As they walk around the edge of the quad, she feels a strange unreality taking over. They are walking—the three of them—to the site of Hannah’s worst ever experience, but as they crunch along the gravel it’s happier memories that crowd her mind. She remembers herself and Emily, picnicking on the banks of the Cherwell. She recognizes the bench where Ryan carved his name one summer night, and the archway to staircase 3 that some enterprising student taped up for a Rag Week prank. The sun is lowering in the sky, lights are coming on all around the quad. The figures beside her are dim in the gathering dusk. She could have slipped back in time—walking with April and Hugh, back to the set one winter’s night.
They follow Dr. Myers under the arch to staircase 7, and Hannah feels the stone beneath her feet, familiar even after ten years. There is the same momentary step into darkness before the lights flicker on up the staircase, the same slight delay. There is the same echo as they move upward. Dr. Myers has stopped his running commentary, as if he is not quite sure what to say. They pass rooms 1 and 2, where the slips of paper bearing the names of students have been replaced by ones reading STORES and ADMISSIONS 1, and then move up, landing by landing. Some of the doors stand open and inside Hannah can see not beds and students, but desks and administrators—all the myriad back-office functions of a busy college, hard at work.
On the top floor the door to the set is closed, and Dr. Myers pauses on the landing and gives a little rat-a-tat-tat.
“Come in,” calls a female voice with a slight Yorkshire accent, and Dr. Myers pushes on the door and enters, holding it with his hand so that Hannah and November can see past him. Inside there are two empty desks, a bunch of filing cabinets and box files, and a woman standing by the window putting on her coat.
“Oh, hello, Horatio. Can I help? I was just off.”
“Hello, Dawn. Dawn, this a former student of mine, Hannah.” He waves a hand at Hannah, and the woman nods politely, seemingly without recognition. “I was giving her a tour and she expressed a desire to see her old room. Are we disturbing you?”
“Not at all, as I say, I was just off. Would you lock up after me?”
“Of course.” Dr. Myers takes the keys she holds out and gives a little bow. “I will leave them at the lodge?”
“Ta, that’d be great. Sorry I can’t stay, got to pick up the kids from the minders. See you Monday! Nice to meet you ladies.”
“Have a good weekend, Dawn.”
Hannah stands back to let the woman leave, and then, after she’s gone, she steps forwards into the room, feeling the past close around her like a fist.
“You’ll find it’s rather different, I’m afraid,” Dr. Myers is saying, but his voice comes as if from a long way off, hardly breaking into her thoughts. This is where she, April, and the others played strip poker, the very first night they met. That mark on the windowsill was where April burned a hole in the oak with a lit joint. This—her hand touches the ancient wood of the doorway. This was her bedroom.
“Dr. Myers?” Her voice sounds odd in her own ears, too harsh and abrupt, but she can’t think of how else to ask. “Dr. Myers, could you—could you give us a moment alone?”
“Well I—” Dr. Myers flashes a look at the unattended laptops and files, and then, almost unwillingly, at the place on the floor where April’s body was found. There is a short silence as they all stare at the rug in front of the fire. Hannah wonders what he is thinking. Is he remembering what he did? Somehow here, in his presence, it’s harder to believe than ever. Surely there should be a sense of evil coming from a man who killed a young girl in cold blood? A sense of guilt?
But Hannah feels nothing. Nothing but the same immense sadness they all share.
Then, as if making up his mind, he nods.
“Yes. I’m sure I can do that. Take all the time you need.”
He backs out of the door, there is a moment’s silence as it closes behind him, and then Hannah hears November let out a trembling breath.
“So this is it.”
“This is it.”
“I—I wasn’t expecting to feel so—so, I don’t know—affected. I thought you might be shaken going back but I thought, I thought for me it would be just another room. But it—it’s not.”
“No,” Hannah says. “No, it’s not.”
And it isn’t. Although it looks like any back office, this is, after all, where April lived and laughed, studied and slept. And it’s where she died.
“Which was her room?”
“That one,” Hannah says, pointing to the door to the left of the window. She moves across to it, opens the door. She’s almost expecting to find it just as April left it, but of course it has been transformed into an office like the others. There’s a single desk, a rather bigger one than the two outside; a whiteboard covered with notes; and a lot more files. This room obviously belongs to the boss of the little department. “Her bed was there,” she says, pointing. “She had a desk there, and an armchair there—nonregulation. Nothing April had was ever just the standard college stuff, apart from the bed and the wardrobe. And it was a dump—it was always a dump. Clothes everywhere. Nail polish. Half-written essays.”
Pills, she thinks but doesn’t say.
November gives a shaky laugh.
“I can believe that. Her room at home was always awful. Our cleaner used to try to get it into some kind of order once in a while and then April would go raging around the house saying she couldn’t find anything. Which was a complete joke because she couldn’t find anything anyway—she was always leaving stuff strewn around.”
She moves across to the window, looking out at the rooftops of Pelham, past the steeple of the chapel, over the outer wall. In the distance the river is winding its way slowly, glittering in the last failing rays of sun.
“What a beautiful view.”
“Isn’t it? We were so lucky. And we didn’t even know it.”
Hannah moves across beside her, rests her hand on her chin.
“You know, one time, I came up the stairs and I heard April screaming in here. I came running into her room—”
“Let me guess,” November breaks in, a little dryly. “Another prank?”
“This was before I’d learned to be quite so suspicious. I raced in, and at first I couldn’t see April at all. Then I saw it—two pale hands clutching at the windowsill.”
“What?” November says with a short laugh, a mix of puzzlement and amusement on her face. “How on earth? We’re about four floors up, aren’t we?”
“Look down,” Hannah says, and November peers over the sill, and then begins to laugh in earnest.
“Okay. I get it. She lowered herself out to stand on that bay window.”
“Yup. Except then she couldn’t get back in. She wasn’t tall enough to get a purchase on the sill, and I wasn’t strong enough to pull her up. In the end she had to shinny down the drainpipe.”
They both stare out at the rusted drainpipe that runs down beside the bay window serving the flats below, and November gives a little smile.
“Well, that sounds like April.”
There is a moment’s silence.
“Do you think—” November starts, and then glances over her shoulder at the closed bedroom door, as if she is looking for someone, worried about being overheard.
“Do I think he did it?” Hannah says. She has lowered her voice, even though it’s unlikely Dr. Myers would be able to hear them from outside two thicknesses of wood. And they would have heard him reenter the set.
November nods.
Hannah shrugs.
“I have no idea. Before we came here it felt like the best possibility. But now… now I just don’t know.”
They go out into the main office again and stand there, both looking at the spot where April was found.
“It was there, wasn’t it,” November says at last. “I recognize it from the photos.”
“Yup,” Hannah says shortly. Suddenly she very much does not want to be here. The memories are too close, crowding in on her with painful intensity. April, sprawled across the rug, her cheeks still flushed and streaked with the afterglow of the copper makeup.
She sways, steps to try to catch her balance. She feels suddenly as if she might faint.
“Are you okay?” November asks, alarmed at something in her face. “You’ve gone really pale. Sit down.”
Hannah nods and gropes her way to a chair.
There’s a knock at the door, and November barks, “Just a minute! Hannah’s feeling a bit faint.”
“Oh, of course.” Dr. Myers’s worried voice comes through the wood. “Anything I can do?”
“No, she just needs to sit down for a moment.”
“I’m okay,” Hannah manages. “I can go.”