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“Has anyone got a tissue?”
“There’s paper napkins at the bar,” Emily said. She raised her voice to where Hugh was standing by the counter. “Hugh! Grab us a few paper towels, would you?”
“Everything all right between you two, mate?” Ryan said. His voice was uneasy and he rocked on his heels, his hands shoved in his back pockets as if he didn’t trust them not to betray something about his mood.
“Fine.” Will’s voice was short. Hugh had come back from the bar with a plastic cup of gin and tonic and a handful of cocktail napkins, and now Will took them and wiped his mouth and chin. “How do I look?”
“Hang on,” Emily said. She took the cleaner of the two serviettes and dabbed at the streaks of orange still on Will’s cheekbone and jaw. “There you go. There’s not much I can do about your T-shirt, though.”
“It’s fine,” Will said again, his voice tight as a snare.
It’s not fine, Hannah wanted to say. She stared at him, trying to understand what was going on. Had April found something out? Had Will told her?
She was opening her mouth, groping for what to say, when the interval bell rang, and they turned and began filtering back into the auditorium.
It was only as they took their seats that Hannah noticed something—or rather, someone. Someone she was sure had not been there in the first half. It was a man sitting about two rows back from the front, very tall and broad.
It was John Neville.
AFTER
After she leaves the Bonnie Bagel, Hannah finds herself wandering, aimlessly, through the drizzly streets of New Town, her mind buzzing with thoughts of April and Neville. She’s walking the cramped aisles of a Tesco Express, more to get out of the rain than because they really need anything, when her phone goes.
“Hey!” It’s Will. “Have you booked anywhere, or should I?”
Shit. Date night. She had completely forgotten, and now the thought of sitting opposite Will for two hours in a restaurant, no phones or TV or work emails to distract them or fill the gaps in conversation… she’s not sure if she can face it.
“I thought maybe Mono,” Will is saying now. He’s clearly on his lunch break; she can hear the hubbub of a sandwich bar in the background. “But do you reckon we’d get a reservation at such short notice? Or there’s always Contini’s, but we go there so often. I don’t know. What do you think?”
What does she think? She has no idea. She only knows that the question of which restaurant to go to seems painfully insignificant in the aftermath of Geraint’s bombshell—and that she can’t have that conversation here, in the supermarket. She swallows.
“Look, would you mind if we didn’t go out tonight? I’m just—I feel like we ought to be saving money.”
There’s a short silence.
“Sure,” Will says. His voice is crackly on the other end of the line, but she can still hear the faint puzzlement. “But, you know, we don’t have to go fancy, we could just get fish and chips.”
“I know,” Hannah says. She picks up a bag of organic rice, looks at the price, and then swaps it for normal. “But it’s not just that—I’ve got the midwife again tomorrow, and I feel like I should be putting my feet up.”
“Of course,” Will says, and now the puzzlement has been replaced by concern. “Are you not feeling great?”
“I’m feeling fine, honestly. I just want a quiet one in front of the TV. Is that okay?”
“Of course,” Will says again. “Quiet one it is, then. Love you.”
“I love you too,” she says, and then Will hangs up, and she is left standing there, staring at the pasta, Geraint’s words ringing in her head.
April was pregnant. April was pregnant? If it’s true, it changes everything. It opens up a whole mess of motives and possibilities that have nothing to do with Neville. There’s Ryan, of course—the supposed source of this information. If it’s true—if April really did tell him that she was pregnant, and Ryan really did believe her—Hannah can think of only one plausible explanation, unlikely though it is on the surface: Ryan must have been sleeping with April. Why else would she tell him first, out of everyone in their group? April didn’t even particularly like Ryan, so the prospect of her picking him as a confidant is totally outlandish. But apparently she did choose him. And when she really considers it, Hannah can imagine April sleeping with Ryan. Or sleeping with someone, at least.
Because it wasn’t just that one morning, when she found Will in the dining hall when he should have been in bed with April; there were other times. Nights when she heard footsteps padding across the sitting room followed by hushed whispers and giggles floating across the hallway. Afternoons when she caught a scent of cigarettes that Will didn’t smoke coming from April’s room. Mornings when she found shoes that weren’t his by the front door as she headed out to early lectures.
And there was always something between April and Ryan. Not friendship, definitely not. But it is all too easy for that prickly antagonism to mask a very different kind of attraction. Hannah remembers the strange electrical charge that crackled between them the night April pranked Ryan, and the weird energy the first night of April’s play, and she does not find it hard to believe that Ryan was sleeping with April. Not at all.
But if that’s the case, it’s not just Ryan who is implicated—and this, this is why she is distracted and why her answers to Will are short and strained. Because if it’s true… if it’s true it gives someone else a motive too.
Will.
It’s absurd, of course—she knows Will like she knows her own heart. But if this comes out—and if Geraint is digging, it still might—it would destroy Will. She has caught glimpses of them—the articles on the internet making snide references to De Chastaigne—who is now married to April’s college roommate—as though their happiness were somehow bought at the cost of April’s death. It’s always the boyfriend is a cliché, but clichés are clichés for a reason. With this new information, the internet gossip boards would go wild. Her and Will’s life would once again become a misery of paparazzi doorsteppers and newspaper speculation.
