Chapter 47: After

AFTER

That night, Hannah can’t sleep. Again. It’s not just the heartburn, though the Gaviscon pills aren’t working as well as the liquid does, and have left a horrible chalky residue on her teeth. It’s not just the baby, who seems to have woken up as soon as she lay down and is even now shifting and wriggling and turning like a cat trying to get comfortable on a strange bed.

It’s everything.

It’s her own fears. It’s her argument with Will. It’s Emily.

It’s Emily.

Oh God, it can’t be Emily. Can it?

A sickness is churning inside her as she thinks of the dinner they spent together tonight, Emily chatting away, glancing at Hannah with concern as she sat there silently picking at her ramen.

Had she guessed? Does she know what Hannah is thinking? Is she lying awake even now at her house across town trying to figure out what Hannah knows and what has changed since last night?

As Hannah reaches for her phone—1:47 a.m., the numbers gleam bright in the dim light of the hotel room—she is swamped by an almost overwhelming urge to call Emily, talk to her. Because it can’t be true. She can’t be thinking this about her old friend.

But the alternatives are just as bad. Could Ryan have left the bar after them and run the long way round, around the other side of the chapel? It is just possible. He could even have been going up the stairs when Neville was coming down, and ducked into a bathroom to avoid being seen.

Fuck. Fuck. Is this really all she has accomplished? She wanted to bring a killer to justice, but instead all she’s done is drag two of her oldest friends into this.

Her phone is still in her hand, and now it lights up with a notification. It’s an email and she opens it, wondering for a minute if it’s Emily, messaging her with some strange telepathy.

It’s not. It’s someone called Lynn Bishop, subject line Hello Hannah!

Hi Hannah, hope you’re well! I’m a journalist with the Evening Mail. Following John Neville’s death, we’re doing a retrospective on April’s case and would love to speak to you about how it feels to have finally laid those demons to—

She doesn’t even transfer that one to Requests. She deletes it, feeling sick to her stomach. It’s not just the timing—it’s everything. The faux chumminess. The exclamation point. And using “April”—like they know her, like she’s a mate or a girl they went to school with, when in reality they have no idea what she was really like. “April”—when John Neville gets the dignity of his full name.

As Hannah shuts down her phone and lies staring into the dark she feels a surge of anger so strong it almost scares her. How dare they—the journalists, the public, the vultures who have picked over this case for years like they care, like they have a right to the truth just as much as Hannah does. They’ve stripped April of her identity, of her uniqueness, of everything that made her real and compelling and fascinating—they’ve reduced her to a cardboard cutout of a girl and a series of Instagram pictures. The perfect victim, in fact.

And as for the rest of the email—“laid those demons to rest”? She would be laughing if she didn’t feel so bitter. She has never felt more haunted—by what happened to April, and by what she, Hannah, may have done to an innocent man. And now haunted too by what she’s doing to her old friends—to Emily and to Ryan, who have suffered enough already. They’ve lived through April’s murder—is she really going to cast suspicion on them both by speaking up? But if she doesn’t…

She rolls over, faces the wall, fighting the urge to cover her face with her hands. She has a sudden, out-of-character urge for a drink—but that is out of the question.

She turns onto her back, puts her forearm over her eyes, shutting out the light filtering in from the street, trying to count her blessings. At least Hugh is out of it. And Will, far away at his mother’s house. Thank God. Thank God he was never a suspect. Geraint’s words to November whisper treacherously in her ear: Strangulation typically points to a domestic murder, usually a crime of passion. Hannah knows what he was trying to say—what that slippery euphemism domestic really means. It means a partner. It means that when strangulation is involved, it’s usually a man killing his wife or girlfriend.

All the mud Hannah has stirred up would look very, very bad for Will, if it weren’t for his alibi. April was cheating on Will. April was pregnant, possibly by another man. If the press wanted motives, she’s serving up a plethora, right here on a gilded plate. And they all point to her own husband.

If Will had not been out of college that night, things would have been pretty grim for him when April died, and they would be looking even grimmer right now.

