But Hannah shook her head. She couldn’t leave Edinburgh, not with Will so sick, not even in the early days when all she could do was sit by his bed and watch his eyes flickering restlessly beneath closed lids. Still less once he woke up enough to miss her presence.
“And how were Hugh’s parents?” November asks now, dragging her back to the present and Hugh’s funeral. “Was it weird?”
“Oh God, November, it was so weird. I just…” Her throat fills with tears at the memory of Hugh’s mother’s fragile bewilderment, his father’s stiff, brittle courage. “I had no idea what to say. He was their only child, their everything. What can you say?”
“And they didn’t… they didn’t throw any light on… why?” November asks.
“No,” Hannah says sadly. “I mean… I didn’t ask them. But they clearly loved him so much. I keep thinking about that last conversation I had with him at Pelham, before April died. When Hugh walked me back across the quad and talked about his father, and how proud he was of getting in to study medicine in his dad’s footsteps… it just… it kind of breaks my heart a little.”
“April always said he didn’t belong at Pelham,” November says. She sighs. “She told me once… how did she put it? Something about giving him a leg up, but it wouldn’t do him any good in the end if he couldn’t keep up.”
“Giving him a leg up?” Hannah is puzzled. “But April didn’t study medicine, how could she possibly have helped Hugh?”
“I don’t know,” November says. “I think a friend of hers helped people with their exams or something? Some kind of tutor maybe?”
Hannah’s breath seems to stick in her throat. April’s voice comes to her, as clearly as if she’s on the other end of the line, with November. Oh, that! I had an ex at Carne who made a pretty good living taking people’s BMAT for them.
And suddenly she knows.
It’s like the last few boxes of a sudoku, with almost every grid completed so that the remaining numbers simply slot in, as easily as one, two, three.
One. Hugh’s desperation to follow in his GP father’s footsteps.
Two. April’s leg up.
Three. The way Hugh had never quite felt up to the work at Pelham.
What was it Hugh had said? Chin up, and we’ll go easy on you in the exams. And Emily’s dry retort, just a few weeks ago but it feels like a lifetime now: Ain’t that the truth. There’s no way I deserved a first, and I’m pretty sure Hugh wouldn’t even have passed if it wasn’t for April.
So many small things made sense now. Hugh’s shocked horror that first night, at finding April in the dining hall. The way April ordered him around, made him fetch and carry, forced him to come to her play, even the night before his most important exam. Why did Hugh keep saying yes? Hannah had never understood that. But now it made sense. Hugh literally could not afford to say no.
And finally… the pills. The innocent little capsules on April’s bedside table, half-colored, half-clear. They had never figured out where April was getting those—it was before anyone knew about Silk Road and all the other darknet market sites. Back then, you had to know someone with access to a prescription pad. NoDoz for grown-ups, but not NoDoz at all. Stronger. Much stronger. Just as April had said to Hugh, that night at the theater. Sod flowers. You should have brought something stronger than that, Hugh… Just what the doctor ordered, am I right?
“Hannah?” November is saying now, on the other end of the phone. “Hannah? Are you still there?”
“Yes,” she says. Her throat is dry, and she swallows against the obstruction. “Yes, yes, I’m still here. I think I know. I think I know what happened. Hang on.” The taxi is pulling up to the mews, juddering over the cobbles, and she leans forward and pays the driver with her new, uncracked phone, and slides out to stand in the drizzling rain as the car drives off.
She feels a coldness sink over her as November says, “Hannah?”
“I’m still here,” Hannah says. The rain is running down the back of her neck. “November, I think I know why Hugh killed April.”
“Wait, what, you know? But just a second ago you were saying—”
“Yes, I know, but it was what you just said—about April giving him a leg up. She told me once, she told me that she had a friend, an ex-boyfriend, who took people’s BMATs for them.”
“What’s a BMAT?” November sounds more bewildered, rather than less.