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“Will you stop that!” Hannah said irritably, pushing April’s hand away, perhaps harder than she had meant, but there was something extraordinarily annoying about the action, the patronizing element to it, the physical invasion of her space. “For God’s sake, April, I’m going back, and that’s an end to it.”
“Fine,” April said. She crossed her legs, wrapping her arms around herself, looking for all the world like some kind of Siamese cat curling up to lick her fur. The candles on the bar winked off the huge rings on her fingers and she leaned confidentially across the bar. “Raoul and I will be fine, won’t we, Raoul?”
“I will take good care of your friend,” the barman said, and he smiled again at Hannah. “Don’t worry, I will make sure Miss Clarke-Cliveden gets home safely.”
“You”—April leaned still farther over the bar so that her top slipped lower and Hannah saw a flash of rose-colored brassiere—“can call me April. And I don’t say that to all the staff.”
“Okay,” Hannah said. It was that last word that did it, that little reminder of the world April inhabited and she didn’t. “Okay, that’s it. I’m out, thank you for a lovely evening, April, I’m going to go home and get some food and I suggest that you do the same.”
But April said nothing. Instead she pointedly turned her back to Hannah and began watching Raoul carve off a long coil of lemon zest.
Hannah hesitated for a moment, wondering if she was doing the right thing but unsure what her other options were, and then picked up her bag, turned, and made her way down to the street entrance.
A porter was standing at the door, and opened it as she came near.
“Can I get you a taxi, miss?”
“No, no thank you,” Hannah said. “I’ll be fine walking, but—” She paused in the doorway, uncertain of what to say, how to put it.
“Yes, miss?” The porter was kindly, in his seventies perhaps. He looked like a grandfather.
“My friend, she’s still upstairs—will you make sure she gets home okay? She’s had a bit to drink…”
“Say no more, miss.” The porter tapped the side of his nose and winked, but not in the way the barman had, with a hint of suggestion. This was purely avuncular. “I’ll see to it myself. Where’s home?”
“Pelham College. She’s a student.”
“You leave it with me. She’ll be grand.” He nodded at the rain, which was just starting outside, turning the stone flags of the pavement to dark mirrors and the lamps to splashes of gold. “Are you sure you don’t want that taxi now? I can put it on Mr. Clarke’s account.”
Hannah smiled, knowing that he had sized up her clothes, and April’s, and had a very good idea of how much cash she had in her account, and shook her head.
“No, that’s very kind, thank you. I’ll be fine. I’ve got my mac.”
“All right, then. Good night, miss. You take care.”
“Good night,” Hannah said.
And pulling her hood up, she headed out, into the rainy winter night.
AFTER
Hannah arrives home at the same time as Will. She’s looking through her handbag for her key when she hears the low growl of a motorbike coming up the mews, and turns to see him, blindingly bright, driving towards her. He comes to a halt, kicks out the stand, and unbuckles his helmet.
“How was your day?” he asks. She’s still trying to think of what to say, how even to begin, when he turns aside, pulls his work bag out of the bike’s rear pannier, and heads towards the front door.
Upstairs, she sinks into an armchair with a sigh, watching as Will peels off his leathers and shakes his folded suit jacket out of its creases.
“Let’s get takeaway,” she says, ignoring the brief twinge provoked by the thought of the cost. “I can’t face cooking.”
“Bad day?” Will asks, looking up, and Hannah nods, and then regrets doing so. She doesn’t want to talk about it, but now she’ll have to. She’s always going on at Will for buttoning things up; she can’t very well do the same. Plus she has to tell him about the midwife appointment. It’s his baby—it wouldn’t be fair to keep that stuff from him.
“I had high blood pressure at the midwife appointment,” she says at last. “My own fault. I ran there.”
“Okay…” Will says slowly. He sits down on the arm of the sofa next to her, his face puzzled. “Is that a big deal?”
“It can be, apparently. It can be a sign of this thing called pre-eclampsia, which is pretty serious, though they don’t seem to think it’s that. But they want me to come back next week for another check.”
“Next week?” Will’s face doesn’t betray much emotion, but Hannah knows him well enough to read the flicker of alarm beneath the surface. “Well, that’s annoying for you. Seems pretty stupid they didn’t just wait for it to go down and try again.”
