“I’m—I’m sorry,” she stammers, shutting down the phone with hands that aren’t quite steady and shoving it into her pocket as though it has been contaminated by the image on the screen. “Sorry.”
The woman pushes past with a shake of her head, and Hannah starts for home. But even as she comes out of the dark underpass, into the autumn sunlight, she can still feel it—still feel his eyes upon her, that dark, hunted gaze, like he is beseeching her for something—she just doesn’t know what.
* * *
IT’S QUITE DARK BY THE time Hannah finally turns into Stockbridge Mews, her feet sore with walking, and she has to search in her handbag for the keys, cursing the fact that no one has replaced the burned-out bulb above the shared front door.
But at last she is inside, up the stairs, and the door of their flat is closed behind her.
For a long time she just stands there, her back against the door, feeling the silence of the flat all around her. She is home before Will, and she’s glad—glad of this moment to just stand there in the cool, quiet welcome of their little flat, letting it wash over her.
She should put on the kettle, take off her shoes, turn on the lights. But she does none of these things. Instead she just goes through to the living room, slumps into an armchair, and sits, trying to come to terms with what has just happened.
She is still sitting there when she hears Will’s bike draw up outside, its throaty roar reverberating off the other houses in the narrow mews. He kills the engine, and a few moments later she hears his key in the downstairs lock and the noise of him coming up the stairs.
As he opens the front door she knows she should get up, say something, but she can’t. She just doesn’t have the energy.
She hears him dump his bag in the hallway stand, come down the corridor, hissing some silly pop song between his teeth, flick on the lights—and then stop.
“Hannah?”
He’s standing in front of her, blinking, trying to make sense of her being here, alone in the dark.
“Han! What are you—is everything okay?”
Hannah swallows, trying to find the words, but the only one that comes out is a cracked “No.”
Will’s face changes at that. He falls to his knees in front of her, his face suddenly frightened, his hands on hers, holding her.
“Han, it’s not—it isn’t—has something happened? Is it the baby?”
“No!” It comes quickly this time, as she suddenly understands his concern. “Oh my God, no, nothing like that.” She swallows, forcing out the words. “Will—it’s—it’s John Neville. He’s dead.”
It’s unintentionally brutal—harsher even than the way her mother told her—but she’s too shaken and broken to figure out a better way of conveying the news.
Will says nothing, but he lets his hands drop, and his face for a second goes unguardedly, heartbreakingly vulnerable—before he closes in on himself. He stands, moves over to the bay window, and leans against the shutters, looking out into the darkness of the mews. She can see his face only in profile, pale against his dark hair and the blackness of the glass behind him.
She’s always found him hard to read in moments like this—he’s generous with his joys, but when he’s in pain or afraid, he holds his emotions close to his chest, as if he can’t bear being seen to be hurting—a legacy, she supposes, of a military father and a boarding education at a school where showing emotion was for sissies and crybabies. If it weren’t for that split second when he let his defenses drop, she would have thought he hadn’t heard what she said. Now she’s not sure what’s going on underneath his silence, behind the polite, neutral mask of his face.
“Will?” she says at last. “Say something.”
He turns and looks at her, as if he has been very far away.
“Good.”
It’s just that one word, but there’s a brutality in his voice that she’s never heard before, and it shocks her.
“Now,” he says. “What’s for supper?”
BEFORE
“Oh. My. God.” April’s voice was theatrically drawling, more than a touch of Janice from Friends, Hannah thought as she followed her down the narrow passage between the long dining tables than ran the length of the hall. It was the first time Hannah had set foot in the Great Hall as an actual Pelham student, and she felt a prickle of wonder as she looked around her at the ancient beams soaring high overhead, and the dark oak-paneled walls, dotted with oil paintings of former Masters. She might have felt overwhelmed by it all, but it was hard to feel intimidated with April beside her, bitching about the limited menu and poor acoustics. Now, April set down her tray on one of the long, crowded refectory tables and put her hands on her hips. “Will de Chastaigne, as I live and breathe.”