She opens up WhatsApp, sends Ryan a message. Are you awake? Can you talk? I need to ask you something.
There’s a pause. The minutes tick by. Hannah goes into the bedroom to get dressed, but between every garment she finds herself checking to see if the two ticks have gone blue, showing Ryan’s read her message. Ten minutes later she is fully dressed, but they still remain stubbornly gray.
Any time is good she adds, not because it’s true, but just to make his phone ping again in the hopes that it will attract his attention. And this time it works. After a couple of seconds the checkmarks go blue, and Typing… appears at the top of the screen.
Sure. Is now good? We’re heading out to the park in a bit.
Hannah’s pulse quickens.
Now is great, she texts back. She glances at the clock: 7:51. Will can’t be back before 8:10 at the absolute earliest, even if he’s queuing at the door at 8:00. Shall I call you?
Hang on, Ryan texts back. Give me two secs, I’ll phone you.
Hannah goes back into the kitchen and waits. Her heart is thumping. Her fingers are numb and cold. Her mouth tastes of metal.
She paces up and down, staring at the screen.
And then at 7:56 her phone rings with a jangle that makes her jump and drop it, clattering to the tiles with a crack that sounds deeply ominous. Swearing, she crouches past her bump and picks it up. There’s a long silvery fissure across the screen with a shadow of something dark that seems to be seeping out across the LCD display, but it still works when she presses to accept the call.
“Ryan!” Her voice is breathless.
“Ey up, Hannah Jones.” She can hear cartoons in the background, Bella’s voice yelling at the girls to finish up their Weetabix. “How’s things, pet?”
“Good.” She wants to talk, procrastinate, put this off, but she can’t afford to. Will could be home very soon. She needs to spit this out. They can chat afterwards—if—
But she can’t think about that. Ryan has to give her the answer she’s hoping for. He has to.
“Listen, Ryan, I—I have a weird question.”
“Is it about how wheelchair sex works?”
“What?” She laughs at that, not meaning to, but so nervous that it comes out like a burst of tremulous hysteria.
“Ryan!” she hears Bella shouting from across the room. “I daresay you think you’re very funny, but the girls can hear you, you know, and you won’t think it’s so funny when they’re trotting that question out at nursery.”
“Sorry,” Ryan says, and she can hear the suppressed laughter, the old piss-taking, provoking Ryan in his voice. “Ignore me. Carry on. What was it you wanted to ask?”
“It’s about—” She swallows. She feels suddenly sick. Ryan’s friendly banter has somehow made this even harder. How can she explain what this means? “It’s about that night. When April—when April died.”
Ryan says nothing, but she senses rather than hears his nod down the phone.
“Someone said… someone told me…”
She hears April’s voice in her head, clear as if she were standing next to Hannah, fixing her with that icy blue gaze.
Spit. It. Out.
“Someone told me that Will was in college that night,” she says in a rush. “That he wasn’t in Somerset. Did you hear him come in?”
“What?” Ryan sounds stunned; whatever he was expecting, it plainly wasn’t this. “But… but what difference does it make? April was alive when Neville went up the stairs, and dead when she came down them. There’s no one else could have done it. You were the one who testified to that.”
“Ryan—” She’s trying to keep her voice calm, but there’s an edge of desperation that she knows Ryan must be able to hear. “Look, I don’t have time to go into it right now, but all I want to know is, did you see Will come home that night? Did you hear anyone in his room? His alibi for April’s death hinges on him not being in Oxford that night. Can you back that up, or can’t you?”
“I—” Ryan’s voice sounds uncertain. “I… I don’t know. I’d need to think. I didn’t see him come in… I guess the first time I saw him was… coming out of the shower? Around lunchtime?”
“Lunchtime on Sunday?” She tries to think. How long would it take to get from rural Somerset to Oxford, on a Sunday? Lunchtime is pushing it… but just about possible she guesses. “And before that? Did you hear anyone? In his room?”