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Then the door closed behind them, and Hannah was left alone.
AFTER
When Hannah wakes up, it’s with the feeling that something is different.
It’s not the fact that the bed is empty. That happens every Wednesday—Hannah’s day off, in lieu of working Saturdays in the shop. On Wednesday Will puts his phone under his pillow so that his alarm doesn’t disturb her, and tiptoes out of bed before she wakes.
It’s not just the fact that she’s pregnant and the strange feelings that go with that—the odd morning stiffness, the heaviness in her body, the feeling of queasiness that she has never quite gotten under control, in spite of what the books say about when it’s supposed to end.
No, it’s something else. She knows that, even in the dazed aftermath of sleep, before the events of yesterday come rushing back to her. Now she lies there, staring at the ceiling, trying to work out how she feels. Wednesdays are usually a treat—a chance to catch up on errands, call into town, or, increasingly as her pregnancy has progressed, just spend the day lolling around their sunny mews flat, doing nothing, in a kind of lazy trance.
But today the thought of sitting by herself in the empty flat, Will at work, nothing but the news and the yawning Google search bar to distract her, is intolerable.
It’s not that there isn’t stuff she could be doing—she could be researching prams, or building the flat-pack crib that has been sitting propped in the corner of their bedroom for the last six weeks. But somehow she can’t bring herself to slit open the cardboard boxes. It feels like tempting fate, a presumptuous taking for granted of a future she has learned the hard way not to rely on.
But she can’t lie there, thinking like that. Instead she gets up, pulls on her dressing gown, and goes through to the kitchen, rubbing the sleep from the corners of her eyes as she makes the one coffee she allows herself these days.
Will has left the radio on, as he often does when running out to catch an early meeting. She hasn’t really been paying attention, but now something the newscaster is saying snags at her—and she leans across the counter to turn up the volume.
“… has died in prison, aged sixty-three. Neville, who was convicted in 2012 of the killing of Oxford University student April Clarke-Cliveden—”
Hannah’s hand shoots for the off button, cursing her own stupidity, but it’s too late. As the room falls silent, she finds her hand is shaking.
She can’t stay here. She has to get out.
* * *
IT’S DRIZZLING IN THE PARK, but the rain provides a kind of comforting cocoon as she walks slowly down the leafy avenue in her mac. When she and Will moved into Stockbridge a few years ago it was the hip, artistic district of Edinburgh, still relatively affordable compared to New Town—if anything in central Edinburgh could really be called affordable.
But the area has grown up with them, its village vibe luring in young families alongside the bars and coffee shops, and now the streets are filled with bumps and buggies—or it seems that way to Hannah. Maybe it’s just her own bump making her see the world with different eyes.
There are children in the park today, despite the weather, stomping about in wellies or clambering across dripping rope bridges, while their resigned parents and carers huddle under the cover of the trees, doing their supervision from a distance.
Hannah comes to a halt under the shelter of a big yew, watching them, when her phone goes. She pulls it out of her pocket, wipes the mist from her glasses, and glances cautiously at the caller ID. But it’s okay.
She picks up.
“Hi, Mum.”
“Hello, love, is it your day off? Did I get it right?”
Hannah smiles. Her day off has always been Wednesday, for all of the nine years she’s worked at Tall Tales, but for some reason her mother can never seem to remember that.
“Yes, I’m in the park. How are you?”
Her mother ignores the question.
“I’m driving so sorry if I cut out. I’m on hands-free. But are you okay? I felt worried after you rang off yesterday. I shouldn’t have ambushed you at work.”
“No, it was fine.” Hannah watches a little girl evade her father and run gleefully into a huge muddy puddle at the foot of the slide. “You were right, it was better I heard it from you.”
“Did you get any trouble?”
She means journalists, doorsteppers, cold callers, Hannah knows. In the early days it was a swarm. When they came back to Dodsworth, in those first few awful weeks after April’s death, her mother had wooden shutters installed on the ground floor of their home so people couldn’t peer through the curtains, and a brush on the inside of the letter box. Hannah remembers them calling through the door, Any comment, Mrs. Jones? Is Hannah here? What would you like to say to John Neville if you met him?
“Not really,” she says now. “Just an email. Nothing I couldn’t handle.”
“And how’s Will?”
