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* * *
OUTSIDE THE THEATER, HANNAH FOUND herself looking up and down the street, half expecting to see Neville lurking in the shadows, but to her relief, he was gone.
“Are you okay?” Hugh said, rather curiously.
Hannah let out a nervous laugh.
“Yes, sorry. I just thought I saw…”
“Saw what?”
Hannah bit her lip. She hadn’t said much about Neville’s behavior to the others, not since that day when he’d talked about little girls in the Porters’ Lodge. Since then there had been nothing she could put her finger on, and she had begun to feel almost ashamed of her antipathy to him. Well, nothing, right up until the night he had come up to her room with the parcel—but that was weeks ago, and besides, it was so bound up with what had happened afterwards, her kiss with Will, that she had found it almost impossible to talk about. The whole night was so bound up with her feelings for Will and her shame over her own actions that she was afraid that if she unpicked one edge of the tangle, the whole mass would come unraveled—and risk betraying Will in the process.
“I thought I saw one of the college porters,” she said at last. Hugh looked puzzled, but Emily, a couple of paces ahead, swung round.
“Oh my God. Not that weird Neville guy? The little girls creep?”
“Yes,” Hannah said. She felt a deep unhappiness take hold of her, somewhere inside. “I thought—I thought I saw him near the front, in the second half. But I don’t know if it was him.”
“It was him,” Ryan said, somewhat unexpectedly. “I clocked him in the queue for the gents. Is he still bothering you?”
“N—I don’t know,” Hannah said. She felt like someone was pulling slowly at a bandage over a cut, exposing something very raw and tender underneath. “He’s just—he’s always there, always hanging around. He came up to our room one time—I don’t want to talk about it,” she finished hurriedly, seeing that Emily was about to open her mouth to interject something horrified and furious. “I told him to go away and he did, but I just—I find him really creepy and I don’t know what to do about it.”
“You have to go to the college authorities!” Emily burst out. “This isn’t okay!”
“And say what? He came to see my friend’s play? He made me feel a bit weird?”
“She’s got a point,” Ryan threw over his shoulder. “It in’t exactly a smoking gun, is it?”
Emily was opening her mouth to reply when Ryan stopped, pointing up a side street at a kebab van parked at the intersection, a line of people snaking across the pavement.
“Ey up, I spy supper. Hold up. I’ll be back in a tick.”
“Have you seen that queue?” Emily said explosively. “And did you not hear me about the revision?”
“So don’t wait,” Ryan called. He was already halfway down the side road towards the van. “Keep the bed warm!”
“You should be so lucky!” Emily yelled back, then let out an exasperated sigh. “Knob. Well I’m off, he’ll be half an hour in that queue if he’s lucky, and then he’ll want to eat it. Hannah?”
“I’ll come with you,” Hannah said. She looked at her watch, trying to figure out the likelihood that Neville would be back at Pelham by now. Did he live in college? It dawned on her she had no idea about the lives of the porters outside their jobs. “Hugh?”
“Well, I am pretty hungry. I might… I might join Ryan?” Hugh said, as if seeking their approval. He looked a little uncertain. Hannah had the impression that he and Ryan had never really been the best of friends—that they were linked by default, through Will, rather than via any real connection of their own. But maybe Hugh was trying to change that.
“Knock yourself out,” Emily said. “Laters, Coates!” she bellowed down the alleyway after Ryan, and then turned on her heel and left.
* * *
IT WAS ALMOST ELEVEN WHEN they got back to Pelham, and Hannah found her footsteps slowing as they approached the front gate, wondering if Neville would be there.
“Come on,” Emily said impatiently as they crossed Pelham Street.
“You go on,” Hannah said. “I just want to check if the Cloade gate is still open.”
“It won’t be,” Emily said. She stopped, looking harder at Hannah. “Is this about Neville? Do you want me to see if he’s in the lodge?”
“No, it’s fine,” Hannah said, rather wearily. “You’ll have to knock at this time of night, and then how will you explain going back for me? I’ll just brave it out. I mean, so what if he’s there. He can’t eat me.”
“Okay, well, first of all, let me reiterate once again how extremely fucked up it is that you’re rearranging your life to avoid this man without going to the college authorities, and second, you know you can climb the wall behind Cloade’s?”
