“Well, I can’t address these—these allegations, without hearing Mr. Neville’s account of what happened,” Dr. Myers said. His expression was exasperated now, the sympathy receding further, and he paced to the window, turning his back on them both, before returning to the desk to perch on the corner, one thigh hooked over the edge, smiling with what was clearly an effort at being conspicuously understanding.
“Look, Hannah, the bottom line is, I can take this further if you would like me to. But not without talking to Mr. Neville to hear his version of events. Which is it to be?”
Hannah looked at Emily. She had her arms folded across her chest, plainly only just containing her fury, but didn’t speak, only raised her shoulders in a tight this is your decision kind of way.
Shit.
Dr. Myers consulted his watch. He did not make a pretense of hiding it.
“Can I think about it?” Hannah asked. Her voice sounded small and uncertain in her own ears. It did not sound like the voice of someone making a credible accusation.
“Certainly.” Dr. Myers stood up again, all warmth and bonhomie now. “Take your time.” He moved to the door, plainly signaling that the interview was over. “Now, if you’ll forgive me, I have to prepare for my ten o’clock. I’ll look forward to seeing you for our final tutorial next week, Hannah? Pleasure to make your acquaintance, Ms. Lippman.”
But as they filed out into the corridor Hannah knew, with a depressing certainty, that one thing was sure. She would not be back to Dr. Myers’s tutorial next week. In fact, she wasn’t sure if she could ever face him again.
AFTER
On the train back to Edinburgh she sits and stares out the window, replaying Ryan’s words over and over. Is this a joke?
A pregnancy test. A positive pregnancy test.
It’s nothing she didn’t know from her conversation with Geraint, but somehow, hearing it from Ryan’s mouth…
Was it real?
She could have drawn it on with a… with a biro for all I knew.
Fuck. Fuck. She rubs her face. Part of her wants to scrub away the memory of the conversation and all the poisonous suspicions it’s stirred up, but she knows she can’t. Not just because she can’t think of anything else, but because even if she were given the choice of magically erasing Ryan’s words from her memory, she wouldn’t do it. She can’t let this go. Because whether or not it’s true, whether or not even April, inveterate practical joker, would have been cruel enough to play this unforgivably harrowing hoax on Ryan, it is a missing piece of the puzzle which has finally turned up, out of the blue, throwing the whole existing pattern out of alignment.
A positive pregnancy test—real or not—is exactly what was missing from the case against Neville. It is a motive. And not just for Ryan. It’s a motive for Will, and for anyone else who was sleeping with April.
Hannah remembers again the noises coming from behind that closed bedroom door, the morning after the premiere of April’s play. And, more than ever, she wishes that she had stopped, pulled back that door, and put a face to whoever was in there.
Because it wasn’t Ryan, that much she is sure of, or at least as sure as she can be without asking him outright. Not just because of the way he reacted on the first night of the play, pulling away from April as if reluctant to touch her, but because of what he said in their conversation just now. She texted me the morning after that first night. If April were in bed with Ryan, why would she text him with the news just an hour or so later? It wouldn’t be plausible—to go from carefree noisy sex to a pregnancy test in a single morning. Ryan wouldn’t have been taken in, he would have wondered why she hadn’t raised her worries just an hour or so earlier.
But if it wasn’t Ryan, then who?
Will is the next most obvious candidate. But Hannah isn’t sure about him either. There was something wrong, that night at the play. Some kind of reserve or antagonism between him and April that didn’t seem to mesh with the loud, performative sounds coming through the wall the following morning. And, though it makes her flush to think of it, Hannah knows what Will sounded like—sounds like—during sex, both now and then. She watches the countryside rippling hynotically past the window, thinking about her husband—thinking about the way he holds himself over her, bracing his weight on his forearms, staring into her eyes, silent, concentrated, attentive. He doesn’t whimper and grunt and thrash about like someone in a blue movie.
Why. Why didn’t she stay behind that morning? Why didn’t she curl up and wait in the living room armchair to see who exactly came out of April’s bedroom?
Why didn’t she confide in April what had happened?
Because she was traumatized, and in denial. Because she was recovering from—and now ten years on, she can say the words, without feeling they are too strong—an assault. And because she didn’t know. She had no idea how important that question would become. She didn’t know that many years later, so much would end up hanging on it. Her happiness. Her future. Her marriage.
It is at that moment that the train goes into a tunnel and momentarily loses power. The lights in the carriage go out—just for a second—and it’s then that Hannah feels it. Something just below her belly. A flutter, like a bubble popping, or an elastic band snapping, or something small and slippery and feathered rippling inside her.
She goes utterly still. She doesn’t even breathe.
And then the train comes out of the tunnel and the carriage is flooded with light again and she is left, sitting perfectly still, her hand over her stomach, iridescent with happiness. And for the first time since John Neville died, she isn’t thinking about April, or the past, or the fact that she may have condemned an innocent man to die in prison.
She is thinking about her baby, and the new life inside her. And her happiness is so intense that it hurts.
BEFORE
“Well fuck you.”
“Well fuck you.”
The voices came clear through the door of April’s room, making Hannah wince, wondering if they knew she was sitting just on the other side of the wall, working on her final essay of the term.
She thought about calling out, Hey, some of us are trying to study as a jokey way of alerting them to her presence, but before she could do so the door to April’s bedroom opened and Will walked out, slamming it bad-temperedly behind him.
“Oh.” He had the grace to blush when he saw her sitting there. “Sorry, I didn’t realize—”
“No, gosh, I mean—it’s fine,” Hannah said. She put down The Faerie Queene and stood awkwardly, twisting her fingers together. “You weren’t disturbing me.” The lie makes her cheeks color. “I mean, I could—should—have moved. Are you—”
Are you okay was what she wanted to ask, but she wasn’t sure if it sounded patronizing, or disloyal. She was supposed to be April’s friend—April, who was probably listening from the other side of the doorway right now. She couldn’t be seen to be taking Will’s side.
But Will was frowning, and now he came across the room to stand closer, looking at her with an unsettling intensity.
“Hannah, what happened to your face?”
Hannah felt a sinking feeling inside her. Was this how it was going to be for the next few days? Having to tell the story over and over?
“Does it show?” She knew she was evading the question, but she still hadn’t made up her mind what to do about Neville. Could she really face taking it further?
Will nodded.
“I mean, it doesn’t look terrible, but it does look like you had an argument with a door and lost.”
“That’s pretty much it,” Hannah said with a shaky laugh. It was another lie—or as near to one as made no odds—but she couldn’t bear to tell Will the truth. His reaction would be worse than Emily’s—she would probably get frog-marched down to see the Master, and have to face that exquisitely polite skepticism all over again.
“Are you coming to April’s closing night on Saturday?” she asked at last, more as a way of changing the subject than because she really wanted to know.
Will’s mouth twisted, and his eyes met hers.