Chapter 44: After

AFTER

“Ican’t get over it,” Emily says again.

They are sitting on Emily’s sofa, drinking white wine (lemonade, in Hannah’s case) and after half an hour of slightly awkward small talk, the years are beginning to peel back. It must be more than five years since Hannah has seen Emily in person, but she’s still the same—sharply impatient, cracking jokes, fiercely ambitious under the self-deprecating veneer (Oh that? I think only two people read it, and one was me), and rolling her eyes at this year’s intake of students. They’ve talked about Emily’s research, November’s work (What exactly is an influencer? Emily had asked. It sounds like a physics experiment), and Hannah’s pregnancy.

Hannah has filled Emily in on Ryan, and Hugh, and told her how much Will hates his job as an accountant. Emily doesn’t say it, but there’s a very strong current of he’s wasting an Oxford education in her replies.

Now, though, she sits back, nursing her glass, and looks from Hannah to November, shaking her head.

“Can’t get over what?” Hannah asks, laughing.

“I just—the two of you. Side by side on the couch. It’s messing with my head—like something out of The X-Files. On the one hand you’re pushing thirty and pregnant, and on the other…” She turns to November, half-apologetic. “I mean I guess you get told this a lot, but you really look like April.”

“I know,” November says. “It’s one of the reasons I don’t go by Clarke-Cliveden professionally.”

“Yup, I get that,” Emily says. She leans forward, refilling her glass. “I get my fair share of weirdos just from my small role in what happened. I can’t imagine what it would be like to be a Clarke-Cliveden. Or you, Han,” she adds apologetically. “I can’t believe the way the college washed its hands of you. Of all of us, actually, but especially you. They just let you drop out.”

“I know, that’s what Hugh said,” Hannah says, remembering. “He reckoned these days it would be all compulsory post-trauma counseling and CBT, but back then, how did he put it? Chin up, and we’ll go easy on you in the exams.”

“Ain’t that the truth,” Emily says dryly. “There’s no way I deserved a first, and I’m pretty sure Hugh wouldn’t even have passed if it wasn’t for April. I mean, I don’t want to make it sound like a silver lining, because a cloud that shit doesn’t have any kind of lining, but he spent his entire time at Pelham scraping through. I don’t honestly think he really belonged there.”

“You think?” Hannah is surprised, though perhaps she shouldn’t be. She thinks back to Hugh’s perpetually worried expression, his frequent complaints about the workload, and the way, the night of April’s death, he had confided his worries about the exams and his desperate fear of letting his parents down. At the time she had thought that was just Hugh, and medicine—an anxious high achiever taking a grueling course. Now, though, she wonders. Maybe Hugh was struggling. The thought makes her feel disloyal. “They wouldn’t have let him in if that were true,” she says now. “I mean, what’s that exam called, the one they do for medicine? The BMAT. It’s supposed to be really hard. Will told me once that Hugh aced it. He was practically guaranteed a place, his marks were so high.”

Emily opens her mouth, but before she can reply, a buzzer goes off in the kitchen.

“Ah, that’s the tagine. I’ve made chickpea tagine, is that okay? I wasn’t sure if you were veggie or anything,” she says to November, “so I played it safe.”

“I actually am vegetarian,” November says with a smile. “So that sounds delicious.”

As Emily disappears into the little kitchen to check on the food, Hannah rises and looks around the room. It’s sparsely decorated—no photos, no mementos of Emily’s travels or pictures of her family. Only books and a couple of antique maps on the wall. It’s a room that is hard to read—a little like Emily herself. Reserved. Austere. A little severe, perhaps.

“What are you hoping to find?”

The voice comes from behind her and she swings round, to see Emily standing there, hands on hips.

“How do you mean?” Hannah asks. For a minute she’s unsure whether Emily means here in Oxford, or here in her house. Was she accusing Hannah of snooping? “What am I hoping to find in Oxford? Or just generally?”

“At Pelham, I suppose I meant. But yes, generally. Are you looking for something specific?”

“Not really,” Hannah says. She exchanges a quick glance with November. They haven’t discussed how much to tell Emily. The story they are presenting to Dr. Myers is one they have agreed on—November got in touch with Hannah asking about memories of her sister, and Hannah agreed to show her around Pelham and contact a few friends. But they never spoke about Emily. On the one hand, Hannah has an instinct to hug her agenda to herself. But on the other, Will, Hugh, and Ryan know that she has been digging into the past. Does it really make sense to keep Emily in the dark?

“The truth is…” She stops, glances again at November. November says nothing; her expression is supportive, but Hannah can’t read anything more from it. She half wishes November would mouth Go on, or step in with a cover story.

“The truth is,” she begins again, “I’ve started to wonder. About April’s death. Ever since that reporter got in touch.”

