Maybe he’s not even there. Maybe the ringer is switched off. Maybe he’s drowning his sorrows in a pub, and can’t hear her call, and it’s already gone to voicemail.
Please, please, please. I’m sorry, Will, I’m sorry I doubted you.
“… what you’re going to say to him?” Hugh is asking. He’s frowning.
“I guess you’re right,” Hannah says. Her heart is thudding so hard her belly is shaking with it. It feels like a miracle that Hugh can’t hear it, can’t see how scared she is, but his eyes are on the road. “I just wish—oh God, I just wish we hadn’t left it that way. He must be frantic—wondering where I am, whether I’m safe.” Oh God, please don’t hang up, Will. Please hear what I’m trying to tell you, please stay on the line. She shifts in her seat, feeling the baby pressing against her pelvis.
“I know,” Hugh says, and his voice cracks with what sounds almost like realistic emotion. “I know, Hannah. God, I mean, I know it’s not the same, but—he’s my best friend, you know? Was.” There is a long silence.
Please don’t hang up.
“How long, do you think?” Hannah says at last. “Until we get to the police? We seem to have been driving for ages. I feel like we must be halfway to Berwick.” Are you listening, Will?
“Oh, nowhere near there,” Hugh says with a laugh, but he sounds a little uneasy. He taps his fingers on the steering wheel. The wipers swish back and forth with hypnotic rhythm. “Why don’t you have a nap? I can wake you when we get to the station.”
Hannah nods. But if she hadn’t been sure before, those words would have made her so. Because no one could possibly think she was tired—she’s done nothing but sleep since she drank that tea. Another surge of fear runs through her. She rests her arm against the window and stares out into the night, looking, desperately, for something, anything to give Will a clue about her whereabouts.
And then it comes. A pub, looming out of the darkness.
She blinks, strains her eyes. She cannot afford to miss the sign, but the writing is small, the rain is so hard, and the sign isn’t illuminated… and then it flashes past and she has caught it.
“The Silver Star…” she says shakily, trying to make it sound as if she is just thinking aloud. “What a pretty name for a pub…”
She yawns, hoping it sounds convincing. The groggy stupor from earlier is wearing off, the adrenaline of fear pumping through her body, pulling her forcibly out of that pit of exhaustion, but she has to pretend to Hugh that she is more tired than she is. He cannot know.
Did you hear that, Will? Are you even there?
A sob rises inside her because after all, maybe this whole thing is hopeless. There’s every chance Will’s phone went to voicemail, her call timed out, and she’s talking to no one at all. And then she realizes something: The phone in her hand is growing warm, and not just from her touch. It is hot, the kind of heat that builds up when she’s on a long call.
Will is there. He is listening.
And maybe he is coming.
AFTER
It is the third pothole that does it, jolting Hannah so hard that her head cracks painfully against the car window and, with a sinking feeling, she realizes this is it. It is time to stop pretending. She can no longer feign sleep or ignorance because no one, not even Hugh, could believe that Hannah would trust this track.
“Where are we, Hugh?” She is, oddly, a little proud that her voice comes out steadily, without shaking, in spite of how afraid she is.
“What do you mean?” Hugh says, and then he looks across at her, and sees something in her face, palely lit by the dashboard display and the headlights reflecting off the rain, and he sighs. “Oh dear. I suppose it was too much to hope…”
He trails off, and Hannah finishes the sentence for him.
“Too much to hope that even someone as stupid as me would believe this was the route to the police station?”
“Hannah,” Hugh chides her gently. “That’s unfair. I never thought you stupid.”
“Oh really.” Her voice is bitter. “Not even when I went to court and gave evidence against an innocent man?”
“The evidence was pretty compelling, to be fair…”
“Not even when I came to you sobbing, believing that my own husband was a murderer?”
“Well, you had cause…”
“I had cause because you gave it to me, Hugh! Why? Why Will of all people? How could you? He’s your best friend.”