Chapter 50: After
AFTER
That night Hannah sleeps well—better than she has for ages. She doesn’t wake up with the baby pressing on her bladder and then toss and turn for hours with a mixture of leg cramps and heartburn. Instead she goes to bed at ten, falls asleep, and stays that way for eight solid hours.
At 6:00 a.m., something wakes her. She’s not sure what—perhaps the central heating coming on. Their boiler is old and often makes strange banging sounds when starting up from cold. Or maybe the milkman in the mews outside, the bottles jingling as his wheels rumble over the cobbles.
Whatever it is, it jolts her fully awake, and she can’t get back to sleep.
After a quarter of an hour of lying there, trying to ignore her increasingly pressing need to pee, she gives up and swings her legs out of bed. It’s a chilly morning, still dark outside, and she can almost feel the coming of winter in the air as she pads through to the bathroom, her bare feet shrinking from the cold tiles.
After, she makes a cup of tea and brings it back to bed, scootching her cold feet down under the duvet to warm up beside Will’s body. He is still asleep, and looking at him now, at his face, unguarded and heartbreakingly vulnerable, she can’t believe that she seriously considered Hugh’s implication last night. There has got to be some misunderstanding, some innocent explanation. Cloade’s was modern, well insulated, not like the old buildings in the rest of the college. A faint, muffled sound, traveling through the concrete… what does that prove? It’s not like Hugh actually saw Will.
And yet… Hugh is Will’s best friend, and the memory of the anguish in his voice makes Hannah shiver for a moment, in spite of the warmth of the bed. Would he really have said what he did if he wasn’t sure?
She needs someone who can back up Will’s story, reassure her that he left Somerset when he said he did. But who? Will’s sister wasn’t there that weekend, as far as she knows; his mother is undergoing chemotherapy for the third time, and his father’s memory is increasingly shaky. She can hardly ring up this frail, aging couple and demand to know what time their son left their house one weekend more than a decade ago. Even if one of them remembered, she would never know for sure if they were telling the truth or protecting Will.
The coldness settles around her heart as she realizes—the only person who will ever truly be able to tell her the truth… is Will.
For a moment she fantasizes about waking him up and asking him—his voice saying firmly, This is ridiculous. I came back Sunday afternoon, you know I did.
November’s words come back to her, filled with concern: Please, don’t do anything about this until you’ve spoken to the police.
But that was what Hugh was trying to tell her. He was trying to warn her that once she spoke to the police, she would be opening a can of worms she’d be unable to shut.
Fuck. Fuck.
She puts the cup down on the bedside table, harder than she meant, so that the tea slops over and the wood makes a loud thunk.
And beside her, Will stirs.
“What time is it?”
His voice is sleepy, loving, and she feels her muscles instantly uncoil, as if his very presence is all she needed to chase away the doubts. Her fears, so real in the silence of a few minutes ago, disappear, like she’s a child turning on the light after a nightmare.
“Six thirty,” she whispers, and he groans and slides his arm over what used to be her waist, cradling her bump.
“Six thirty? You’re shitting me. On a weekend? Couldn’t you sleep?”
“It’s good practice,” she says, laughing. “For when the baby comes.”
She doesn’t want to say, I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t sleep because I was spiraling into a stupid, dark fantasy that you were April’s killer. Now, with Will’s arm around her, the words seem absurd.
“Well, let’s practice something else,” he murmurs, his lips warm and soft against the ticklish skin of her side. And Hannah slides down beneath the duvet and somehow the heat, and the comfort, and the reassuring feel of Will’s skin against hers succeed in driving out the demons… for a while, at least.
AFTERWARDS, WILL MAKES COFFEE FORthem both, and Hannah yawns and stretches, working out the kinks the long train journey yesterday left in her spine and hips.
“What do you fancy for breakfast?” Will calls through from the other room.
“What have we got?”
She hears the sound of the fridge opening.
“Um… nothing, basically.”