“Fuck.” Emily puts her hand to her forehead. “I knew I shouldn’t have told you about him. Was it me set you wondering? Because if it was—”

“No, no, not really,” Hannah says. “I mean, you were the first person to tell me about Geraint, but if I’m honest—” She stops, trying to think how to phrase it. “When I met him, after I met him, I realized that a lot of the stuff he was saying—they were doubts I’d been having too. I just hadn’t admitted it to myself.”

“Wait, so you think he’s right?” Emily looks genuinely shocked. “Han—I told you about Geraint to warn you he was sniffing around, not sign you up to his agenda. He’s just another conspiracist. These journalists—they all want to believe their pet theory is right so they can write their magnum opus, April: MY TRUTH, and get a Netflix true-crime documentary off the back of it. The evidence was there, Neville was convicted. It’s not your fault if his defense didn’t do their job.”

“It’s not that,” Hannah says, slightly nettled. “But Geraint’s come up with genuinely new information. He’s told me stuff I had no idea about.”

“Like what?” Emily says skeptically.

“Like—” Hannah begins, and then she pauses. Like the fact that April sent Ryan a positive pregnancy test was what she had been going to say. But the words feel like a betrayal of Ryan’s trust in her. He and Emily may not be together anymore—but this is no small thing she’s about to reveal. Does Hannah really have the right to blurt all this out without consulting Ryan?

And yet Emily is her friend too. She has the right to know.

Hannah bites her lip, trying to think how to phrase it. How do you tell someone their boyfriend was cheating on them for a whole year, and may have had a solid motive for murder?

“Yes?” Emily prods. “I’m fascinated to hear this journalist’s conspiracy theories, but I’m finding it quite hard to imagine what kind of ‘evidence’ would counteract an eyewitness.”

Maybe it’s the audible air quotes she puts around evidence, and the implied dig at Hannah for taking Geraint’s concerns seriously, but something about Emily’s tone prickles at Hannah, in spite of herself. She hears Hugh’s voice in her head, reciting April’s words: She said it was Emily’s fault for being so stuck up and pleased with her own intellect.

“Well, for one thing,” Hannah says, her voice level, “I had no idea that April played a trick on you right before she was killed.”

It wasn’t what she’d been intending to say—but it is said now, and there’s no taking it back. Emily’s mouth has compressed into a thin, grim line, and she folds her arms and stares at Hannah.

“What exactly are you implying?”

“Nothing,” Hannah says uncomfortably. “I mean—look, none of us were ever suspects, you know that. We had no opportunity. But if she was doing that to you—who else might she have pissed off? It sounds like she was on a tear that last week. She was pranking everyone.”

“Everyone except you,” Emily says a little coldly. She is surveying Hannah in a way Hannah doesn’t quite like. She had forgotten how icily direct Emily could be, the way she ignores the polite woolly conventions that most people use to cushion discomfiting truths. Emily has never shied away from saying something because it was awkward or painful.

“Yes…” Hannah says, rather slowly. “Everyone except me.”

“The girl making eyes at her boyfriend,” Emily says.

“Hang on,” November says, but Hannah holds out a hand to say, No, I can handle this.

“I beg your pardon?” she says to Emily.

“I’m just saying,” Emily says with a shrug. She’s recovered herself now, and she gives a little laugh and moves down to the other end of the room, where there are olives and breadsticks laid out on the table. “If we’re chucking motives about, it was pretty obvious, those last few weeks. You could practically hear the swelling orchestral chords whenever Will looked at you. And so what, yes, I was pissed off at her. That A-level stunt she pulled was vile, and the planning that she’d put into it—I’m sorry,” she says, turning to November. “I know she was your sister, and I don’t want to speak ill of the dead. But when you think someone is your friend and then they do something like that, and you realize that the whole time you’ve been there, supporting them, having coffee with them, sharing drinks, they’ve been plotting how to fuck you up—it leaves a bad taste in your mouth, do you know what I mean?”

“It’s okay,” November says. She smiles a little sadly. “I have no illusions about April. I loved her—I still do. But I know the person she was. She could be incredibly kind, but she wasn’t always.”

“No, she wasn’t,” Emily says, rather shortly. She puts down her glass a little too hard so that the wine slops, and then disappears again into the kitchen. Hannah makes an oh my god gesture to November, putting her head in her hands and miming her own stupidity at putting Emily’s back up.

“Should I tell her?” she whispers, under cover of the clank of pots and pans. “About Dr. Myers?”

“It’s up to you,” November whispers back. “I mean… doesn’t she work here now? Would it put her in a difficult situation?”

“I don’t think so. Emily works for Balliol. It’s a different college. It’s not like we’d be making accusations about one of her colleagues.”

