Chapter 5: Before

BEFORE

“Oh. My. God.” April’s voice was theatrically drawling, more than a touch of Janice from Friends, Hannah thought as she followed her down the narrow passage between the long dining tables than ran the length of the hall. It was the first time Hannah had set foot in the Great Hall as an actual Pelham student, and she felt a prickle of wonder as she looked around her at the ancient beams soaring high overhead, and the dark oak-paneled walls, dotted with oil paintings of former Masters. She might have felt overwhelmed by it all, but it was hard to feel intimidated with April beside her, bitching about the limited menu and poor acoustics. Now, April set down her tray on one of the long, crowded refectory tables and put her hands on her hips. “Will de Chastaigne, as I live and breathe.”

One of the students sitting at the long oak bench turned, his dark hair falling in his eyes, and Hannah found her heart missing a beat. The glass of water on her dinner tray slid an inch to the left and she hastily righted it.

“April!” He stood up, swinging one long leg easily over the bench, and the two embraced in a sort of part hug, part continental kiss that was so deeply un-Dodsworth that Hannah felt more than ever as if she had landed on another planet. “Good to see you! I had no idea you were coming here.”

“Well, that’s Liv for you. Doesn’t tell people anything! How is she? I haven’t seen her since exams.”

“Oh…” The boy’s tanned face suddenly flushed, a streak of color high on his cheekbones. “We, well, we broke up. My fault, if I’m being honest. Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize,” April purred. She ran a hand down the boy’s arm, squeezing his biceps in a way that was just the right side of teasing. “Another eligible man on the scene is nothing to be sorry about.”

Behind her, Hannah shifted. The tray she was holding was becoming uncomfortably heavy and her arms were starting to ache. April must have heard the movement because she turned and gave a slightly theatrical double take, seeming to remember Hannah’s presence for the first time since she’d spoken to Will.

“God, where are my manners? Will, this is Hannah Jones, my roommate. She’s studying Eng Lit. We’ve got a suite, don’tcha know, so I’ve got a feeling we’ll be hosting aaaall the parties this term. Hannah, this is Will de Chastaigne. I went to school with his ex. Our boarding schools were… what would you call it?” She turned back to Will. “Twinned?”

“Something like that.” A smile crinkled the tanned skin at the side of Will’s mouth. Hannah found herself staring up at him. He had clear brown eyes, dark brows, and his nose had clearly been broken, maybe more than once. Hannah’s mouth felt dry and she swallowed, trying to think what to say, but Will filled in the silence for her. “I went to Carne—all boys. So they paired us up for socials with April’s school to try to ensure we didn’t get to uni without having met a real live female.”

“No danger of that with you, darling,” April said. She took a swig of the chocolate milk on her tray, and then slid onto the bench beside Will without bothering to ask if she could. Will sat back down beside her.

“I was actually saving that seat, you know,” he said to April, but conversationally, not as if he expected her to move. Hannah, still standing, hesitated. There was a space opposite—but only one. Maybe Will wanted it for his missing friend? She looked at April, seeking a cue, but April was tapping away on her phone.

Hannah bit her lip, half turned away, and then Will spoke.

“Hey, don’t go, we’ll make room.”

Her heart flipped again. She smiled, trying not to look too pathetically grateful, as Will put his bag on the floor and nudged his neighbor up a few inches, making an extra space.

“Look, sit there.” He indicated the space opposite. “Hugh can squeeze in next to me and April.”

“Did you say… Hugh?” April’s head came up from her phone at that. There was an odd expression on her face, surprise, even delight, but mixed with a kind of mischievousness that Hannah couldn’t totally figure out. “Not… Hugh Bland?”

“The very same. Didn’t you know he was applying here?”

“I knew he was trying for Oxford, but I had no idea he’d picked Pelham,” April said. She put her phone down, and then a smile curved her lips as a tall, pale boy with heavy Stephen Hawking–style glasses came up to the table. “Well, well, well… speak of the devil.”

“April!” the boy said, and then, all at once, he stumbled, tripping over his own feet so that his tray lurched out of his hands, the pasta crashing to the floor.

There was a moment’s dead silence, every head in the place turned, and then one of the other boys at the table spoke up.

“Ey up, show’s over, everyone. Move along now.”

Hugh, though clearly mortified, laughed and gave a little self-conscious bow. His face was scarlet as he picked up his can of Coke and scooped up stray tortellini.

“Sorry. Such an ass.” His voice was muffled, but plainly what Hannah’s classmates would have called classic posh boy. “So sorry. Thank God it landed right way up. Mostly.”

He slid into the seat beside Will with the ruined plate of pasta, his cheeks still flaming, and picked up a fork.

“Don’t eat that, you idiot,” April said a little scornfully. She stood, waving her arm at the counter. “Hey, could we get some help over here? And another plate of the tortellini?”

They all watched in silence as a member of the catering staff came across with a spare plate and a cloth to wipe up the spilled sauce.

