April? Not the way they had left things—and anyway, she was in a bar halfway across town, and probably drunk by now.
Dr. Myers? He was the closest—and the nearest thing to authority. In fact, if she was going to tell anyone about Neville’s behavior, it would probably be him—as her tutor, he was supposed to be her first port of call for pastoral matters. But Hannah felt a strange compunction about dobbing Neville in to the college authorities. What could she say? He brought me up a parcel. It didn’t sound exactly convincing. And besides, she didn’t know Dr. Myers’s number.
She was still standing, paralyzed, trying to figure out what to do, when there was a knock from outside, making her jump, her heart skittering uncomfortably in her chest. Her first thought was Neville, trying to gain entry to her bedroom, but it sounded too faint for that—the knock had not been on her door, but somewhere farther away.
She held her breath, trying to stop her teeth from chattering as she pressed her ear to the door, trying to hear whether Neville was still out there.
There was no sound at all, not even the creak of a floorboard, and then the knock came again, shockingly loud in the silence. It must be someone trying to get into the set. Did that mean Neville had gone?
Slowly, trying not to make a sound, Hannah turned the latch and opened the door to the sitting room. The overhead light had been turned off, but a lamp burned in the alcove by the fireplace, illuminating the room just enough to show that it was empty. The door to the corridor was closed.
Then the knock came again, one final loud thump, and with it a voice.
“April? Hannah? Are you in?”
Will.
Hannah almost flew across the living room to the door, her numb fingers fumbling with the lock. When she finally got it open, Will was standing there.
“Your light was—” he began, but something in her face must have told him everything was not right, because his expression changed almost immediately. “Hannah? Are you okay? Where’s April? Did something happen?”
Hannah couldn’t speak. She could only shake her head, No, I’m not okay, no, nothing happened. Both were true, after all. Will shut the door behind himself and led her across to the sofa. Then he sat her gently down.
“Hannah, you’re shaking. What happened? Do you need me to get someone?”
“No,” she managed, “I’m okay. I’m sorry, I—”
And then she burst into tears.
Before she really realized what had happened, Will’s arms were around her, and she was sobbing into his shoulder, feeling the warmth of him, the softness of the skin at the crook of his neck, breathing in his scent of laundry detergent and body wash and warm skin.
“You’re okay,” she heard his voice, strangely intimate and close, felt the heat of his breath on her ear as he said it over and over, “You’re okay. I’ve got you. You’re okay. It’s okay. There, there. I’ve got you.”
She could feel the shaking subsiding, feel her breathing getting calmer, and she did not want to move. She wanted to stay here, in the circle of Will’s arms, feeling his warmth and protection. Her lips were pressed into his T-shirt, in the hollow below his collarbone. It was not a kiss—but it so nearly could have been. And suddenly she knew that if she did not pull away, she was going to do something very, very stupid.
“I’m sorry,” she managed at last. She sat up straighter. Will let her go, although—was it her imagination?—there seemed to be something a little reluctant in the way he released her, and he kept his arm along the back of the sofa in a gesture that was close to an embrace, even though they weren’t actually touching.
Hannah coughed, pushed her hair back, and wiped her eyes, thankful that the lights in the sitting room were low. Her red eyes and puffy face would not look as bad as they really were.
“Do you want to tell me what that was about?” Will asked. His voice was quiet. Hannah swallowed. Not really was the honest answer. The truth was that now that Neville had left, she wanted nothing more than to pretend the whole thing never happened, but that was impossible with Will here. There was a long silence as Hannah tried to think up the right words, part of her hoping that Will would fill in the blanks, or else maybe just stand up and say, Right, I’ve got to go. But he did neither. Only sat there in a charged silence. She was painfully aware of his arm along the spine of the sofa, of the fact that if she leaned against the cushions, his bare forearm would be touching the back of her neck.
“It was nothing,” she said at last. It was a lie, and a transparent one at that. But she had the sensation of teetering on the edge of a precipice—and that to tell Will the truth would be to jump, setting in motion events she might not be able to stop. “I was being stupid. It’s this porter, Neville, he’s been really weird with me ever since I arrived. Nothing I can put my finger on but just—and then I came back and found him in my room. He didn’t do anything—” she said, hurriedly, seeing Will’s face. “It was just a shock, that’s all.”