“Will!”
“Surprise!” he says, beaming. “Thought I’d pick you up. Though bloody hell, you’re a hard woman to stop. You were charging up that ramp like a cricketer going in to bowl. Didn’t you hear me bellowing?”
“I’m sorry—” She feels winded, as if they really had collided. “I didn’t—I was thinking about something—I—It’s nice to see you!”
Nice to see you? She feels like kicking herself. Nice to see you is what you say to a colleague you bump into at an art gallery, not your husband after a trip away.
“I missed you,” Will says, and he bends and kisses her, his stubble prickling her lips. Hannah feels something twist inside her—not just the baby, but something else, a confusing, contradictory maelstrom of emotions. She wants to return Will’s kiss, burrow into his arms—and she wants to pull away until she figures out how she feels about all this. How can both be true? How can she both love this man and be seriously considering that he may have been lying to her for ten years?
She should trust him. He’s her husband.
She does trust him.
So why isn’t she telling him about the bay window and the drainpipe?
Meanwhile, Will is talking—asking about her trip, asking about Emily, November, Dr. Myers.
“Sounds like it was something you needed to do for your own peace of mind, but it’s all wrapped up now?” he’s saying, and her voice is saying Yes, while her mind is screaming Why are you so keen for me to put a lid on this? Is it because you’re afraid of what I might find?
“You’re very quiet,” he says at last, as she fails to reply to yet another remark. “Are you okay?”
“I’m sorry.” Hannah passes a hand over her forehead. “I—I—yes, I’m fine. I’m just really tired. I don’t know what it is, I feel like I’ve been hit by a truck the last few days.”
“Well, you’re, what, nearly twenty-five weeks?” Will says. He kisses the top of her head affectionately. “Six months. Nearly third trimester!”
“Third trimester.” Hannah weighs the words in her mouth, momentarily diverted from her round-and-round about April, into a realization that Will’s right. “Third trimester, bloody hell. We’re nearly there, Will.”
“We nearly are.” He beams down at her, and as he does, the baby gives a great kick, the strongest she’s felt yet, so hard that she stops in her tracks. “What is it? Did you forget something?”
“No, the baby—” She puts her hand to the side of the bump, and to her astonishment, there it is. A long, distinct push against her palm, for all the world as if the baby is trying to force its way out through her skin, like the scene from Alien. “Oh my God, Will, quick.”
Will looks bewildered, uncomprehending, until she grabs his hand and holds it flat against the side of her distended belly, waiting, waiting—and there it comes again. She feels it at the same time as his face lights up.
“Holy mother of God.” Will’s voice is awed. “Was that it? Was that him?”
“It was. It was our baby.” She is beaming, the smile so wide it feels like it’s splitting her face, she can’t help herself. They are standing in the middle of the ramp up from the concourse, people streaming past, banging her case with their suitcases and tutting at the obstacle she and Will are forming, but she doesn’t care. She doesn’t care about anything in that moment, anything apart from the feel of Will’s palm, hot against her taut skin, and the movement of their child inside her.
“Oh my God,” Will says again, very slowly, and his expression is a mixture of shock and delight. “Will he do it again?”
“Excuse me,” a woman in a business suit says acidly, pushing past with unnecessary force. “Could you move aside?”
“I don’t know.” Hannah picks up the case, Will drops his palm from where it was pressed against her stomach and takes the handle from her, and the two of them start moving again, up the ramp. “I think he’s stopped now. But it’s not going to be the last time. I can’t believe you felt it!”
“You can’t believe it? I can’t believe it.” He’s smiling, a great huge smile that crinkles the skin of his cheeks with pure elation. “Our baby. Our baby, Hannah! We’re having a baby!”
“I know,” she says, grinning back. She puts an arm around him, squeezing him so tight that he almost stumbles, their legs banging against each other, and she feels her heart swell with love for him. And the strangeness, the uncertainty she felt all the way up to Edinburgh is gone, completely gone. How could she have doubted him? How could she have doubted herself, her own judgment? This is Will. The man she loves—has loved for more than ten years. The man she knows like she knows her own skin.
“I love you,” she says, at the same time as he says, “Curry for supper?” and they both laugh, and suddenly everything is all right again. He is her Will. And Oxford is a long way away.
“Curry for supper,” she agrees. “And I’ll even let you have a beer.”
“I’m drinking for three now,” he says with a grin, and then he squeezes her back, and she feels her heart overflow.
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.