“I’m so sorry,” Hugh said again, this time to the caterer, who just nodded and walked off. Hugh looked miserable, and Hannah suddenly felt unbearably sorry for him.

“Do you all know each other?” she said to April and Will, more in an attempt to change the subject than because she was in doubt. April nodded, smiling, but it was Will who answered.

“Hugh and I go way back—we were at prep school together, and there’s nothing that binds friends like a shit prep school, right, Hugh?”

“Right,” Hugh said. The flush was fading from his cheeks, and he had his head down, bent over his food as if he was trying to avoid everyone’s gaze. “Hugh Bland,” he said to Hannah. “Medicine.”

“Hugh and I are very good friends,” April said with a kind of purr. She reached across and pinched Hugh’s cheek, and the scarlet tide rose in his face again, this time reaching to his ears. There was a brittle silence.

“And what about you?” April said, with the air of breaking an awkward moment. She was speaking to the boy sitting next to Hannah, the one who had told everyone the show was over. He was a broad, stocky kid with Mediterranean coloring, wearing a Sheffield Wednesday football shirt.

“This is Ryan Coates,” Will said. “He’s doing Economics, same as me.”

“A’right,” Ryan said, grinning. His accent was straight-up Sheffield, and after so many posh southern voices, it sounded almost aggressively northern. Hannah felt a sudden shock of kinship—even though Dodsworth was about as far south as it was possible to get. But here was someone normal like her—someone not from the monied, private-school background that Will and April seemed to take for granted.

“We’re all on the same floor in Cloade’s,” Will said.

Cloade’s, Hannah knew from the prospectus, was the big modern wing at the back of the New Quad where most of the first-years had ended up. It was square and made of brutalist concrete, but the rooms were en suite and the heating actually worked. Still, Hannah couldn’t help feeling secretly grateful that she and April had been allocated a picturesque old-style room. After all, wasn’t this what she had come to Oxford for? She had wanted to walk in the footsteps of four hundred years of scholars—not on the carpet squares of the last few decades.

“Heard him playing the Stone Roses through the wall.” Ryan pointed his fork at Will. “Went over to introduce meself and it turned out we’re ont same course. And he introduced me to this bloke.” He nodded at Hugh.

“Will and I were at school together,” Hugh said, and then flushed again. “Oh wait, duh, Will already told you that. Sorry. Such a thicko.”

“Don’t listen to him,” Will said with an affectionate dig in his friend’s ribs. “Hugh was the brainiest chap in our year.”

Ryan spoke around a tortellini, his expression rather droll.

“Well, in’t that the coincidence. I was the brainiest chap in my year. Looks like you and me have summat in common.”

“We were all the brainiest in our year,” said the girl next to Ryan, speaking for the first time. Her voice was deep, and rather brusque and impatient. “Isn’t that the point? Isn’t that why we’re here?”

“And who’re you?” Ryan said, looking her up and down. She had long dark hair, a serious, slightly equine face, black rectangular glasses, and she looked Ryan straight back in the eye with none of the diffidence Hannah would have felt at being appraised so baldly.

“Emily Lippman.” The girl put a forkful of pasta in her mouth, chewed deliberately, and then swallowed. “Mathematics. You can call me Emily Lippman.”

“I like you, Emily Lippman,” Ryan said with a broad grin, and Emily raised a single eyebrow.

“To which I’m supposed to say?”

“Whatever you like,” Ryan said. “Nothing if you want.” He was still grinning. Emily rolled her eyes.

“Anyway,” April said lazily, “it’s not true.”

“What’s not true?” Hugh asked.

“About being the cleverest in our year. I wasn’t.”

“How did you get in here, then?” Emily said. The remark should have sounded rude, but somehow, coming from her, it didn’t. Just preternaturally direct.

“My natural charm, I suppose,” April said, and she smiled, the deep, soft dimples showing in her golden cheeks. “Or maybe my dad’s money.”

There was a long silence, as if no one quite knew how to take this. Then Ryan gave a short, barking laugh as if April had told a joke.

“Well, good for you,” Emily said. “On both counts.” She shoved the last forkful of pasta into her mouth and stood up, brushing herself down. “Now. What the fuck does a woman have to do to get a drink around here?”

“We could go to that common room place,” Ryan said. He stood too. Hannah saw that he was much taller than she had realized. “What did they call it, the JCB?”

“JCR,” April said. Her lips curled in a smile that Hannah was beginning to recognize as quintessentially April—beguiling, and at the same time, just a little bit wicked. “Junior Common Room if you read the handbook, which you clearly didn’t. And there’s also a bar next to the Great Hall. But sod that. We’re hardly commoners. And who needs a bar when you’ve got a totally majestic suite and a fridge full of champagne?”

She pushed her still-full plate of tortellini away, looked around the group of faces, and then pulled a room key out of her pocket, dangling it from one finger as she raised a fine dark eyebrow.

“Am I right?”