AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“What are you hoping to find?”
The voice comes from behind her and she swings round, to see Emily standing there, hands on hips.
“How do you mean?” Hannah asks. For a minute she’s unsure whether Emily means here in Oxford, or here in her house. Was she accusing Hannah of snooping? “What am I hoping to find in Oxford? Or just generally?”
“At Pelham, I suppose I meant. But yes, generally. Are you looking for something specific?”
“Not really,” Hannah says. She exchanges a quick glance with November. They haven’t discussed how much to tell Emily. The story they are presenting to Dr. Myers is one they have agreed on—November got in touch with Hannah asking about memories of her sister, and Hannah agreed to show her around Pelham and contact a few friends. But they never spoke about Emily. On the one hand, Hannah has an instinct to hug her agenda to herself. But on the other, Will, Hugh, and Ryan know that she has been digging into the past. Does it really make sense to keep Emily in the dark?
“The truth is…” She stops, glances again at November. November says nothing; her expression is supportive, but Hannah can’t read anything more from it. She half wishes November would mouth Go on, or step in with a cover story.
“The truth is,” she begins again, “I’ve started to wonder. About April’s death. Ever since that reporter got in touch.”
“Fuck.” Emily puts her hand to her forehead. “I knew I shouldn’t have told you about him. Was it me set you wondering? Because if it was—”
“No, no, not really,” Hannah says. “I mean, you were the first person to tell me about Geraint, but if I’m honest—” She stops, trying to think how to phrase it. “When I met him, after I met him, I realized that a lot of the stuff he was saying—they were doubts I’d been having too. I just hadn’t admitted it to myself.”
“Wait, so you think he’s right?” Emily looks genuinely shocked. “Han—I told you about Geraint to warn you he was sniffing around, not sign you up to his agenda. He’s just another conspiracist. These journalists—they all want to believe their pet theory is right so they can write their magnum opus, April: MY TRUTH, and get a Netflix true-crime documentary off the back of it. The evidence was there, Neville was convicted. It’s not your fault if his defense didn’t do their job.”
“It’s not that,” Hannah says, slightly nettled. “But Geraint’s come up with genuinely new information. He’s told me stuff I had no idea about.”
“Like what?” Emily says skeptically.
“Like—” Hannah begins, and then she pauses. Like the fact that April sent Ryan a positive pregnancy test was what she had been going to say. But the words feel like a betrayal of Ryan’s trust in her. He and Emily may not be together anymore—but this is no small thing she’s about to reveal. Does Hannah really have the right to blurt all this out without consulting Ryan?
And yet Emily is her friend too. She has the right to know.
Hannah bites her lip, trying to think how to phrase it. How do you tell someone their boyfriend was cheating on them for a whole year, and may have had a solid motive for murder?
“Yes?” Emily prods. “I’m fascinated to hear this journalist’s conspiracy theories, but I’m finding it quite hard to imagine what kind of ‘evidence’ would counteract an eyewitness.”
Maybe it’s the audible air quotes she puts around evidence, and the implied dig at Hannah for taking Geraint’s concerns seriously, but something about Emily’s tone prickles at Hannah, in spite of herself. She hears Hugh’s voice in her head, reciting April’s words: She said it was Emily’s fault for being so stuck up and pleased with her own intellect.
“Well, for one thing,” Hannah says, her voice level, “I had no idea that April played a trick on you right before she was killed.”
It wasn’t what she’d been intending to say—but it is said now, and there’s no taking it back. Emily’s mouth has compressed into a thin, grim line, and she folds her arms and stares at Hannah.
“What exactly are you implying?”
“Nothing,” Hannah says uncomfortably. “I mean—look, none of us were ever suspects, you know that. We had no opportunity. But if she was doing that to you—who else might she have pissed off? It sounds like she was on a tear that last week. She was pranking everyone.”
“Everyone except you,” Emily says a little coldly. She is surveying Hannah in a way Hannah doesn’t quite like. She had forgotten how icily direct Emily could be, the way she ignores the polite woolly conventions that most people use to cushion discomfiting truths. Emily has never shied away from saying something because it was awkward or painful.
“Yes…” Hannah says, rather slowly. “Everyone except me.”
“The girl making eyes at her boyfriend,” Emily says.
“Hang on,” November says, but Hannah holds out a hand to say, No, I can handle this.
“I beg your pardon?” she says to Emily.
“I’m just saying,” Emily says with a shrug. She’s recovered herself now, and she gives a little laugh and moves down to the other end of the room, where there are olives and breadsticks laid out on the table. “If we’re chucking motives about, it was pretty obvious, those last few weeks. You could practically hear the swelling orchestral chords whenever Will looked at you. And so what, yes, I was pissed off at her. That A-level stunt she pulled was vile, and the planning that she’d put into it—I’m sorry,” she says, turning to November. “I know she was your sister, and I don’t want to speak ill of the dead. But when you think someone is your friend and then they do something like that, and you realize that the whole time you’ve been there, supporting them, having coffee with them, sharing drinks, they’ve been plotting how to fuck you up—it leaves a bad taste in your mouth, do you know what I mean?”
“It’s okay,” November says. She smiles a little sadly. “I have no illusions about April. I loved her—I still do. But I know the person she was. She could be incredibly kind, but she wasn’t always.”
“No, she wasn’t,” Emily says, rather shortly. She puts down her glass a little too hard so that the wine slops, and then disappears again into the kitchen. Hannah makes an oh my god gesture to November, putting her head in her hands and miming her own stupidity at putting Emily’s back up.
“Should I tell her?” she whispers, under cover of the clank of pots and pans. “About Dr. Myers?”
