Why, why did she say that about the email? Now she will have to read it—and reply. Why?
Because it was the only way to get rid of him, she realizes. Or it felt like the only way. And because part of her, at heart, is still the nice polite girl from Dodsworth who wants people to like her, and who doesn’t want to disappoint anyone, or cross anyone, or let anyone down.
For a brief flashing moment she tries to imagine how April would have handled the young man.
Fuck you, probably, in her most bored, drawling tone. And then laughed after he’d gone, and poked fun at his prematurely balding hair.
But then she pushes the thought out of her mind. She can’t think about April. Not now. Least of all now.
She is heaving herself to her feet when her phone starts vibrating. Her first thought is What now? And her second is an instinct to silence it, send it to answerphone. She can’t be dealing with her mother—not now. But when she looks at the screen, it’s not Jill. It’s not even Will.
It’s the hospital.
She presses answer.
“Hello?”
“Oh, yes, hello.” The woman on the other end sounds brisk and a little bit pissed off. “Is that Hannah de Chast—” She stumbles over the surname, as people always do. “De Chasti-gan?”
“Yes.” Hannah doesn’t bother to correct the pronunciation. “Is everything okay?”
“Well, yes and no, it’s Ellie here from the midwifery team. We had you down for an appointment at two. Had you forgotten?”
For the second time that day, the blood drains from Hannah’s face and then comes rushing back.
“I’m so sorry.” She stumbles over the words, even while she is heading to the staff room, picking her way through the teetering displays with all the haste she can safely muster. “I totally forgot—something happened—family stuff—” Ugh, no, that word again—but it’s too late to take it back. “I’m so sorry, am I too late?”
“Well, you’re lucky, my next two ladies have arrived early so I can put you back to two twenty, if you can get here in time? Where are you?”
“Just around the corner. I am so sorry.” Hannah has reached the staff room. She grabs her coat off the back of the door, shrugging her arms into it as she speaks. “I’ll be there in five minutes, I promise.”
As she hangs up she sees Robyn staring at her over the kettle.
“Everything all right?”
“Yes. No. I mean, I forgot my midwife appointment. I’m so sorry, can you hold the fort?”
“Sure!” Robyn says cheerfully. “But calm down. You’ll do yourself a mischief!”
“You’re a star,” Hannah says breathlessly, and then she snatches up her bag and runs from the shop.
BEFORE
“So, drink then?” Hannah said, coming into the living room, where April was scrolling through her phone. Hannah had finished putting away the last of her belongings, and the set finally looked like home again.
“Sure,” April said. She stretched, catlike, spreading out all her toes and fingers. “Pelham bar? I don’t think I can be arsed to go into town.”
“Sure. But can we go via Cloade’s? I met Ryan on the way over and he said to knock on if we were going for a drink.” She said the last part with a slight flush, knowing that she was giving herself an alibi for calling past Cloade’s that had nothing to do with Will, but knowing too that of course April would collect Will while they were over there, so it would come to the same thing. By picking up Ryan, she was ensuring Will’s company.
“No probs,” April said. She grabbed her phone, keys, and purse, glanced at herself in the mirror, and followed Hannah down the staircase and across the quad to Cloade’s.
As they crossed the courtyard in front of the big, blocky modern building, Hannah found herself glancing automatically up at Will’s window, as she always did—second from the right, sandwiched between Hugh’s and Ryan’s. It was dark, but next door Ryan’s was bright, and the window was open, in spite of the cold air.
“Bet they’re smoking,” April said with a slightly wicked look that made Hannah’s stomach shift a little uneasily. She had come to know that look of April’s, and it usually foretold some kind of mischief. The only question was how far she would go.
When they reached Ryan’s room Hannah raised her hand to knock, but April put her finger to her lips. Her eyes were full of laughter.
“Can you smell it?” she whispered. Hannah nodded. The smell of weed was filtering under the door, in spite of the dense municipal carpet, along with the sound of Bellowhead’s “New York Girls.”
“Don’t say anything,” April whispered, and then she raised her hand and knocked, a sharp peremptory rat-a-tat, quite unlike her usual single thump.
“Er, who is it?” Ryan’s voice came from inside. April winked at Hannah and then, to Hannah’s enormous surprise, she spoke, but in a voice quite unlike her own—plummy and rather prim.
“Mr. Coates, this is Professor Armitage. We have received a complaint that the scent of the marijuana weed known as skunk has been detected emanating from your room. Could you please open the door?”
“Shit,” Hannah heard, very muffled from within, and the sound of people scrambling to their feet. The music was abruptly silenced. Then, still Ryan, but more loudly, “Um, just a minute, Professor—I’m—I’m just on the bog. Hang on a sec.”
More flurried noises came from behind the door—the sound of the bathroom door opening and then a toilet flushing.
“Open the window,” she heard, whispered urgently from within, and then, in reply to some remark she couldn’t hear, “Well open it wider, you dickhead.”
April meanwhile was creasing up with silent laughter. She recovered herself enough to say, “Mr. Coates, Mr. Coates, I must ask you to kindly open this door immediately!” though there was a suspicious wobble in her voice at the last word as the toilet flushed again.
“One sec!” came Ryan’s voice, this time with a note of desperation, and then the door opened and Ryan, face red and hair tousled, his clothes giving off a strong smell of weed, was standing in the doorway. For a second he just looked at them both, puzzled, trying to make sense of the situation, but as April burst into an irrepressible guffaw, realization dawned, and his whole face flushed purple with barely suppressed rage.
“You little fucking bitch,” he said, grabbing April’s arm and dragging her inside the room. April was still howling with laughter, but she was also trying to pull herself out of Ryan’s grip.
“Get off me, you bastard! That hurts!”
“It fucking should hurt.” He shoved her, and she sprawled backwards into an armchair, looking up at him with a mixture of annoyance and defiance, rubbing her arm. “I just flushed a perfectly good eighth down the bog because of you, you stupid little cow!”
“Hey, hey, Ryan, calm down,” Will said. He came across to stand between Ryan and April. He looked torn between relief and irritation. “Come on, it was just a joke. April didn’t know we’d flush it.”
“Yeah, I had no idea you’d be that stupid,” April retorted. “Why didn’t you just drop it out the window like a normal person?”
“Because I thought I was about to get sent fucking down,” Ryan said through gritted teeth. He was standing over April as though he would have liked to hit her, and Hannah wasn’t certain whether he would have done so, if it hadn’t been for Will. “I daresay this is all very funny to posh birds like you, in’t it? But those of us without a rich daddy to pay people off have to live with the consequences of our actions. If I get expelled, that’s it. Kaput. I am royally fucked. And you know what, I understand why you wouldn’t get that—but you.” He rounded on Hannah. “I didn’t think you were such a silly little bitch. Maybe living with her, it’s rubbed off.”