“One of whose colleagues?” Emily says, making Hannah jump and turn around, to where Emily is standing in the kitchen doorway. She is holding a huge casserole filled with steaming chickpeas, plump apricots, and savory spices, and it smells incredible. Hannah and November watch as she maneuvers it onto the mat in the center of the table, and then Emily says again, “You were saying? About someone’s colleagues?”

“Well, so, that’s the real reason we’re down,” Hannah says. “I’m sorry I said that about the prank April played on you. That was stupid. But I was thinking about the layout of the staircase—the fact that Neville was convicted because no one could have entered the building between him leaving, and us coming in.”

“Right…” Emily says slowly. She is dishing out tagine and couscous into three bowls, a furrow between her black brows, unsure where this is going.

“Unless… unless they were already in there.”

Emily stops. She puts a bowl down in front of November and looks hard at Hannah.

“Hannah, what are you saying? You’re saying that someone else on the staircase—”

“I’m saying it’s possible. The two guys below—Henry and Philip—they had alibis. They were both together all night in Henry’s room, and they gave evidence at the trial about hearing April walking around on the floor above from about ten forty-five and answering the door to someone. And the rooms below them, rooms one and two, room one was empty, it was used for some kind of scouts storage. And the girl in room two had her boyfriend over. I know because I knocked on the door on my way down and they came out together. But Dr. Myers… he was never questioned at the trial. He didn’t come out and see what was going on. Why wouldn’t he come out when he heard me screaming like that?”

“Yes. Why wouldn’t he…” Emily says, very slowly. “Unless he had something to hide… Fuck. I can’t believe the police didn’t rule him out, though?”

“I mean, maybe they did and we just didn’t hear about it—but on the other hand, maybe they just never suspected him. What would his motive be?”

“Well, that’s a good point,” Emily says. “What would his motive be?”

Hannah looks down at her plate. She has to tell Emily. It isn’t fair not to. She takes a deep breath.

“Well… we think April may have been pregnant.”

She’s not sure what she’s expecting from Emily. Shock maybe, or a flicker of something indicating that she already knew. Neither comes. Instead a deep, weary sadness spreads over Emily’s face.

“Fuck,” she says very quietly. “Oh my God, that’s awful. Why didn’t they bring it up at the trial?”

“According to Geraint, Neville’s defense thought it would look bad,” November says. “You know—victim-blaming. But if Myers was the father, it wouldn’t have gone down well with the college, would it?”

“Or his wife,” Emily says. “You know he’s married?”

“What?” Hannah is more puzzled than shocked. “When? Recently?”

“No, forever. He was married when we were at Pelham.”

“What?” Now Hannah really is shocked. “But—but where was his wife then? Had they separated?”

“I don’t think so. Fellowship abroad or something? But she came back the following year, after you’d left, and he moved out of Pelham and into a rather nice house in Jericho with her. I think they’re still there. She’s a professor at Wadham.”

“Shit,” November says. She looks very sober, in spite of the glass of white wine she’s holding. Hannah has a sudden, visceral longing for a glass herself, even though she hasn’t drunk since she held her own positive pregnancy test in her hand.

“And this is why you’re going to see him tomorrow?” Emily says. She looks rattled now, her cool composure shattered. “To try to—what? Trap him into something? Confront him?”

“Not confront him, no,” Hannah says impatiently. She digs her spoon into the tagine, as if the gesture can somehow restore the normality of the situation. “I’m not stupid. We’re just—we’re going to talk to him. That’s all.”

“I mean—” Emily stops. She folds her hands in her lap as if she’s trying to think how to compose something, and then starts again. “Look, if you think your evidence at the trial could have been based on a mistaken premise, then I can understand you wanting to get to the bottom of that, but—this could be dangerous.”

“It won’t be dangerous,” Hannah says, rather cross now. This is not what she wants. She doesn’t want Emily echoing Will’s concerns. “As far as Myers is concerned, November and I are just two grieving people remembering April in her last year. He doesn’t need to know anything else.”

“I really think—”

“I really think this is Hannah’s decision,” November puts in, and Hannah shoots her a grateful look. Yes. Thank you. “If Myers is guilty—which is a pretty big if—he’d be absolutely insane to try anything. We’ll be together in broad daylight. He’s hardly going to gun a pregnant former student down just for coming on a tour of Pelham.”

“Ugh,” Emily says now, as if frustrated. She runs her hand through her hair, leaving the stiff waves mussed and tousled, and then rubs under the nose-clips of her glasses before resettling them. “I wish I could come with you, but I’ve got tutorials. Will you promise me you’ll be careful? And will you report back tomorrow night?”

“Of course we’ll be careful,” Hannah says firmly. She picks up her spoon again and takes another bite of tagine. “And yes I’ll report back tomorrow night. Shall we have dinner somewhere in town?”

“Okay,” Emily says reluctantly. “I’ll make a reservation and text you.”

“Okay,” Hannah says. “Good. Now. Let’s eat dinner, I’m starving.”