“I could murder a bacon sandwich,” Hannah says. “I had an amazing one at the hotel in Oxford, and ever since then I’ve had this craving for another.”
Will comes into the bedroom, holding her coffee.
“I’ll go to the shop.”
“You don’t have to do that,” Hannah says, taking the coffee. “I was only thinking aloud.”
“Now you’ve said it”—he throws himself down beside her, kisses her cheek—“you’ve got me craving one too. I can’t rest now.”
“It’s too early.” Hannah looks at her phone on the bedside table. “It’s only… quarter past seven. The Sainsbury’s mini-market doesn’t open until eight on Sunday.”
“I’ll go for a run,” Will says. “Get the bacon on my way back. Can you last that long?”
She smiles.
“Yes, I can last that long. See you in an hour or so.”
AFTER WILL IS GONE, HANNAHopens up her book, but she can’t settle. As soon as he left, her doubts began to creep back, like shadows wavering at the edge of a candle’s glow, rushing in when the lamp is taken away. Reading doesn’t help, her mind is too full, and in the end she gives up and heaves herself out of bed.
As she opens the wardrobe to grab her clothes, she catches sight of herself in the full-length mirror inside. Without her glasses everything has a fuzzy, softened quality, but even so her reflection arrests her and she stands for a moment, side on, just looking at the alien shape of her belly, at the reddish stretch marks creeping around from her hips. The air is chill, in spite of the radiator, and the baby quivers inside her. It’s impossible for her child to be cold, but still, Hannah shivers in sympathy and pulls on a T-shirt and sweatpants.
In the kitchen she makes herself another coffee—decaf this time—and sits by the window, looking down at the street, chewing her thumbnail. It’s still almost dark, and she imagines Will running alongside the road past the park, the pavement wet and slick with overnight rain, the reflective stripes on his running jacket shining back at the cars as they pass.
At the thought of him, running through the morning darkness to get the bacon that she was craving, her heart hurts. How can she be having these doubts? This is Will—who wrote to her, month after month, year after year, even when she was too sad and broken to reply. Will, who came to find her in Edinburgh, and in doing so turned the city from a place of exile into a home. Will, who she’s argued with over flat-pack furniture, and laughed with over bad films, and shared a thousand candlelit dinners with—from a single Pot Noodle in their very first flat to Michelin-starred restaurants on their honeymoon. This is Will—whose child she is carrying.
And yet, in the silence of the flat, she cannot stop thinking of Hugh’s words.
This is worse than any of her sleepless nights over Neville, because whichever way this falls out, she is a terrible person. If Will has been hiding something from her for all these years, she is married to a liar and maybe a murderer. But if he’s innocent, what kind of wife does that make her? One willing to believe the man she loves might be a killer just because of a few sounds in the night?
She has to find out one way or another. But the thought of confronting Will on such a tiny shred of proof makes her feel sick. Were you in Pelham College the night April died? She just can’t imagine saying the words—destroying her marriage on the basis of something Hugh may or may not have even heard.
Then it comes to her. Ryan.
Ryan’s room was on the other side of Will’s. There is a strong chance he would have seen or heard Will arriving. And if Ryan remembers Will turning up at 4 p.m. that Sunday with his rucksack on and his rail card in his pocket, well, that is all the proof she needs that Hugh was mistaken.
Hannah glances at the clock on her phone. 7:35. Early, but not ridiculously so, not for someone with two small kids.
She opens up WhatsApp, sends Ryan a message. Are you awake? Can you talk? I need to ask you something.
There’s a pause. The minutes tick by. Hannah goes into the bedroom to get dressed, but between every garment she finds herself checking to see if the two ticks have gone blue, showing Ryan’s read her message. Ten minutes later she is fully dressed, but they still remain stubbornly gray.
Any time is goodshe adds, not because it’s true, but just to make his phone ping again in the hopes that it will attract his attention. And this time it works. After a couple of seconds the checkmarks go blue, and Typing… appears at the top of the screen.
Sure. Is now good? We’re heading out to the park in a bit.
