“I had a pretty good idea,” Will says, very shortly. He moves across to the stove, taking over where she has left off. She can see that the muscles of his shoulders are tense beneath his shirt.
“And he… he confirmed that rumor I told you about last night. About the—”
She stops. This is so much harder than she thought it would be. How is telling the truth to the man she loves so difficult?
“About the pregnancy test. Will, she told Ryan she was pregnant. She said, at least, she implied it was his baby.”
Very slowly the flush drains out of the back of Will’s neck. For a long moment he just stands there, motionless, his shoulders sagging.
“Jesus.”
“I know.” There is a knot in her stomach. “He doesn’t know if she was telling the truth about the pregnancy but… she did say it.”
“Why?” Will says, and his voice is like a groan.
“Why would she lie to Ryan?”
“No, I mean, why you, Hannah?” He puts down the spoon and turns to face her and she sees that his face is pale and set. “Why are you doing this? Why now?”
“Why am I doing what?” she cries. “Trying to find out the truth? Because Neville is dead, Will. Dead. And I have to know if I condemned an innocent man to die in prison! Don’t you understand that?”
“No, I understand,” he says. He has himself under control now, the anguished note in his voice is gone, and when he speaks again, his words are almost unnaturally level, as if he’s spelling something out to a small child. “In fact I think it’s you who doesn’t understand, Hannah. Don’t you see what you’re doing? If Neville didn’t do this, someone else did. Yes, Neville’s dead, and you can’t change that. So why can’t you leave this alone?”
She’s staring at him now, as if a stranger is standing in the corner of her kitchen.
“Will, are you seriously saying that if April’s murderer is still out there you don’t care?”
“I’m saying that April’s murderer—as tried and convicted in law—died in prison and that was the best thing for everyone! What good are you going to do by digging all this up—finding motives where there were none, and unearthing decade-old dirt? I mean, so what if April sent Ryan a pregnancy test—are you really going to the police with that? For what? So that a bloke in a wheelchair with two little girls and a wife who adores him can rot in prison instead of John Neville?”
“I’m not saying Ryan did it—” Hannah says hotly, but Will interrupts her.
“Then who? Hugh? Emily? Me?”
“Don’t be stupid, you weren’t even in college that night,” Hannah snaps. “But there were hundreds of other students and staff members who were, and who weren’t investigated because of my evidence against Neville. I can’t let that go, even if you don’t give a toss about what happened to April!”
She shuts her mouth at that and stands there, panting, horrified at her own words. She knows she went too far with that. Will is not stupid, anything but. And he certainly cares about April, just as she does.
She waits, expecting him to call her out on it—on the unfairness of what she just said, on her irresponsibility in pursuing this. She’s waiting for him to call her selfish, or obsessive, or to point out that she had no problem in letting Neville rot for ten years so why now, what does his death change?
And she wouldn’t be able to answer any of it. Because if he said any of those things, he would be right.
But he doesn’t. He doesn’t say anything at all. He just turns away from her, puts the pan back on the heat, and goes on stirring.
BEFORE
“She’s coming,” Hannah said to Ryan, looking up from her mobile phone. As promised, Hugh, stationed in a room above the Porters’ Lodge, had texted her when the group of actors came in through the main gate. “They’ll be here in five. Someone turn off the music.”
Where are you???? she texted to Emily as the lights dimmed.
There was a kerfuffle behind the bar and, in the nick of time, the sound of Beck’s Odelay got muted and everyone went silent, or as close to silent as a room of fairly drunk students could pass for. “Turn the bloody lights back on!” someone grumbled from the far side, but the barman shook his head good-naturedly.
“Ah, give ’em a break, it’s only five minutes, mate.”
They crouched there in a greenish darkness, lit only by the illumination from the fridges behind the bar and the glow from the emergency exit signs. There was a momentary squeak of excitement as the main door creaked open, but it was swiftly quelled by Hugh’s voice whispering, “It’s only me, they’re right behind me,” as he slipped in beside Hannah, behind a table.