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Think of the baby. Think of the baby.
“Hannah?” November says tentatively. “Hannah? Are you okay?”
“No. No, I’m not,” Hannah says harshly. Her fists are clenched. She has never, never been so angry at Will. At Will.
This is Will, she reminds herself. Will, who has loved her, waited for her, saved her from herself in so many ways since they were both just teenagers themselves.
And right now she hates him.
“What happened?”
“He wants me to pretend there’s nothing wrong,” she says shortly. “And I can’t. I wish I could but—” And then, realizing they are almost at the hotel, she says to the taxi driver, “Sorry, can you stop at that supermarket? I need to grab something.”
The driver pulls up outside a Tesco Metro and Hannah gets out. Her pulse is still racing, but she knows it will do her good to stretch her legs for a moment, walk off some of her anger, stretch her aching back. November gets out after her, her face worried.
“Hannah?”
“I just need to get some Gaviscon. I’ve got heartburn.”
“Okay,” says November, following her into the almost painful brightness of the little store. “But what did you mean, you can’t pretend nothing’s wrong?”
“I don’t know,” Hannah says. She grabs a basket and begins to walk the aisles, scanning for the pharmaceutical section. “I just—it was when we were in April’s room. I realized something. Something that made me think that perhaps…” She swallows. “Perhaps we’d all been looking at this the wrong way.”
“What do you mean?”
“It was when we were leaning out of the window,” Hannah says. She’s found the Gaviscon now, a box of pills rather than the liquid she’s used to, but it will have to do. She checks the label. Suitable for pregnancy. “I’d forgotten that April climbed down one time.”
“Yes, you told me,” November says, looking puzzled. “But I don’t see—”
Then she halts in her tracks, in the middle of the aisle. Her eyes are wide under the fluorescent lights.
“Wait, maybe I do. Are you thinking someone could have—”
She stops, as if she doesn’t want to say it.
“Someone could have killed April, and then climbed out the window,” Hannah finishes for her. She pays for the Gaviscon at a self-service till and then turns to face November. “We’ve all been focusing on the fact that no one could have got into the building after Neville left. But that’s not the issue. The issue is that no one could have got out. Or so we assumed. If Neville’s last sighting of April alive was correct, then Hugh and I had the staircase in view the whole time. But what if the killer didn’t use the stairs? What if he—or she—climbed out the window?”
“Hang on,” November says. They are walking to the exit now, and she runs her hands through her short hair, as if trying to cudgel her brains into action. “If someone was already in the set when Neville went up there, he would have seen them.”
“Not if whoever it was stayed in April’s bedroom. I’ve been thinking about this all evening—trying to piece it together, and it all fits. By Neville’s own account he never went farther than the living room.”
“So you’re saying—”
“I’m saying someone went up there to see April, probably with the intention of killing her. It wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment, crime-of-passion thing, or the students below would have heard an argument. It must have been planned, someone waiting for their chance to surprise her. So whoever it was lulled her into a false sense of security, and then while they were talking, Neville knocked. April went out to talk to him, and the killer stayed in the bedroom. Then they came out and killed her as soon as Neville shut the door.”
“But they couldn’t have known Neville would come up…” November says slowly. Hannah shakes her head.
“No, I don’t think that part was planned. I think it was just the killer’s good luck that Neville gave them the perfect alibi.”
“The timing would work…” They have reached the taxi and November opens the door and slides back inside. Her face, golden in the sulfurous yellow of the streetlamp, is troubled. “It would make sense of Neville’s story, and it would explain why you never saw anyone coming out after him. But… wait, how would whoever it was know not to take the stairs? They had no way of knowing you were waiting at the bottom.”
“I’ve been thinking about that,” Hannah says. She feels more than a little sick, and it has as much to do with what she is about to say as it does with the aftermath of her argument with Will. “And if I’m right, if the killer did escape down the drainpipe, then I think what must have happened is this: The killer knew they couldn’t afford to be seen coming down the stairs—so they would have waited until Neville was well clear to leave. They wouldn’t want to bump into him in the quad if he was still hanging around. So whoever it was, they probably killed April, then hung around by the window to check Neville was gone. By the time Neville came out of the building—”
“By that time, they would have seen you crossing the quad,” November finishes. Her face is pale. “Shit. You mean they saw you coming. They knew you’d be coming up the stairs, so they had no choice but to escape through the window.”
“I think so. The only other possibility is that they heard me coming up the stairs as they were finishing the”—she swallows, the word sticking in her throat—“finishing the job.”
“Oh my God.” November closes her eyes. The beam of a streetlamp passes over her face as they drive beneath it, illuminating the shape of her skull with ghostly beauty. In the half-light she looks so like April that Hannah almost cannot bear it. For a moment it is as if April has come back to haunt her with the specter of the mistakes she made—except that April has never left her. The voice in the crowd. The blond head weaving down a busy street. April has always been here, with her, trying to make her see.
