“I really need a cup of tea,” she says at last, and Will nods, jumping up, glad to have something to do, a way to be a good husband in all of this.
As the sounds of the kettle boiling and Will moving cups and containers in the kitchen filter down the corridor, it comes to her like a reluctant realization—she has to tell him the truth about the encounter in the bookshop. Anything else would be a betrayal. It’s just a question of how.
“Will,” she says at last, when they’re both settled, him on the sofa with the takeaway menus, her curled up beneath a fluffy blanket with a mug of peppermint tea warming both hands.
He looks up.
“Yes? I was thinking pizza—what do you reckon?”
“Pizza’s fine, but listen, there was something else. Something happened today.”
“At the clinic?”
“No, at work. This—this guy came into the shop. The journalist I told you about, the one who emailed—”
“He came into the shop?” Will puts down the menus and turns to face her. His expression takes her aback—this is exactly why she didn’t want to tell him, out of a fear that he would overreact. But his face has a fury in it that’s even more out of proportion than she was expecting. Will knows what she’s been through with the press over the years; he’s watched her change her number and her appearance and even her name. He gets angry on her behalf, angry enough to swear at reporters who call the house, even threaten them sometimes, but that doesn’t begin to touch what she sees in his reaction now.
His face is still, almost unnaturally still, but there is a contained rage in it that frightens her, and a vein beating in his temple that she knows is a sign that he’s very close to losing his temper. Will doesn’t lose it very often—she can remember only once or twice in their whole relationship. But when he does, he really loses it. She can remember him hitting a man once, late at night, on their way home from the pub. The guy had been catcalling a woman in a headscarf with horrible racist innuendo, and when Will called him out, the man refused to apologize and then took a swing at Will.
He missed. But Will hit him back, and his punch connected. And he didn’t just hit him once, he pounded him and pounded him, while Hannah watched in a kind of mute, frozen terror, unable even to protest, she was so shocked. Will came very close to being arrested for assault that night. He was saved only because two witnesses attested to the racist abuse and that the other man had swung first—that and the fact that the man had turned out to have a long record of racially aggravated offenses, which perhaps made the police more willing to overlook Will’s actions.
But Hannah has never forgotten that moment of watching her gentle, loving boyfriend snap. That moment when his mood turned in an instant, and he became someone capable of inflicting severe injury on another human being. Seeing his face now, she is reminded of that night, and a shiver runs down her spine.
“Hannah?” Will says, his voice very level, but there’s a sound in it like a warning, and Hannah swallows, and forces herself to answer.
“Yes. Apparently he said in his email that he might pop in.” She finds herself trying to make excuses, downplay her own shock and indignation at the invasion, in order to preempt his fury. “And when I didn’t reply, he thought that was a green light. Anyway, I told him—I told him work wasn’t the place for it and he’s going to email—”
“He’s what?” Will breaks in, his voice rising.
“Will, please calm down.” Hannah’s voice is pleading, and she hates herself for it. “He’s a friend of Ryan. I can’t just tell him to go away.”
“You can and you will!”
It’s that will that does it. If he’d said should, Hannah would probably have nodded. But that will, there’s an autocratic snap to it, like she’s not his wife but his employee, his servant. And it makes all her hackles rise.
Will’s parents didn’t want them to marry—too soon, too young was what they said, with a vague implication that Will was still traumatized by losing April, but to Hannah it had sounded very much like an unspoken too common formed part of their objections. Mostly she and Will don’t talk about that—they don’t discuss the fact that neither his parents nor his sister came to their wedding, and have never really welcomed Hannah into the family. They skirt round the fact that Hannah’s mum visits regularly and helps out, the fact that Hannah’s dad contributed most of the furniture when they moved in together and guaranteed the rent on their first flat, while Will’s family basically pretend Hannah doesn’t exist.