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“What on earth is going on here, Mr. Neville?”
“I found this person climbing over the wall—” Neville panted. He got to his knees, putting his weight painfully on Hannah’s arm as he did. She lay there, gasping and trembling as he lumbered slowly to his feet, feeling the crushing sensation in her chest slowly lifting.
“Well still, but I’m not sure—”
Hannah didn’t wait around to hear any more. She had only one instinct—to get away.
As the last of Neville’s weight came off her she twisted like an animal in a trap and wrenched herself out from underneath him—and then she was gone, stumbling around the corner of the quad, into staircase 7, up the stairs, three at a time, until at last she was in the sanctuary of the set, the good, solid wooden door of her bedroom hard against her back—and then she sank down to the floor and burst into tears.
AFTER
“So,” Ryan says, with another of his lopsided smiles.
They are sitting in his living room, nursing cups of tea that Hannah has made under his direction.
“What brings you here, then?” He puts on a plummy accent quite at odds with his normal one and intones, “Rumors of my death have been much exaggerated.”
Hannah laughs at that, she can’t help it. He’s still Ryan, still stupid, piss-taking, sarcastic Ryan, even after everything he’s been through.
“I can’t believe how well you look,” she says, and he grins.
“Aye, well, you should have seen me a few years ago. Adult nappies, surgical hoists, the whole shebang. Pretty sexy it were.”
“And how’s Bella?”
“She’s grand. She’s been my lifeline, her and the girls.”
The girls. Of course. She had almost forgotten that Ryan has two little girls now.
“How old are they?”
“Mabel’s almost four and Lulu’s two. Mabel was born right after I had the stroke. Bella always said I couldn’t stand to share the”—he pauses, frowns infinitesimally as though searching for a word, and then his brow clears and he finishes—“limelight. Had to make it all about me.”
“Will and I are expecting,” Hannah says. She pats her stomach, feeling like a performative fool, but she still can’t quite get over it—the fact that it’s there, their baby, a melting pot of her and Will growing inside her. “Did you know?”
“Aye, Hugh said. Congratulations. They’ll pull your life apart and stick it back together with vomit and shit, but it’ll still be more beautiful than you ever thought possible.”
Hannah smiles at that, and Ryan smiles back, a little sadly this time. Maybe he’s thinking of how their own lives were ripped into little pieces after April’s death.
“I didn’t know you kept up with Hugh,” she says, as much to change the subject as anything.
“Yeah, it’s funny, I wouldn’t have put us down for pen pals neither, and I never heard from him much after college. But he got in touch after my stroke. He’s been a good mate.”
Better than you and Will. The words hang in the air between them. Ryan doesn’t say it—he wouldn’t reproach them like that, and Hannah knows it—but it doesn’t stop it from being true.
Hannah swallows. She needs to bring it up—she can’t stand the way they’re both dancing around her betrayal, not mentioning the years of silence, the lack of visits.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “Ryan, I’m really sorry we never came to see you. And I know Will feels bad about it too. It was just—I don’t know. I was running from everything about Pelham for so long. It’s why I ended up in Edinburgh. And I don’t want you to think Will and Hugh and I formed this cozy little clique up there, it wasn’t like that. Will came to find me. I don’t think I would ever have sought him out off my own bat—it was all just too painful. And Hugh…” She stops. She has never thought about why Hugh ended up in Scotland. “I guess Hugh followed Will,” she says finally. “Or I think he had some kind of surgical residency there at one point—maybe he just liked it there. But I never meant to drop you the way I did—or Em. It was more like…” She stops again, groping for the words. “More like I was just trying to survive.”
“It’s okay,” Ryan says softly. He puts out his good hand, touches hers, very gently. “We’ve all been a bit rubbish. I mean, how often did I call you before my stroke? Once, maybe twice? And that was only to tell you about the wedding—way to make it all about me, huh. And yeah, I’m not gonna lie, things have been a bit shit here. But it’s not like you were having a great time either. It’s not just you—I’ve barely spoken to Em since uni. We let each other down. We all did.”
Hannah nods. There are tears pricking at the backs of her eyes. She wants to tell him how much she’s missed him, how often she’s thought of him and Em, but she can’t find the words.
“Do you think it was because of April?” she manages at last. “The stroke, I mean? I’ve always wondered.”
“What, the…” Ryan pauses as if he’s searching for a word. “The stress, you mean?”
Hannah nods. Ryan shrugs lopsidedly, one shoulder rising more than the other.
