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“Nice to meet you too,” Hannah said, and she drained her wine, put down the glass, and hobbled painfully out into the corridor, where she stood for a moment, catching her breath and trying not to groan inwardly at the hash she had made of turning down Jonty gracefully.
“Sooooo…” said a drawling voice from behind her, and she turned to see April, closing the door of Dr. Myers’s room. “Someone else, eh? Who’s the lucky man?”
Hannah felt her cheeks flush again.
“Oh God, I only said that to get rid of him.”
“You should have said yes! I know Jonty. He’s thick as pig shit, but he’s a sweetie, and more to the point, his dad owns Westwell Pharmaceuticals.”
“He can’t be that thick,” Hannah said irritably, pulling off first one of April’s teetering high heels, then the other. She felt as if she had descended a step on an imaginary staircase, suddenly six inches shorter than April. “I mean, he did get into Oxford to study English.”
“Oh you,” April said affectionately. “You’re so naive, Hannah. First, he’s a rowing blue. Second, did I mention his dad owns Westwell Pharmaceuticals?”
“So? You still have to pass the entrance exam.”
April made a dismissive noise through her nose.
“Oh, that! I had an ex at Carne who made a pretty good living taking people’s BMAT for them.”
“That’s medicine,” Hannah retorted, but half-heartedly.
“Well, whatever the equivalent is for English. Just because you wouldn’t do that, doesn’t mean everyone else is as high-minded as you.”
“April, you shouldn’t talk like that.”
“Why not? Because people will think I bought my way in too?” April said, laughing. “So what? They already think that, why not give them the satisfaction of thinking they’re right?”
“But they’re not!” Hannah exploded. “I know full well they’re not. Why do you talk like this? I’ve read your essays, April. You’ve got nothing to prove.”
“Exactly,” April said, and suddenly she was no longer laughing but deadly serious. “I have nothing to prove. So let them say what they want.”
There was a silence, then Hannah said, “I’m turning in. What about you?”
“I don’t know,” April said. She looked out the window at the top of the staircase, across the glittering roofs of the college and away towards the water meadows beyond the Isis, striped black and white in the frosty moonlight. “I’m not sure. Horatio’s asked me and a couple of girls to go for a drink in town. I’m not sure if I can be bothered, though.”
“Horatio?” Hannah knew the single word dripped disapproval, but it was too late to take it back.
“He’s not my tutor,” April snapped.
“He’s a tutor, though. Don’t you think this is a bit inappropriate?”
“We’re not in high school,” April said impatiently. Then she turned and opened the door to Dr. Myers’s rooms, letting out a gust of cigarette smoke and laughing conversation. “I don’t know. I haven’t made up my mind. Don’t wait up.”
“I—” Hannah said, and the door slammed behind April. “Won’t,” she finished to the empty corridor, and sighed, picked up the borrowed high heels, and crossed the hallway to go to bed.
AFTER
When they get home from the restaurant, Will falls into bed and straight into a deep slumber, but Hannah—though she felt tired in the taxi—finds she can’t sleep. She tries hot milk, white noise to drown out Will’s snores, but nothing works. Her joints hurt. Her breasts are sore. Everything aches and she can’t find a comfortable position in bed.
At last, she pulls out her headphones and does something she hasn’t done for months, years, even. She opens up Instagram and navigates to @THEAprilCC. April’s account.
April was the first person Hannah had ever met with Instagram, back in the days when filters were strictly for coffee, and plenty of people didn’t even have a camera on their phone. But April had been one of an early handful to download the app and she had known, somehow, that this would be big.
Now Hannah scrolls back through ancient selfies, with sun-soaked filters and frames to make them look like Polaroids. There are photos of April draped across punts, pictures from college bars, a snap of some tuxedo-attired boy being led by the tie down St. Aldates. All the drunken, laughing, unselfconscious mementos of student life, a decade ago.
She knows the photos well, and not just because the press mined them for publicity shots. In the early days, when they were all that was left of April and of her own life at Pelham, she had flicked through them obsessively—noting every like, reading every comment, each one testament to April’s impact on the world and the gaping hole she had left.
RIP April <3
