The It Girl(12)

For a moment she had lost the power of speech. She had simply stood there, the customer rattling happily on about Rick Stein—while Hannah’s heart beat and beat and beat with a kind of fierce joy.

Three months later they moved in together.

Two years later they were married.

It’s strange—Will is the best thing that ever happened to her, and yet they are bound together by the worst events of her life. It shouldn’t work. But it does. She would not have survived this without him, she knows that.

Now she lifts her head, looks him in the face, and runs her fingers down his cheek, trying to read his own feelings beneath his concern for her.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” he says reflexively, and then, “I mean—not fine exactly.” He’s struggling, she can see that. It’s been a bone of contention their whole relationship, his tendency to shut himself away from her, to pretend everything is fine just when he’s closest to falling apart. The worse things are, the more stressed he is at work, the more worried he is about money, the less he says. Talk to me! It’s been her cry for almost ten years, and he’s still figuring out how to deal with the vulnerability of opening himself up when his entire childhood was about not showing weakness.

“I’m okay,” he says at last. “Or I will be. When I’ve had time to process the news. But I’ve not had to deal with it in the same way you did. I didn’t see—” He stops, begins again. “I haven’t had to go through everything you did.”

She nods. Because it’s true. Yes, Will was there, and yes, April meant just as much to him, maybe even more. But he didn’t see what Hannah saw that night. And he didn’t have to spend the next weeks, months, even years going over and over and over what happened. First with the police. Then with the prosecution lawyers. And finally in court, in the witness box. But it didn’t stop, even after the conviction. Because the fact is that the case against John Neville rested on her evidence—and that’s something no one has ever allowed her to forget.

Will is speaking again now, his voice sounding softer and deeper than usual, with her head resting on his chest.

“Maybe… I mean, maybe in a way this is for the best?”

Hannah doesn’t speak at first. Why now? is what she’s thinking. Why now, when they should be so happy, so wrapped up in each other and in the baby they have made. She shouldn’t have to be dealing with retrospectives and newscast specials at all—but especially not now.

But then she thinks of the years stretching out ahead of them, filled with a never-ending parade of newspaper articles and appeals and requests for comment, and she knows Will is right. And yet… why doesn’t this feel right?

“The BBC said he was preparing another appeal,” she says. Appeal. The word feels sick with dread in her mouth. “I don’t think I could have taken that. I just don’t want all the renewed interest, but you’re right. When this is over…”

She stops, almost too fearful to voice it.

Instead it’s Will who says the words, his voice firm as he tightens his arms around her.

“When this is over, it’ll really, finally be over.”

And for the first time, Hannah allows herself to believe that it might be true.





BEFORE


“Take it off, take it off!” April chanted, flashing a meaningful look around the rest of the group to get them to join in.

Hannah looked down at herself, and then at the cards in her hand.

It had been April’s idea to play strip poker, and at first Hannah had felt fairly confident. She was actually a pretty good poker player, and in any case, she was wearing several layers, if you counted accessories. But whether it was bad luck or the amount of champagne she had drunk, she had been losing for several hands now, and she was down to removing either her jeans or her top. She tried to remember whether she had shaved her legs in the shower that morning, and couldn’t. It would have to be her top. The thought gave her a weird feeling—halfway between a sickening thrill of nerves and a flutter of excitement. Was she really going to do this? Was she going to strip down to her bra in front of five people she’d only met that day?

“Take it off!” Ryan joined in, and then Emily. Hannah shot a look around the circle at the laughing, drunken faces. Only Hugh looked as uncomfortable as she felt. In fact, he had tried to get out of playing—making an excuse about the time and the fact that he was tired. April had been having none of it, however. Shut up, Hugh. Nobody cares. You’re playing, and that’s that, she had said. And Hugh, to Hannah’s surprise, had sat back down, tension and anger emanating from every muscle.

Now he was hunched miserably between Will and Ryan, his arms wrapped selfconsciously around his naked, bony ribs—and the only reason he was down to his jeans and not his underpants was because April had graciously allowed him to count each sock as a separate garment. Hannah again cursed the fact that she’d been wearing sandals.

“Hey…” Will said. He leaned forward, his black hair falling into his eyes in a way that made something deep inside Hannah twist with desire. He was bare-chested, his torso lean and sculpted in a way so unlike Hugh’s that they might have been different species. She became aware that she was staring, and forced her gaze up, to his face. He was smiling, but not in a mocking way. “Hey, don’t let them bully you.”