She hears the faintest, almost imperceptible chime of a ringtone starting up through the phone’s internal speaker, and she gives a loud yawn to cover it, her fingers diving for the volume button, pressing down, down, down as hard as she can. The ring dies away, her heart thumping in time with its fading rhythm. With the speaker muted, she has no way of knowing whether Will has answered. Please, please, she finds herself thinking. Hugh is speaking, but she can’t concentrate on his words, all she can think of is whether Will has picked up, or if he’s grunted furiously and sent her call to voicemail. Oh God, oh Will, please, I’m sorry—I’m so sorry—if you ever loved me—
Maybe he’s not even there. Maybe the ringer is switched off. Maybe he’s drowning his sorrows in a pub, and can’t hear her call, and it’s already gone to voicemail.
Please, please, please. I’m sorry, Will, I’m sorry I doubted you.
“… what you’re going to say to him?” Hugh is asking. He’s frowning.
“I guess you’re right,” Hannah says. Her heart is thudding so hard her belly is shaking with it. It feels like a miracle that Hugh can’t hear it, can’t see how scared she is, but his eyes are on the road. “I just wish—oh God, I just wish we hadn’t left it that way. He must be frantic—wondering where I am, whether I’m safe.” Oh God, please don’t hang up, Will. Please hear what I’m trying to tell you, please stay on the line. She shifts in her seat, feeling the baby pressing against her pelvis.
“I know,” Hugh says, and his voice cracks with what sounds almost like realistic emotion. “I know, Hannah. God, I mean, I know it’s not the same, but—he’s my best friend, you know? Was.” There is a long silence.
Please don’t hang up.
“How long, do you think?” Hannah says at last. “Until we get to the police? We seem to have been driving for ages. I feel like we must be halfway to Berwick.” Are you listening, Will?
“Oh, nowhere near there,” Hugh says with a laugh, but he sounds a little uneasy. He taps his fingers on the steering wheel. The wipers swish back and forth with hypnotic rhythm. “Why don’t you have a nap? I can wake you when we get to the station.”
Hannah nods. But if she hadn’t been sure before, those words would have made her so. Because no one could possibly think she was tired—she’s done nothing but sleep since she drank that tea. Another surge of fear runs through her. She rests her arm against the window and stares out into the night, looking, desperately, for something, anything to give Will a clue about her whereabouts.
And then it comes. A pub, looming out of the darkness.
She blinks, strains her eyes. She cannot afford to miss the sign, but the writing is small, the rain is so hard, and the sign isn’t illuminated… and then it flashes past and she has caught it.
“The Silver Star…” she says shakily, trying to make it sound as if she is just thinking aloud. “What a pretty name for a pub…”
She yawns, hoping it sounds convincing. The groggy stupor from earlier is wearing off, the adrenaline of fear pumping through her body, pulling her forcibly out of that pit of exhaustion, but she has to pretend to Hugh that she is more tired than she is. He cannot know.
Did you hear that, Will? Are you even there?
A sob rises inside her because after all, maybe this whole thing is hopeless. There’s every chance Will’s phone went to voicemail, her call timed out, and she’s talking to no one at all. And then she realizes something: The phone in her hand is growing warm, and not just from her touch. It is hot, the kind of heat that builds up when she’s on a long call.
Will is there. He is listening.
And maybe he is coming.
AFTER
It is the third pothole that does it, jolting Hannah so hard that her head cracks painfully against the car window and, with a sinking feeling, she realizes this is it. It is time to stop pretending. She can no longer feign sleep or ignorance because no one, not even Hugh, could believe that Hannah would trust this track.
“Where are we, Hugh?” She is, oddly, a little proud that her voice comes out steadily, without shaking, in spite of how afraid she is.
“What do you mean?” Hugh says, and then he looks across at her, and sees something in her face, palely lit by the dashboard display and the headlights reflecting off the rain, and he sighs. “Oh dear. I suppose it was too much to hope…”
He trails off, and Hannah finishes the sentence for him.
“Too much to hope that even someone as stupid as me would believe this was the route to the police station?”
“Hannah,” Hugh chides her gently. “That’s unfair. I never thought you stupid.”
“Oh really.” Her voice is bitter. “Not even when I went to court and gave evidence against an innocent man?”
“The evidence was pretty compelling, to be fair…”
“Not even when I came to you sobbing, believing that my own husband was a murderer?”
“Well, you had cause…”
“I had cause because you gave it to me, Hugh! Why? Why Will of all people? How could you? He’s your best friend.”
“Because he was the only person I thought you might care about enough to protect,” Hugh snaps suddenly. “You were clearly happy to throw anyone else to the wolves.” The car jolts through another pothole, making Hannah’s teeth crack together so hard that her skull hurts. The baby inside her kicks violently, as if in protest at the jolt, and she shifts uneasily in her seat, trying to take the pressure off her bump. The rain has slowed to a drizzle, but she can see nothing at all outside the car, no lights, no houses. No Will. They are very far down a long farm track; even if he’s heard all her messages, even if he’s followed the trail of clues she’s tried to leave him, the chances of him picking this tiny obscure road out of all the others is so impossibly remote…
“Where are we?” she says again, her teeth gritted. “Where are we, Hugh? You owe me that—you owe me the truth about one thing at least.”
Hugh laughs.
“Don’t you recognize it? Some wife you are.”
“What?” She frowns, puzzled. And then she realizes.
It’s the beach. It’s the beach where Will took her, that first week he came to Edinburgh. The beach where they swam and lay together on the sand, and where Hannah finally admitted to herself that she was going to love this man for the rest of her life.
The phone in her pocket is so hot now that she can no longer grip it. She can feel it burning her thigh through the thin layers of material. It’s almost painful, but she doesn’t move it away, because the heat is the one thing she has to hold on to. The one scrap of hope that tells her Will is there. He is listening. And perhaps, if she can keep Hugh talking for long enough, he is coming. If only she can manage to tell him.
“It’s our beach,” she manages now. “The one where we—near Tantallon Castle. But how—” she tries, and then swallows and tries again. “How did you know?”
“Because he asked me where to take you,” Hugh says. He looks… he looks weary, Hannah thinks. And perhaps he is. He has been carrying his secrets for more than ten years. It must, in a strange way, be a relief to set that burden down at last. “I’d just finished a summer work experience placement here, do you remember? He said he wanted to take you out somewhere, but it needed to be cheap; a cheap, romantic place that you could get to by train.”
“And why—” Hannah swallows again. She puts her hand on her bump, where the baby is quivering nervously, as though it can feel her unease. “Why here? Why now?”
Hugh’s face twists with some very strong emotion. Hannah can’t tell what it is. Disgust? Remorse? Pity? Maybe all three.
“Because it felt right,” he says at last. The car has stopped. Its lights are shining out over the headland. Far below, Hannah can hear the crash of waves beating against the rocks. It is high tide.
Right for what? she wants to ask, but in her heart she knows. And it is right. Because Hugh knows her almost as well as Will does, almost as well as she knows herself.
It is where she would come if she were going to kill herself.