There is a long, long silence. So long that Hannah looks at her screen to check that they’re still connected, that the train hasn’t swept her into a dead spot. But the line is still open. Hugh is still there. And then he speaks.
“I heard something, that morning, when I got back to my room.”
“What do you mean you heard something? Someone told you something?”
“No, through the wall. I heard something. Someone. Moving around.”
For a minute a surge of irritation flushes through Hannah. It’s like he’s speaking in code, beating around the bush, expecting her to understand what he’s saying when she has no idea. What does he mean he heard someone? And through what wall?
“You mean you heard someone in the room next to yours?”
“Yes,” Hugh says, and his voice is almost vibrating with urgency. It’s as if he’s begging her to understand what he is saying without forcing him to say it. “At two a.m. Through the wall.”
And then she understands. Everything goes cold, a prickling sensation running up and down her spine like ice water. She has to hold on to the grab rail beside the door.
She can hear Hugh saying something on the other end of the phone, but she can’t make out the words through the rushing in her ears.
“Hannah?” she hears, as if from very far away. “Hannah, are you all right? Say something?”
“I’m okay,” she manages, though her voice is cracked and strangled, and she can barely form the words. Her hand holding the phone feels numb and cold, like a mannequin’s, stiff and plastic. “I’m… thank you, Hugh. I have to go.”
And then she hangs up.
She sits there, staring out the window at the rushing countryside, feeling the chill horror trickling through her veins.
She wants to wail. No, no, no, no, no.
But she cannot. She can’t say anything. She knows why Hugh didn’t want to spell this out. She knows what he wanted to say but couldn’t bear to put into words.
She knows why he warned her to be prepared for what might happen.
For that night, the night that April was murdered, when he finally went back to his room in Cloade’s at two in the morning, he heard someone through the wall, his neighbor, walking around.
But Hugh was on the end of the block. He only had one neighbor. And that neighbor… that neighbor was Will.
AFTER
By the time the train draws into Edinburgh, Hannah has almost convinced herself that Hugh is wrong. Or perhaps she misunderstood him.
It’s not possible that Will was in college that night. To begin with, he would have been spotted. The side gates closed at 9:00 p.m., and the main gate was shut at 11:00, so he would have had to knock and be admitted by a porter. And okay, yes, he could have climbed the wall, just as she did so many years ago, but it would have been child’s play for the police to break an alibi resting on such a fragile lie.
And second, second, she just can’t believe that he could have kept something like this secret for over ten years. Not just from the police but from his family, from the college, from her.
Someone would have seen him, at breakfast when he was supposed to be in Somerset. On the train when he was supposed to be at home.
Maybe someone did see him, a little voice whispers in her head. Or heard him, at least. Maybe that someone was Hugh.
No, it’s not possible. It’s not possible.
But then she thinks of Will. Of his voice on the phone yesterday, uncertain, hesitant, as if trying to convince himself. I’m sure you’re right. If he’s got an alibi, he’s got an alibi.
He was talking about Myers, about the police assumption that the conference put him out of the picture. But now Hannah can’t help but wonder what that long pause really meant. Was he trying to find a way to tell her something that he has never been able to confess?
She remembers his endless, halting Typing… Typing… on WhatsApp last night. Was this what Will was trying and failing to find a way to tell her?
She is still turning the matter over and over in her head as the doors open and passengers begin to spill out onto the platform. She’s so wrapped up in her thoughts as she exits the barrier and begins dragging her case towards the ramp that she doesn’t even hear the voice calling her name at first.
“Hannah… Hannah!”
Somehow that last one gets through and she stops, looking around to see if it’s directed at her, or just someone calling their kid—though the voice is familiar. It sounds like—but no. That’s not possible. It sounds like—