“Well, let’s practice something else,” he murmurs, his lips warm and soft against the ticklish skin of her side. And Hannah slides down beneath the duvet and somehow the heat, and the comfort, and the reassuring feel of Will’s skin against hers succeed in driving out the demons… for a while, at least.
* * *
AFTERWARDS, WILL MAKES COFFEE FOR them both, and Hannah yawns and stretches, working out the kinks the long train journey yesterday left in her spine and hips.
“What do you fancy for breakfast?” Will calls through from the other room.
“What have we got?”
She hears the sound of the fridge opening.
“Um… nothing, basically.”
“I could murder a bacon sandwich,” Hannah says. “I had an amazing one at the hotel in Oxford, and ever since then I’ve had this craving for another.”
Will comes into the bedroom, holding her coffee.
“I’ll go to the shop.”
“You don’t have to do that,” Hannah says, taking the coffee. “I was only thinking aloud.”
“Now you’ve said it”—he throws himself down beside her, kisses her cheek—“you’ve got me craving one too. I can’t rest now.”
“It’s too early.” Hannah looks at her phone on the bedside table. “It’s only… quarter past seven. The Sainsbury’s mini-market doesn’t open until eight on Sunday.”
“I’ll go for a run,” Will says. “Get the bacon on my way back. Can you last that long?”
She smiles.
“Yes, I can last that long. See you in an hour or so.”
* * *
AFTER WILL IS GONE, HANNAH opens up her book, but she can’t settle. As soon as he left, her doubts began to creep back, like shadows wavering at the edge of a candle’s glow, rushing in when the lamp is taken away. Reading doesn’t help, her mind is too full, and in the end she gives up and heaves herself out of bed.
As she opens the wardrobe to grab her clothes, she catches sight of herself in the full-length mirror inside. Without her glasses everything has a fuzzy, softened quality, but even so her reflection arrests her and she stands for a moment, side on, just looking at the alien shape of her belly, at the reddish stretch marks creeping around from her hips. The air is chill, in spite of the radiator, and the baby quivers inside her. It’s impossible for her child to be cold, but still, Hannah shivers in sympathy and pulls on a T-shirt and sweatpants.
In the kitchen she makes herself another coffee—decaf this time—and sits by the window, looking down at the street, chewing her thumbnail. It’s still almost dark, and she imagines Will running alongside the road past the park, the pavement wet and slick with overnight rain, the reflective stripes on his running jacket shining back at the cars as they pass.
At the thought of him, running through the morning darkness to get the bacon that she was craving, her heart hurts. How can she be having these doubts? This is Will—who wrote to her, month after month, year after year, even when she was too sad and broken to reply. Will, who came to find her in Edinburgh, and in doing so turned the city from a place of exile into a home. Will, who she’s argued with over flat-pack furniture, and laughed with over bad films, and shared a thousand candlelit dinners with—from a single Pot Noodle in their very first flat to Michelin-starred restaurants on their honeymoon. This is Will—whose child she is carrying.
And yet, in the silence of the flat, she cannot stop thinking of Hugh’s words.
This is worse than any of her sleepless nights over Neville, because whichever way this falls out, she is a terrible person. If Will has been hiding something from her for all these years, she is married to a liar and maybe a murderer. But if he’s innocent, what kind of wife does that make her? One willing to believe the man she loves might be a killer just because of a few sounds in the night?
She has to find out one way or another. But the thought of confronting Will on such a tiny shred of proof makes her feel sick. Were you in Pelham College the night April died? She just can’t imagine saying the words—destroying her marriage on the basis of something Hugh may or may not have even heard.
Then it comes to her. Ryan.
Ryan’s room was on the other side of Will’s. There is a strong chance he would have seen or heard Will arriving. And if Ryan remembers Will turning up at 4 p.m. that Sunday with his rucksack on and his rail card in his pocket, well, that is all the proof she needs that Hugh was mistaken.
Hannah glances at the clock on her phone. 7:35. Early, but not ridiculously so, not for someone with two small kids.