First the running feet, the porters and the college staff pushing her aside to climb to the stairs, Hugh standing in the hallway, saying in a cracked and desperate voice, “No one should touch her until the police get here, please, no one should touch anything in the room.”
Then the sound of sirens, uniformed police taping off the landing, the blue lights of the massed squad cars reflecting back from the building opposite on Pelham Street and flickering off the still, black waters of the river.
Hannah was interviewed by the police until the small hours, when she was given a parcel of her own belongings and allowed to go to bed in a strange room in Old Quad. The next day she was interviewed again, and then moved to a different room in Cloisters with better sound insulation, because her sobs the night before had kept her neighbors awake. Her parents arrived, and she cried in her mother’s arms, and moved rooms again, this time to sleep on a pull-out sofa in her mother’s hotel room. The college closed for the summer break, but Hannah was not allowed to leave Oxford, and neither was Hugh.
Emily, Ryan, and Will were interviewed but then told they were free to return home. None of them were suspects. Ryan had spent the whole night in the bar, with multiple witnesses including Hannah and Hugh. Will had been away from the college, at home in Somerset until Sunday morning. Emily had been in the college library all evening, and examination of her swipe card showed she hadn’t left until after 11 p.m., when she, along with the few other students still studying, had come out to see what was going on, why the police were hurrying across the forbidden lawns to New Quad.
Hannah and Hugh were different. They weren’t suspects—but they were witnesses. They had discovered April’s body, and Hannah had reported the prime suspect to the college authorities just days before April’s death.
Lying awake at night beside her sleeping mother, trying to reconstruct what had happened, what she could have done differently, what she might have missed, Hannah came to think of her existence as divided into two sharp halves—before and after.
Before, everything was fine. After, everything was broken.
* * *
HANNAH SAW APRIL’S PARENTS ONLY once. She was leaving the police station after giving yet another statement, and a tall blond woman with enormous sunglasses accompanied by a man in a gray suit straining across his gut walked past her, their faces stony and grim. She was never quite sure what made her do it, perhaps something about the shape of the woman’s mouth and chin, but she pulled out her phone and googled “April Clarke-Cliveden parents” and there they were. April’s mother, Jade Rider-Cliveden and her father, Arnold Clarke, former city banker turned private equity investor.
There were older shots, pictures of Mr. Clarke climbing into taxis, waving with a broad self-satisfied smile, or shaking hands after a successful business deal; photos of Mrs. Clarke-Cliveden entering a spa, or leaving Harrods, shooting daggers at the photographer. But the one that held Hannah’s attention was the most recent—one plainly taken after news of April’s death had been broken. Their faces stared out at her from the search page, snapped by some opportunistic paparazzo as they hurried into a waiting car. They looked like people in a waking nightmare—and she knew how they felt, for she was trapped in the same bad dream.
Part of her wanted to hurry after them, tell them how sorry she was, ask if they were okay—though that was clearly stupid, for how could they be okay? Their child had died, the worst thing that could happen to any parent.
But she could not do it. She stood, paralyzed, watching them until the doors of the police station closed after them and they disappeared.
Now, more than a decade later, Hannah wonders.
She wonders what happened to Mr. and Mrs. Clarke-Cliveden. She wonders how April’s mother, that fragile fuckup April talked about so dismissively, had coped with the death of her child. She wonders if April’s father was as strong and as self-centered as April had believed. Had he picked himself up and carried on, making money, running his businesses? Or had his world fallen apart?
As Hugh walks her to the bus stop, waves her goodbye, and she turns her head to watch him, standing there under the streetlight with the rain pattering around him, she wonders.
AFTER
Hannah is still wondering when she wakes the next day. She lies there under the warm covers next to Will, thinking about April, about her parents, and about the conversation with Hugh last night.
It is Saturday—Will’s day off, but not hers—and she is getting quietly out of bed, trying not to wake him, when he rolls over.