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Hannah nods, though the truth is that she doesn’t know. She never went back to Pelham. Hugh, Will, Emily, and Ryan, they all returned—shaken and traumatized, but they returned—and eventually they all graduated. But not Hannah.
Instead she moved back to her mother’s house. She would return to Pelham eventually, she told herself. Take a year out, perhaps. But then a year turned into two. Going back to Pelham became moving on to the University of Manchester. Or Durham. Anywhere else.
And then gradually that goal disappeared too, fading into the distance, along with the memories of her friends, her essays, and the girl she used to be. Only Will remained. Will, whose letters kept arriving, regular as clockwork, in his distinctive spiky handwriting, telling her about May balls and end-of-term parties, about rowing on the river and fluffing exams, about essays and tutors and rags and, eventually, about graduation ceremonies and MAs and postgraduate training.
She had thought at the time that nothing could survive April’s death, that she had been burned out by it, left a shell of the girl who had gone up to Pelham so hopefully that bright October day. And for a while that had been true—or almost true. Because one thing had survived. Her love for Will. It was the only thing that had endured.
“So… do you think it was Neville, then?” she forces herself to ask. She picks up her glass and takes a sip.
Hugh shrugs.
“I don’t know. I thought so at the time but now you’re making me wonder. I mean it’s not like—”
He stops.
“It’s not like?” Hannah prompts. Hugh, unexpectedly, flushes, a splotch of bright color appearing high on his cheekbones. He tosses his hair out of his eyes with that nervous tic she remembers so well from the very first time they met. He looks embarrassed.
“What were you going to say?” Hannah says, frowning.
“Oh, I feel like a shit,” Hugh says. He looks really pained now, but Hannah shakes her head.
“Go on, just say it. We’re in a safe ‘no judgment’ space here.” She puts air quotes around “no judgment” and Hugh laughs shakily, as she had intended, breaking the tension a little.
“Oh… if you must. Well, look, all I was going to say was… it’s not like she didn’t have her enemies.”
“Enemies?” Whatever Hannah had expected Hugh to say, it wasn’t this, and she looks up at him, surprised. “What do you mean, enemies?”
“Well, I mean. You know. Her constant pranking. It… it pissed people off, you know?”
“They were just jokes—” Hannah says, but Hugh raises an eyebrow, cutting her off.
“Jokes to her, maybe, but not always very funny to the person being pranked. Remember how annoyed Ryan was when she made him flush his weed? And the call to the Master? I don’t think he found that very amusing. I got off pretty lightly in comparison. That stupid mobile phone thing, and a blow-up sex doll in my bed one night—God, I had a job smuggling that out without everyone seeing. It’s amazing we all let her get away with it.”
There’s an edge to his voice that surprises Hannah. When they were at university he was always so meek and pliable, passing everything off as a joke with a good-natured laugh. She never thought of Hugh as really minding anything. But now she remembers—a thousand tiny moments, a thousand small cuts, the way April bossed him around, took the piss out of him. She remembers even that very first night, Hugh trying to excuse himself gracefully from playing poker, and April’s flat Shut up, Hugh. Nobody cares. She remembers Hugh’s expression as he sat back down, a kind of tense, mutinous fury.
“Hugh…” she says slowly. “Hugh, did you actually… like April?”
There is a long silence. Then Hugh sighs, as if he is releasing something long pent up.
“Truthfully, I didn’t. I would never say that to anyone else but you. But I didn’t think she was a particularly nice person, and she certainly wasn’t good for Will—she made him absolutely miserable that last term. I do get why everyone else fell for her. She was so funny, and she could be incredibly sweet when she wanted to. But some of her antics were pretty cruel. Think about what she did to Emily.”
“What she did to Emily?” Hannah echoes, puzzled. “I don’t think she did anything to Emily, did she?”
“Didn’t you know?” Hugh frowns, and then his expression changes. “Ah, no, it would have been right before… well. Right before.”
He doesn’t need to spell it out. Hannah knows what he means.
“What did she do?” she asks.
“It was another letter one,” Hugh says, a little reluctantly. “Similar to the Nokia one she pulled on me. Only this time she pretended…” He takes a breath. “She pretended that Emily’s A-level results had been called into question. She wrote this letter—it was very convincing, Emily showed it to me. It was on headed paper and everything, I have no idea how April made it look so good. These days it would be a cinch, of course, with scanner apps on everyone’s phone, but back then, she must have worked quite hard to make it look official. It said it was from the exam board and that Emily’s answers had been found to correspond very closely with another girl’s at her school. It basically accused Emily of either cheating or feeding another student the answers.”
“Wow.” Hannah is taken aback. That really is cruel. She can see what Hugh means. It’s not even funny. Most of April’s jokes had at least a slight twist of humor to them, even if it didn’t seem that way to the recipient. But this… this just seems horrible. “How did Emily react?”
“Well, I only found out about it afterwards, so I’m not sure. But… I mean, you know Emily.”
Hannah nods slowly. She does indeed know Emily. And all of a sudden it comes to her, a memory as sharp and clear as a voice hissing in her ear—Emily, walking past the chapel on a frosty November evening, her voice ringing out as cold as the night air: If she tries any of that shit with me, I will end her.
“How did Emily find out?” Hannah says. “That it was a hoax, I mean?”
