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“Yes. I mean—not everything. Obviously no one was going to tell a twelve-year-old girl the grisly details, but they couldn’t stop me listening at doors and so on. There was a lot of stuff that didn’t come out in court—the drugs, the pregnancy—”
Hannah catches her breath at that. So it’s true?
“How—um—oh my God.” She lets out a shaking breath. “I’m sorry, this is a lot. So, she definitely was pregnant?”
“Or had been very recently,” November says. “I was never quite sure which. Whichever it was, there were enough hormones for them to trip a blood test. And I think they tried to do DNA matches to determine a father, but I’m not sure if they ever pinned it down. I don’t know if they just didn’t swab enough people or if they couldn’t get enough DNA from April to get a good profile.”
Hannah shuts her eyes. Suddenly it all makes sense. She remembers the police coming around, swabbing her, Will, Ryan, and all the others. “Elimination DNA,” they called it, along with the fingerprints. At the time Hannah had assumed it was simply to rule out all the people who had been in April’s room for innocent reasons. Now she wonders if there was more to it than that, with the boys at least.
“So it wasn’t—” Her voice is croaky, and she is not sure she can bear to say it, but she has to. “It—it wasn’t… Will’s?”
November shakes her head sympathetically, but her eyes are sad.
“I’m sorry, I don’t know. I don’t think so, or I think we would have heard. But I just don’t know for certain. You could probably go to the police and ask—I don’t know if they would tell you, though.”
But now it’s Hannah’s turn to shake her head. She knows she won’t do that. Not just because the police are unlikely to hand out confidential information on a closed case. Not just because of what it might unleash if she admitted her fears, admitted that all these years later she is becoming more and more uncertain of whether she pointed the finger at the right man. But because she is afraid of what she might find out.
“Wh-what about your parents?” she asks now. “Would they know?”
“I doubt it,” November says. “My father died—did you know that?”
“I didn’t,” Hannah says. She bites her lip. “I’m so sorry.”
“Massive heart attack two years ago. He was never really right after April’s death, to be honest. She was his firstborn, his golden girl, you know? I don’t think he ever got over what happened. And my mother… well, perhaps April told you. She has… problems. Even before April died. Her memory isn’t reliable at the best of times and she’s done her best to block all this out. I don’t think she would agree to talk about it, and even if she did, I don’t think you could trust anything she told you.”
“Oh God, November, I’m so sorry,” Hannah says. “That’s so difficult.”
November gives a little shrug as if to say, What can you do?
“And… drugs?” Hannah asks. “You said the autopsy showed up drugs in her system? Did that have something to do with her death?”
“No, I don’t think so,” November says. She sighs. “From what I could tell it was mostly that stuff, what’s it called—they give it to kids with ADHD… dex something.”
“Dextroamphetamine,” Geraint says quietly, and November nods.
“That’s it. They found a stash of it in her room at home, as well as at college. I don’t think there was any suggestion that someone gave it to her covertly, or she overdosed. She was taking it deliberately, methodically, and for quite a long time. I’d say she was well aware of the toxicity.”
“An ADHD medication?” Hannah is puzzled. “But that makes no sense. Why would April be taking that? She didn’t have ADHD.”
“It’s sometimes used as a study aid,” Geraint says. “They gave it to air force pilots in the war, to help them concentrate and stay awake. Kids use it to pull all-nighters, study for exams and so on. But it’s not easy to get hold of—you have to have a prescription because it can be extremely addictive if you’re using it recreationally. It’s highly controlled.”
“Oh God.” Suddenly so many things click into focus. April’s frequent red-eye essays, her seemingly superhuman ability to act all week and then study all night. Hannah remembers her own complaints about her essay, April holding out her hand, two pills in her palm, Hannah’s puzzled What are they—like, NoDoz or something? And the way April laughed, and said dryly, NoDoz for grown-ups.
“What do they look like?” she asks Geraint, and he googles for a moment and then holds out his phone. Hannah’s heart sinks. It’s them. It’s the capsules filled with little beads that April offered her so long ago.
“I knew she was taking those,” she says. “I just didn’t know what they were. But—that doesn’t have anything to do with her death, does it?”
November shakes her head.
“I don’t think so. I assume that’s why it never came out at the trial. The pregnancy stuff, though… I mean, I’m surprised Neville’s defense lawyer never brought it up.”
“I think they thought it was too risky,” Geraint says. “I mean, they had a good shot with reasonable doubt—there wasn’t anything concrete to tie him to April’s death apart from having been seen coming out of the building around the time she was killed. But he did badly in the witness box.”
Hannah nods. She remembers hearing about this. First, Neville had denied being in the room at all—had claimed that he had simply been checking something in the building. But halfway through cross-examination he’d become flustered and changed his story—confronted with fingerprints on the inside doorknob, he had abruptly admitted that he had been in the room. But he said that he had simply been bringing up the weekly parcel from Hannah’s mum, and that April had let him in. He claimed they’d had a pleasant chat, which Hannah found implausible in itself, and that he had left her alive and well just a few minutes later.
That had sealed his fate. By John Neville’s account, he had seen April alive at 11:00 p.m. Hannah and Hugh had discovered her dead body just a few minutes later—and they’d had a clear view of the entrance for the whole time. There had been absolutely no opportunity for anyone else to enter staircase 7. It was Neville, or no one.
Or… was it?