Hannah’s pulse quickens.
Now is great, she texts back. She glances at the clock: 7:51. Will can’t be back before 8:10 at the absolute earliest, even if he’s queuing at the door at 8:00. Shall I call you?
Hang on, Ryan texts back. Give me two secs, I’ll phone you.
Hannah goes back into the kitchen and waits. Her heart is thumping. Her fingers are numb and cold. Her mouth tastes of metal.
She paces up and down, staring at the screen.
And then at 7:56 her phone rings with a jangle that makes her jump and drop it, clattering to the tiles with a crack that sounds deeply ominous. Swearing, she crouches past her bump and picks it up. There’s a long silvery fissure across the screen with a shadow of something dark that seems to be seeping out across the LCD display, but it still works when she presses to accept the call.
“Ryan!” Her voice is breathless.
“Ey up, Hannah Jones.” She can hear cartoons in the background, Bella’s voice yelling at the girls to finish up their Weetabix. “How’s things, pet?”
“Good.” She wants to talk, procrastinate, put this off, but she can’t afford to. Will could be home very soon. She needs to spit this out. They can chat afterwards—if—
But she can’t think about that. Ryan has to give her the answer she’s hoping for. He has to.
“Listen, Ryan, I—I have a weird question.”
“Is it about how wheelchair sex works?”
“What?” She laughs at that, not meaning to, but so nervous that it comes out like a burst of tremulous hysteria.
“Ryan!” she hears Bella shouting from across the room. “I daresay you think you’re very funny, but the girls can hear you, you know, and you won’t think it’s so funny when they’re trotting that question out at nursery.”
“Sorry,” Ryan says, and she can hear the suppressed laughter, the old piss-taking, provoking Ryan in his voice. “Ignore me. Carry on. What was it you wanted to ask?”
“It’s about—” She swallows. She feels suddenly sick. Ryan’s friendly banter has somehow made this even harder. How can she explain what this means? “It’s about that night. When April—when April died.”
Ryan says nothing, but she senses rather than hears his nod down the phone.
“Someone said… someone told me…”
She hears April’s voice in her head, clear as if she were standing next to Hannah, fixing her with that icy blue gaze.
Spit. It. Out.
“Someone told me that Will was in college that night,” she says in a rush. “That he wasn’t in Somerset. Did you hear him come in?”
“What?” Ryan sounds stunned; whatever he was expecting, it plainly wasn’t this. “But… but what difference does it make? April was alive when Neville went up the stairs, and dead when she came down them. There’s no one else could have done it. You were the one who testified to that.”
“Ryan—” She’s trying to keep her voice calm, but there’s an edge of desperation that she knows Ryan must be able to hear. “Look, I don’t have time to go into it right now, but all I want to know is, did you see Will come home that night? Did you hear anyone in his room? His alibi for April’s death hinges on him not being in Oxford that night. Can you back that up, or can’t you?”
“I—” Ryan’s voice sounds uncertain. “I… I don’t know. I’d need to think. I didn’t see him come in… I guess the first time I saw him was… coming out of the shower? Around lunchtime?”
“Lunchtime on Sunday?” She tries to think. How long would it take to get from rural Somerset to Oxford, on a Sunday? Lunchtime is pushing it… but just about possible she guesses. “And before that? Did you hear anyone? In his room?”
“The police banged on his door,” Ryan says. He sounds bewildered now. “I had to tell them he was away for the weekend.”
“But they didn’t go in, right? They didn’t actually check his room was empty?”
“No, they didn’t go in.”
“And did you hear anything? Anything after you’d gone to bed?”
“I don’t know!” Ryan says. He sounds utterly bewildered, his usual joking manner quite gone. “Hannah, what’s this all about?”
She closes her eyes. A wave of such faintness and nausea is sweeping over her that she has to hold on to the windowsill.
“I’ll call you back,” she says. “I—I’m sorry, Ryan. I have to go.”
She hangs up. She turns around.
Will is standing in the doorway.