reverie.

“Oh shit, the onions!” Hannah had forgotten in the excitement of hearing Will’s feet on the stairs. “I’m making Bolognese.”

They go through to the kitchen, where Hannah peers into the pan, scraping the sticking onions off the bottom.

“I think they’ll be okay. Just a bit caramelized, maybe.”

“They’ll be delicious,” Will says reassuringly. “Hey, how was the appointment, by the way?”

God, the appointment. It feels like a million years ago, and for a moment Hannah has to struggle to remember what happened.

“Oh… fine… I mean, not totally fine. I was still a bit up. But it’s no big deal. They don’t think it’s pre-eclampsia or anything serious, I just probably need to destress a bit. The midwife wants me back next week, just to check.” She pauses. This is the moment she has to say something. About her visit to see Ryan. Because she can’t keep this from Will. It concerns him too.

“I had a free day after the appointment,” she says carefully, tipping the mince into the pan so that she doesn’t have to look at him as she says the words. “So I… well, I called in to see Ryan.”

“Sorry?” Will cups his ear. The meat is spitting and hissing, making it hard to hear above the noise of frying. “Who did you see? I didn’t catch what you said.”

“I went to see Ryan,” she says, more loudly. She puts down the spoon and turns around. “Our Ryan. Ryan Coates.”

“Wait a second.” Will is frowning. She can’t quite read the expression on his face—it looks like disbelief mixed with a kind of controlled annoyance he is trying not to show. A flush is climbing up from the collar of his biker jacket, staining his tanned cheeks. “You went all the way to York to see Ryan Coates? And you didn’t tell me?”

“It wasn’t premeditated,” she says quickly, though that’s only half-true. “I didn’t even call ahead to warn Ryan. I got halfway there and realized he might be out.” That part at least is right. “But I had to, Will, I couldn’t get what Geraint said out of my head, and I wanted to hear it from Ryan, and find out whether Geraint was some kind of delusional stalker or if he really is a mate of Ryan’s. If he was making all this up I needed to know—maybe even get the police involved.”

Will looks a little less blindsided, as if he can see the sense in this last part at least, but he’s still shaking his head in bewilderment.

“And you couldn’t call? I mean—York! It’s not exactly down the road, is it?”

“It’s not that far, it was actually really nice just relaxing on the train, and I felt—I don’t know, Will. I felt like I owed it to him to make the trip. To see him face-to-face, rather than just ringing him up to pick his brains. I don’t exactly feel proud of the amount of support we gave him after the stroke. Do you?”

Will has the grace to look slightly ashamed at this. He gives a very slight gesture with his head, halfway between a nod and a shake, not quite either, but she knows what he means. Yes, he can see her point. No, he isn’t proud of his actions either. Ryan was a friend—one of their best friends. They owed him more.

“How was he?” he says at last. He turns away and begins to shrug off his jacket, more for something to do, Hannah has the impression. The back of his neck is still flushed and red.

“I mean… surprisingly good, actually,” Hannah says. She looks at Will’s back, at the shape of his shoulders beneath his shirt, trying to imagine him struck down overnight the way Ryan was. The idea gives her a sharp pain beneath her heart. “He’s still in a wheelchair but his speech is amazing—just a very slight slur, and he misses the odd word, but nothing major. I didn’t see his kids, but they sound adorable. And Bella’s clearly a keeper.”

“Yeah…” Will says slowly. “Yeah, he hit the jackpot with Bella all right. So what did he say? About that reporter bloke? And I take it you talked about”—he swallows—“about April?”

“Yeah,” Hannah says. She sits down on a stool by the counter, rubbing her sore feet. “Yeah, we did. He really does know Geraint. Says he’s a good bloke, and that he shares some of Geraint’s concerns. And he said…” Oh God, can she really say this? But she has to. She can’t keep the conversation from Will, not when so much of it concerns him. It wouldn’t be fair. “He said he was sleeping with April. Did you know that?”

“I had a pretty good idea,” Will says, very shortly. He moves across to the stove, taking over where she has left off. She can see that the muscles of his shoulders are tense beneath his shirt.

“And he… he confirmed that rumor I told you about last night. About the—”

She stops. This is so much harder than she thought it would be. How is telling the truth to the man she loves so difficult?

“About the pregnancy test. Will, she told Ryan she was pregnant. She said, at least, she implied it was his baby.”

Very slowly the flush drains out of the back of Will’s neck. For a long moment he just stands there, motionless, his shoulders sagging.

“Jesus.”

“I know.” There is a knot in her stomach. “He doesn’t know if she was telling the truth about the pregnancy but… she did say it.”

“Why?” Will says, and his voice is like a groan.

“Why would she lie to Ryan?”

“No, I mean, why you, Hannah?” He puts down the spoon and turns to face her and she sees that his face is pale and set. “Why are you doing this? Why now?”

“Why am I doing what?” she cries. “Trying to find out the truth? Because Neville is dead, Will. Dead. And I have to know if I condemned an innocent man to die in prison! Don’t you understand that?”

“No, I understand,” he says. He has himself under control now, the anguished note in his voice is gone, and when he speaks again, his words are almost unnaturally level, as if he’s spelling something out to a small child. “In fact I think it’s you who doesn’t understand, Hannah. Don’t you see what you’re doing? If Neville didn’t do this, someone else did. Yes, Neville’s dead, and you can’t change that. So why can’t you leave this alone?”

She’s staring at him now, as if a stranger is standing in the corner of her kitchen.

“Will, are you seriously saying that if April’s murderer is still out there you don’t care?”

“I’m saying that April’s murderer—as tried and convicted in law—died in prison and that was the best thing for everyone! What good are you going to do by digging all this up—finding motives where there were none, and unearthing decade-old dirt? I mean, so what if April sent Ryan a pregnancy test—are you really going to the police with that? For what? So that a bloke in a wheelchair with two little girls and a wife who adores him can rot in prison instead of John Neville?”

“I’m not saying Ryan did it—” Hannah says hotly, but Will interrupts her.

“Then who? Hugh? Emily? Me?”

“Don’t be stupid, you weren’t even in college that night,” Hannah snaps. “But there were hundreds of other students and staff members who were, and who weren’t investigated because of my evidence against Neville. I can’t let that go, even if you don’t give a toss about what happened to April!”

She shuts her mouth at that and stands there, panting, horrified at her own words. She knows she went too far with that. Will is not stupid, anything but. And he certainly cares about April, just as she does.

She waits, expecting him to call her out on it—on the unfairness of what she just said, on her irresponsibility in pursuing this. She’s waiting for him to call her selfish, or obsessive, or to point out that she had no problem in letting Neville rot for ten years so why now, what does his death change?

And she wouldn’t be able to answer any of it. Because if he said any of those things, he would be right.

But he doesn’t. He doesn’t say anything at all. He just turns away from her, puts the pan back on the heat, and goes on stirring.