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“Actually—” Hannah began, and then stopped. She didn’t want to tell Emily the truth—that she almost never used the main gate now, unless she couldn’t avoid it. Neville never seemed to leave the Porters’ Lodge, and every time she came through the arched entrance he would appear out of the little back office and stand in the doorway of the lodge, arms folded, his eyes fixed on her all across the Old Quad, until she passed out of sight to the Fellows’ Garden. Hannah never looked back, never acknowledged his presence, but walking across Old Quad with his eyes fixed on her retreating back made her skin crawl, and each time she found herself fighting the urge to run.
The problem was, there was so little she could put her finger on. Since the night in her room he hadn’t said anything directly to her, but his silent surveillance was almost worse. And it wasn’t just the lodge. The other night, as she had been getting ready for bed, she had heard something outside. When she went to the window, there was a figure standing in the center of the quad, staring up at her. It was impossible to make out a face in the darkness, but it was hard to mistake that tall, broad slab of an outline for anyone else, and Hannah was sure in her heart that it was Neville, watching her as she got ready for bed.
She had torn the curtain across with shaking hands, making the curtain rings screech and rattle against the pole, wishing that April were home instead of out rehearsing. Since then she had kept her curtains closed, even in daylight. It’s like a tomb in here! motherly Sue, the scout, had said the following day when she came in to clean, but Hannah had just shaken her head and switched on the overhead light.
“Yes? No?” Em prompted now, breaking into her thoughts.
“Actually… let’s go out via the Cloade gate. It’s a bit closer.” That was more or less a lie, but if Emily thought so she didn’t call Hannah on it. “I’ll come and pick you up, shall I?”
“Okay,” Emily said. “Seven thirty. See you then.”
* * *
WHEN THEY ARRIVED AT THE theater, Hannah saw that April’s fears about playing to an empty room had been unfounded. With a quarter of an hour to go, the little auditorium was already almost full, and her promise to April to sit in the front row was going to be impossible to keep.
She was scanning the rows, looking for two seats together, when Emily nudged her and pointed to the far side of the room.
Hannah turned and saw Ryan standing up, waving an arm to and fro, pointing with his free hand to a couple of empty seats. Beside him was Hugh, bent over a textbook, presumably squeezing in a few extra minutes’ revision, and beside him—but here her stomach flipped.
Since the kiss last term, she had avoided Will’s company as much as possible. It hadn’t been easy, making sure she didn’t eat in the dining hall at the same time as him, or swerving away from an empty desk in the library when she saw him, head down, at the adjacent table. But this term it had become easier. Everyone was revising hard for prelims, and April’s rehearsals had meant she was almost never in their shared rooms, and so neither was Will.
Even when they were forced together—at formal hall, or for celebrations she couldn’t get out of—she had made sure they were never in close proximity, and she’d had the sense that Will was doing the same. Now, with Emily pushing past rows of people to the seats Ryan was saving for them, it seemed that there was no escape.
“Hey,” Ryan said as they made their way through the throng. “About bloody time. It’s been murder keeping these seats free.”
“Sorry,” Emily said, though she didn’t sound apologetic. “You know how it is, Coates. Places to go, people to see.”
She squeezed past Will and Hugh into the free space next to Ryan, and with a sinking feeling Hannah realized that the final free space, the only one left for her, was next to Will.
They looked at each other, and she could tell that he was having the same misgivings as she—and coming to the same realization: that there was no plausible reason to rearrange the seating, at least not without raising eyebrows. The free seat was one in from the aisle, between Will and Hugh. Even if Hannah pretended that she had forgotten something or needed the loo, the only logical rearrangement would be for Will to move up one next to Hugh and leave her with the aisle. There was no possible excuse she could find to move herself farther down the row.
Will gave a small resigned smile, and she knew that he had just gone through exactly the same mental calculation, and was trying to signal that it was okay. That they could still sit next to each other. The theater wouldn’t burn down around them if they sat a few inches apart for a couple of hours.
Still, it was with a sense that she was doing something very stupid that Hannah slid into the seat between Hugh and Will. She sat there mutely, listening to Ryan and Emily bickering good-naturedly farther up the row, and Hugh muttering his revision notes under his breath. And all the time she was horribly conscious of her cardigan-clad arm just millimeters away from Will’s shoulder. He had his hands pressed between his knees, as if to make his body as small as possible and keep his hands as far away from her as he could, but the seats were narrow, and Hugh was unselfconsciously man-spreading on her other side. It was all Hannah could do to keep her arm from touching Will’s, her knee from grazing his, and as the lights went down and the auditorium fell into silence, the sense of intimacy only increased.
She had never been so conscious of her body, of the heat of someone else’s skin, of the sound of their breathing and of every minute movement they each made. As the hush descended and the darkness enveloped them both, Hannah found that she was holding her breath in an effort to keep every muscle strained away from Will, and she was forced to let it out with a shaky rush.
“Are you okay?” Hugh whispered beside her, and she nodded.
“Yes, sorry. Just a—a sneeze that didn’t go anywhere.”
It was a stupid excuse, but Hugh seemed to accept it for what it was. Still, Hannah wanted to kick herself.
A single spotlight came up on the stage, and as it did so, she felt something—the lightest, gentlest touch on her knee, the knee closest to Will. It was only for a moment—and so softly that under other circumstances she would have thought she’d imagined it—but with every muscle attuned to his presence, she knew she had not, and it was all she could do to stop herself from jumping.
She knew what it meant, though. What Will was trying to convey.
It’s okay.
She shut her eyes, pressed her fists against them. It’s okay. It’s okay. It will all be okay.
And then she opened them—and a girl was there, standing in the narrow pool of light. It wasn’t April—it was someone Hannah didn’t know—but she leaned forward, glad of the distraction from her own thoughts.
“I wish to God that ship had never sailed.” The girl’s voice rang clear from the stage, and the production had begun.
* * *
“BLOODY HELL,” RYAN’S VOICE, RAISED over the hubbub of the intermission bar, was grudgingly impressed. “She’s pretty amazing. Did you know she was this good?” He turned to Will, who shook his head.
