AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Come in,” calls a female voice with a slight Yorkshire accent, and Dr. Myers pushes on the door and enters, holding it with his hand so that Hannah and November can see past him. Inside there are two empty desks, a bunch of filing cabinets and box files, and a woman standing by the window putting on her coat.
“Oh, hello, Horatio. Can I help? I was just off.”
“Hello, Dawn. Dawn, this a former student of mine, Hannah.” He waves a hand at Hannah, and the woman nods politely, seemingly without recognition. “I was giving her a tour and she expressed a desire to see her old room. Are we disturbing you?”
“Not at all, as I say, I was just off. Would you lock up after me?”
“Of course.” Dr. Myers takes the keys she holds out and gives a little bow. “I will leave them at the lodge?”
“Ta, that’d be great. Sorry I can’t stay, got to pick up the kids from the minders. See you Monday! Nice to meet you ladies.”
“Have a good weekend, Dawn.”
Hannah stands back to let the woman leave, and then, after she’s gone, she steps forwards into the room, feeling the past close around her like a fist.
“You’ll find it’s rather different, I’m afraid,” Dr. Myers is saying, but his voice comes as if from a long way off, hardly breaking into her thoughts. This is where she, April, and the others played strip poker, the very first night they met. That mark on the windowsill was where April burned a hole in the oak with a lit joint. This—her hand touches the ancient wood of the doorway. This was her bedroom.
“Dr. Myers?” Her voice sounds odd in her own ears, too harsh and abrupt, but she can’t think of how else to ask. “Dr. Myers, could you—could you give us a moment alone?”
“Well I—” Dr. Myers flashes a look at the unattended laptops and files, and then, almost unwillingly, at the place on the floor where April’s body was found. There is a short silence as they all stare at the rug in front of the fire. Hannah wonders what he is thinking. Is he remembering what he did? Somehow here, in his presence, it’s harder to believe than ever. Surely there should be a sense of evil coming from a man who killed a young girl in cold blood? A sense of guilt?
But Hannah feels nothing. Nothing but the same immense sadness they all share.
Then, as if making up his mind, he nods.
“Yes. I’m sure I can do that. Take all the time you need.”
He backs out of the door, there is a moment’s silence as it closes behind him, and then Hannah hears November let out a trembling breath.
“So this is it.”
“This is it.”
“I—I wasn’t expecting to feel so—so, I don’t know—affected. I thought you might be shaken going back but I thought, I thought for me it would be just another room. But it—it’s not.”
“No,” Hannah says. “No, it’s not.”
And it isn’t. Although it looks like any back office, this is, after all, where April lived and laughed, studied and slept. And it’s where she died.
“Which was her room?”
“That one,” Hannah says, pointing to the door to the left of the window. She moves across to it, opens the door. She’s almost expecting to find it just as April left it, but of course it has been transformed into an office like the others. There’s a single desk, a rather bigger one than the two outside; a whiteboard covered with notes; and a lot more files. This room obviously belongs to the boss of the little department. “Her bed was there,” she says, pointing. “She had a desk there, and an armchair there—nonregulation. Nothing April had was ever just the standard college stuff, apart from the bed and the wardrobe. And it was a dump—it was always a dump. Clothes everywhere. Nail polish. Half-written essays.”
Pills, she thinks but doesn’t say.
November gives a shaky laugh.
“I can believe that. Her room at home was always awful. Our cleaner used to try to get it into some kind of order once in a while and then April would go raging around the house saying she couldn’t find anything. Which was a complete joke because she couldn’t find anything anyway—she was always leaving stuff strewn around.”
She moves across to the window, looking out at the rooftops of Pelham, past the steeple of the chapel, over the outer wall. In the distance the river is winding its way slowly, glittering in the last failing rays of sun.
“What a beautiful view.”
“Isn’t it? We were so lucky. And we didn’t even know it.”
Hannah moves across beside her, rests her hand on her chin.
“You know, one time, I came up the stairs and I heard April screaming in here. I came running into her room—”
