“Oh, Han, no,” Hugh says uncomfortably, and then he holds out his arms, awkwardly, and almost in spite of herself Hannah stumbles into them. Hugh is not one of nature’s huggers. He is too tall and bony to be comfortable, too physically ungainly. But he is good, and kind, and he is Hugh. They stand, locked together in Hugh’s hallway, Hannah’s bump intruding uncomfortably between them, and she bawls like a child into the embroidered silk lapel of Hugh’s dressing gown.
At last her sobs subside into gasps, and then hiccups, and then finally just shuddering breaths, and she gets a hold of herself and pulls away. As she wipes her eyes, and then her glasses, she realizes with a kind of shameful horror that she has slobbered all over what is probably a very expensive dry-clean-only garment.
“I’m sorry,” she says. Her voice is croaky. “I didn’t mean—oh God, your beautiful dressing gown. I’m so sorry, Hugh.” She sniffs and gulps. “Have you got a tissue?”
“Here,” Hugh says. She’s not sure where it came from, but he’s holding out a laundered linen square with HAB on one corner. Hannah looks at it doubtfully. Handkerchiefs in her house are made of paper. But at last she blows her nose and then, unsure what to do with it—she can hardly hand it back to Hugh—she puts it in her pocket, intending to slip it into the laundry hamper when she goes to the bathroom.
“Better?” Hugh says, and she nods. It’s both true and untrue. She needed that cry, badly, and she does feel better. It was cathartic in a way no talk could ever have been. But in another way, nothing is better. It’s just as awful and fucked up and unfixable as it was when she walked through the door to Hugh’s flat.
“Come into the living room, sit down,” Hugh says, “and then I’ll make you a cup of tea, and you can tell me all about it.”
* * *
SOME HALF HOUR LATER, HANNAH is sitting on Hugh’s white velvet couch, with her slippered feet tucked under her and a blanket around her legs, and Hugh has his head in his hands.
“So he admitted it?” he asks now, as if he can’t believe it. “He actually said he killed April?”
“Not in so many words,” Hannah says. The sentences feel unreal in her mouth. “But I asked him, and he said—” She stops, gulps, and forces herself on. “He said ‘What do you think?’ And then he laughed.”
“Oh my God,” Hugh says wretchedly. He looks up at Hannah, his face utterly bleak.
“I wish—God, I almost wish I’d never told you about the noises.”
Hannah shakes her head.
“Hugh, no. God, no. If it’s true—” But she stops at that. She can’t bring herself to say it. “Hugh,” she asks instead, knowing she is clutching at straws, “Hugh, was it definitely him? It couldn’t have been a scout or sound traveling through the walls or something?”
But Hugh shakes his head. He looks ten years older, as if he is still coming to terms with what he set in motion.
“No,” he whispers now. “It—it was him, Hannah. I heard him, through the wall, speaking to someone. It was Will.”
Hannah feels her last shred of hope snap. She feels as if she has been hanging on to a fraying rope for dear life, and that last fiber has just been severed.
He was there. He was really there. And he has lied about it for more than ten years—for the entirety of their relationship.
“Why didn’t you say anything before?” she manages. “Why didn’t you tell anyone?” She doesn’t mean it to sound as accusing as it comes out, but Hugh only shakes his head wretchedly, as if accepting any blame she wants to throw at him.
“Because he was my friend, Hannah.” He sounds broken. “And because I didn’t think it mattered. It was Neville—you saw him coming out of the staircase, we both did. There was no way anyone could have got up there between Neville leaving and us arriving—so did it really matter if Will arrived a few hours before he said he did? And besides, no one asked. They never said, Did you hear your best friend coming home at a time that totally breaks his alibi? I would never have lied outright, Hannah, never. But to go to the police with that—when we all thought Neville was guilty…”
He stops, takes off his glasses, covers his face. It must, Hannah reflects dazedly, be almost as much of a shock for him as it is for her. She has lost her husband. Hugh has lost his best friend.
She feels the tears welling up again, and grits her teeth. She can’t keep bursting into sobs. She has to get a grip.