But thank God he was not there.

So why can’t she sleep?

She opens her eyes and turns on her phone again. 2:01. She has to get some sleep. But the baby twists and turns inside her, and suddenly she wishes, powerfully, painfully, that Will were here. Her anger has evaporated, and now she can’t bear the way they left it.

She opens up WhatsApp and finds his last message. How did it go? Can you talk?

She feels a sudden rush of guilt. Her words in the taxi come back to her. I’m glad you find April’s death so funny… I care, Will, and I can’t believe that you don’t.

Not just unfair, but bitterly, vilely so. For Will does care—she has always known that. She has watched him building up his shell of defense around himself, listened to him crying out in the night, dreaming of April. She has seen his face as the news reports come on, watched him trying to protect the wounds left by what happened, winced as every newspaper article and request for comment reopened them.

He cares, just as much as she does. He loved April, and she knows it. And yes, perhaps he hated her too, but so did Hannah sometimes—she can admit it now, though it took many years.

They were kids. Just kids.

I’m sorry, she types out, knowing that her text might wake him but unable to wait. I’m sorry I was such a bitch. The things I said—they were awful. I love you. See you tomorrow? xxx

There is a moment’s pause and she sees Typing… flash up at the top of the message. It shows… and then goes away. Then comes up again… then disappears. What is he doing? Is he typing the world’s longest message? Or is he trying to say something, and deleting it, and then typing it again, and then deleting it again?

Typing…

Typing…

Pause.

Typing…

It goes away again, this time for so long that her screen goes dark and she has to unlock her phone again. And then at last a message comes through.

I’m sorry too. I love you.

And that’s it.

Whatever he had been going to say, he has thought better of it.

What was it? You’re right, you were a complete bitch, how dare you say that stuff to me.

Or, If you weren’t pregnant with my child I would be considering our future.

Or, What’s wrong with you, Hannah?

Or maybe none of that? Maybe something completely different. I’m sorry. It was my fault too. Neville’s death has screwed me up.

She wants to text him back, demand to know what he was thinking of telling her, what he’s keeping from her.

Her mind starts running.

There’s something I’ve been hiding.

I’ve met someone.

I couldn’t work out how to tell you.

I want a fresh start.

I don’t love you anymore.

No, no, no, no, no! She has to sit up at that, her heart racing in her chest, the baby flip-flopping inside her, jolted awake by her surge of adrenaline.

No, this is completely irrational. It’s the paranoia of two-in-the-morning insomnia.

She loves Will. He loves her.

He’s not keeping any secrets from her—he probably just couldn’t work out how to phrase his apology.

Now she realizes, she forgot to take her bedtime blood pressure pill. She stands and hobbles to the bathroom, a stiffness in her ankles and hips that is increasing ever since she became pregnant—ligaments loosening for the birth, her joints creaking in sympathy.

In the bathroom she turns on the light, blinking at the brightness, and stares at herself in the mirror. Her face is puffy with tiredness, her is hair tousled and wild, and there are dark rings beneath her eyes.

She thinks of Will, of his lips against the top of her head as he was leaving for work. Of his whispered words. Please. Please.

She knows what he wanted to say. Please, Hannah, don’t do this.

She should leave this alone. She knows it. For Will’s sake. For the baby’s sake.

But for her own sake, and for April’s, she cannot. She cannot. She has to be sure. If her evidence put an innocent man in jail she has to know. She can’t live like this.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers, to the baby in her belly, to Will’s ghost, hanging over her. “I’m so sorry.”

She downs the pill with a gulp of water and looks again at her reflection in the mirror. The woman who stares back at her looks exhausted, but also grimly determined. Not the frightened girl of ten years before, terrified and full of an obscure guilt and shame at what had happened, as if it had been as much her fault as Neville’s.

Now she knows—it was not her fault. And maybe it wasn’t even Neville’s.

And she is not afraid anymore.

She has stopped running from the monsters. She has turned to face them.

She wants the truth.