“Just occasionally. He came down to an alumni carol service last year. Seems like he visits Oxford quite regularly—he said you and Will never come?”
“No, well, I mean, Edinburgh to Oxford is a long way,” Hannah says, though she knows the excuse must sound feeble, particularly since Hugh also lives in Edinburgh. “It’s a trek.”
“Yeah,” Emily says, but not like she’s fooled. You don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to figure out why Hannah might not want to return to Pelham.
“Did you go to the Gaudy last year?” Hannah asks, more to divert the conversation than because she really wants to know. Personally she can’t think of anything worse than hanging around with their former classmates, reminiscing about the “best years of their lives.” What would she say? The truth? That April haunts her like an unquiet ghost? That her short time at Pelham ended in a long nightmare she’s spent the rest of her life trying to wake up from?
“No,” Emily is saying. “Hugh did, I think, but I’m not really into the whole reunion thing. But I have been back to dine a couple of times. Not often, I find the whole alumni deal unbearably smug most of the time. But I thought since I was back in Oxford I should show willing. You know, work the old network a bit.”
“Oh…” Memory comes back to Hannah, something Will said last year. “I forgot you weren’t in London anymore. You’re a fellow at Balliol College, is that right? Is that a step up from Pelham?”
“Yes, practically come full circle.” Emily’s voice is dry. “As for a step up… I don’t know. Balliol would probably try to say so, but as far as I can see, the only difference is the wine cellar at Balliol is better.”
“What’s it like? Being back?”
“Um… weird, to be honest. At first, anyway.”
She stops. There is a long silence. Hannah is just trying to think what to say when Emily finally speaks, her voice quieter than before.
“Han, are you really okay?”
For a moment Hannah can’t reply. She closes her eyes, pushes her glasses up her forehead, and digs her fingers into the bony hollows on either side of the bridge of her nose.
“Yes,” she says at last. “And no. I mean, no, I’m not okay really. But I’m not not okay. Does that make sense?”
“Yes,” Emily says. She sounds sad. “Because I feel the same.” There is another silence between them, and for a moment Hannah has the strangest impression that no time has passed at all—that the two of them are back at Oxford, phoning room-to-room, and for a sharp, piercing moment she wishes it were true—that she could run down the corridor and tell Emily she’s going to the JCR, and does she want a coffee. Then Emily speaks again, her voice stronger this time. “Oh, hey, I meant to ask—has a reporter called Geraint Williams been trying to get in touch with you?”
The name gives Hannah an odd prickle, coming so close on the heels of the email. She nods, forgetting Emily can’t see her, and then says, “Yes. I mean—he emailed me. But I didn’t reply. I didn’t even really read it. How come?”
“I don’t know. He’s been after me to talk to him. I said no, of course, but… I don’t know. He’s a friend of Ryan’s, apparently.”
“Of Ryan’s?” It’s a shock. Hannah’s not sure why, except that Ryan, out of all of them, is the person she feels most guilty about abandoning after college.
“From his days at the Herald. He said it was Ryan who got him interested in the case. Have you seen him?”
“Geraint?”
“No, Ryan.” Emily sounds impatient.
“No. Not since his stroke.” Hannah bites her lip. “Have you?”
“Only once, when he was first released from hospital. It was so awful I kind of couldn’t bear to go back. But from what Geraint said, he’s in a better place now.”
“Oh. I mean, I’m glad,” Hannah says uncertainly. It is what she feared, and part of the reason she never plucked up the courage to visit. Not just the memories it would have stirred up, but the memories it would have erased—the image in her head of the laughing, handsome, mocking boy overwritten by a slurring wreck.
“Geraint said his memory still isn’t great, and he’s in a wheelchair—but he’s had a lot of physiotherapy and apparently his speech is pretty good now. Plus he’s able to feed himself and stuff, which must make a huge difference to someone as independent as him. I could see how much he was hating being dependent on Bella. And he’s writing again—I haven’t read any of it, but Geraint said he’s able to type, and that must be a huge release.”
“I’m glad,” Hannah says again. And then, because the question is niggling at her, “So, what did he want? Geraint, I mean. Just the usual?”
The usual. Soft focus, syrupy memories of April and her potential. Sad-faced pictures of her friends and family pondering all they’ve lost. Anecdotes about punting and May balls and bright futures. And then some spicy detail, just to add a prurient kick to the piece—a hint of scandal, maybe. A student rivalry. A sniff of drugs, or promiscuity, or some other act of disreputable behavior, to give the reader a frisson of disapproval and the safe knowledge that this would never have happened to them. That they, or their kids, or their grandchildren, are far too responsible ever to get lured in by a predator and strangled in their own room.
She hates them. The journalists. The podcasters. The thought of what it must still be doing to April’s parents, after all this time. She hates them all.
“Not the usual…” Emily says slowly. “At least… not The April I knew, by Emily Lippman bullshit, if that’s what you mean by the usual. No, he…” She stops. Hannah knows that she is trying to find a way to put something potentially upsetting into words, and she sets down her coffee cup, bracing herself for whatever Em might be about to say.
“He thinks Neville was innocent,” Emily says at last. “He thinks… he thinks they made a mistake.”
BEFORE
Four weeks into the first semester (or rather, Michaelmas term, as she had already learned to call it) and Hannah felt like she had been at Oxford forever—but also that she would never get used to this miracle.
It was so strange that it was possible to experience both states at the same time—both the wonder of waking up in a eighteenth-century room, in one of the world’s oldest centers of learning, hearing the chapel bells tolling and the high, ethereal voices of the Pelham College choirboys floating up to her windows—and yet at the same time to feel the reassuring rhythm of Meatloaf Mondays in the dining hall, Hugh’s regular grumbles about the smell of Pot Noodles stinking up his room from the Cloade kitchen, and the daily visits from the staircase scout, bossy, motherly Sue. The strangest thing of all was that she and April seemed to have become de facto best friends—in spite of the fact that back in Dodsworth Hannah was fairly sure she would have gone out of her way to avoid someone as intimidatingly beautiful and conspicuously wealthy as April.
Now, thrown together by the simple fact of sharing a room, they seemed to be taken for granted. April and Hannah. Hannah and April. Friends. Roommates. Conspirators.
“She’s such a cow,” April complained. It was Friday night, and she was sprawled across the sofa eating dry Coco Pops from a bowl, wearing a hand-painted dressing gown in Japanese silk. She was watching The Breakfast Club on her laptop and scrolling through the brand-new Instagram app on her iPhone. “I swear she waits until I’m either maximum hungover or got a massive deadline to come and hoover.”
“Who?” Hannah adjusted the hood of her gown in the mirror. It was formal hall tonight, which meant if you wanted a cooked dinner, you had to dress the part—academic gown and smart clothes, although in practice “smart” tended to mean “no ripped jeans.” She glanced over April’s shoulder to check the time on her laptop: 7:25. Emily had promised to call past on her way over to the hall, but they were cutting it fine if they wanted to find seats together.
“I told you—Sue. Were you not listening?”