The It Girl(117)

“Hannah!” she hears from behind her, Will’s roar of a kind of fury she has never heard from him before. He has rounded the corner onto the main road and is gaining on her. “Hannah, what are you doing?”

She makes her legs work harder—runs across a junction without looking, and then another and then—

There is a screech of tires and the sound of swearing.

“Jesus Christ! You trying to get yourself killed?”

It’s a taxi driver. He’s leaning out of the window of his cab, his face red with annoyance.

“You coulda killed yourself—and the bairn!”

Hannah just stands for a moment, panting hopelessly, her hands resting on the bonnet of the car. Will can’t do anything in front of a taxi driver, surely? But the man is going to drive away—he’s going to leave her—and then she looks up, and she feels a huge, drenching wash of relief.

The yellow light on top of the cab is on. The taxi is for hire.

She doesn’t wait. She runs around to the side, wrenches open the door, just as Will comes pounding up to the junction.

“Drive,” she says urgently to the cabbie. “That’s my husband, he—we just had a row.”

A row. The word comes out like a sob, and yet it’s so pathetically understated. “A row” barely even starts to cover it. I have just found out my husband might be a killer.

And yet she can’t say it. She can’t bring herself to say the words, to make them real.

Will is a killer.

Will murdered April.

If she keeps repeating the words to herself, perhaps she can make herself believe them.

“Understood, hen,” the driver says sympathetically. “Aye, it’s a tough one. Where can I take you? Your mammy? Or maybe not, by your accent?”

Hannah thinks of her mother, far away in Dodsworth, several hundred miles south, and tears spring into her eyes. If only she could go back there, fall into her mum’s arms, sob out her troubles.

But she can’t. It’s a good eight hours on the train, more on a Sunday. She has no coat, no shoes. She doesn’t even have any money, apart from Google Pay on her phone. She can hardly take a taxi to southern England. Where can she go?

And then it comes to her.

Hugh.

Hugh will shelter her. Hugh will loan her money and she can buy herself a jacket and some warm boots and figure out her next move.

“Do you know Great King Street?” she asks the driver, who nods.

“Aye.”

“Thanks.” She sinks back onto the seat, feeling her heart slow and her numb feet begin to thaw. “Thanks, I’d like to go there.”





AFTER


As the taxi draws up outside Hugh’s flat, Hannah gets her phone out to pay. To her dismay, the inky shadow inching across the screen has spread. It’s now covering almost the whole screen, leaving only a small triangle at the top left.

However, she holds it against the card reader, mentally crosses her fingers, and sighs with relief as it beeps obediently.

“Good luck, hen,” the taxi driver says gently. “You need a lift anywhere, you give me a call, ken?” He pushes a business card through the hole in the plexiglass screen, and Hannah takes it, trying to smile. Now that the adrenaline is wearing off she feels almost unbearably shaky; her hands are trembling and cold. “And dinna you be in too much of a hurry to go back tae him. Leave him to stew in his own juices a wee while.”

Hannah nods.

“Thank you,” she says, and then she takes a deep breath and slides out of the back seat.

Standing in front of Hugh’s intimidating brass bell plate, she reflects that she should have called ahead. If Hugh is out, she will be in a fix. But it’s… She glances at her phone, and then realizes that it’s pointless, the clock is no longer visible. It must be before nine, though. It’s not likely a single, childless man like Hugh would be up and out so early on a Sunday. Saturday he sometimes does clinics, she knows that. Hugh’s wealthy clients don’t expect to have to stick to weekdays for their appointments. But not Sundays. Sundays are his days off.

She presses the brass button beside the engraved H. BLAND and waits.

After what feels like an agonizingly long time, her feet getting slowly colder and more numb on the black-and-white tiles of the porch, the intercom crackles and Hugh’s very English voice comes over the speaker.

“Hello?”

“Hugh?” Her teeth are chattering now. “It’s m-me, Hannah. C-can I c-c-come in?”

“Hannah?” Hugh sounds astonished. “I mean—yes, of course. But what—”

“I’ll t-tell you ups-s-stairs,” Hannah says. She can hardly get the words out. Somehow the brief interlude of warmth in the taxi has only made the shock of the outside feel worse now that she is stuck here. A chill wind whips down the road, swirling dead leaves in the porch and making her shudder afresh.

“Oh, yes, sure. I mean of course. I’ll buzz you in. Fifth floor, yes?”

“I remember,” Hannah says. She has her arms wrapped around herself, her teeth clenched to stop the chattering.

There is a drawn-out bzzzzzzz and Hannah shoves the door with a force that sends it swinging inwards to bang against a backstop, and hurries into the hallway of Hugh’s building.