The It Girl(133)

“But—but how could he do that?” November’s voice is shocked, uncomprehending. “April’s ex, I mean. How could he pretend to be Hugh? Or anyone, for that matter?”

“I don’t know,” Hannah says. She is desperately casting her mind back, trying to remember. “If it was like the entry test I took for English, it wasn’t like regular exams, you had to go to a testing center—and I don’t remember anyone asking for ID. I mean, why would they—what are the odds that someone roughly the right age and sex is going to turn up claiming to be Hugh Bland just to take an exam in his place?”

“Unless…” November says slowly, “unless you were someone who’d been paid to do exactly that. But how would Hugh have paid this guy? It doesn’t sound like he had much spare cash.”

“He didn’t,” Hannah says. “But he had a father who was a GP, and probably access to his prescription pad. It wasn’t digitized in those days—most GPs were still handwriting their prescriptions. How hard do you think it would be for a bright kid like Hugh to steal a few scripts and write them out for lucrative prescription-only drugs?”

“Drugs like dextroamphetamine,” November says, with a sudden, flat understanding. “Oh God. You even said it could have been a drug deal gone bad.”

“I think it was many drug deals gone bad,” Hannah says now. She feels an awful, desperate certainty. “April never did know when to stop, when she was pushing people too far. I remember her offering me the pills, the way she said there’s plenty more where those came from. I mean, she’d been taking them for ages, hadn’t she? Long before she came to Pelham. I think she must have been milking Hugh for drugs for months, ever since he took the test in fact. When she discovered he was at Pelham, she looked so pleased—like the cat that got the cream—and I couldn’t understand it, even at the time, because they were never particular friends. But I think this must have been why. Her little drug supplier—not just there in Oxford, but right at the same college as her. And she held it over him all year—until he finally snapped. But what could he do? He had no hold over April, she wasn’t the one who had taken the BMAT for him. She was just an innocent bystander. But April had a hold over him. And she was going to keep using it. Maybe forever.”

“But he didn’t say anything,” November whispers now. “He just told her sure, he could get her more drugs. And he probably even sympathized with her about you and Will, told her that she was quite right to be angry about Will fooling around.”

“He must have helped her plan that last prank,” Hannah says. “He probably suggested it, in fact. He must have convinced her to play dead, told her that he could persuade me there was no pulse, set me up to look an idiot in front of the Master and the rest of the college. And then, he leaned over her, pretending to be doing CPR…”

“And as soon as you left the room, he strangled her,” November finishes. Her voice is flat. There is a silence. Hannah stands in front of the door and feels as if a strange weight is both lifting from her and pressing her down.

Oh, Hugh.

“I have to go,” she says to November. Her voice cracks. “Will you be okay?”

“Yes, I’ll be okay,” November says sadly. “Bye, Hannah.”

They hang up.

Hannah puts her key in the lock and climbs the stairs to the flat slowly, step-by-step. She is out of breath by the time she gets to the top, her lungs made shallow by the child pressing up from beneath.

Inside she goes and sits in the kitchen, by the window, staring out into the street.

She should be phoning Will for the latest news on his discharge, contacting occupational therapy, booking taxis, arranging grab handles, setting all the thousand and one things up for his return home. But she doesn’t, even though she is longing for him with a force that is an almost physical ache inside her.

Instead she wakes her phone, goes to Google, and types something into the search bar—five words she hasn’t had the courage to search for in almost ten years. John Neville April Clarke-Cliveden.

And then she presses search.

The pictures flicker up, one by one, and each one gives her a little reflexive jolt, a shock of muscle memory from the time when every news item made her flinch, every headline was like a punch to the gut.

‘PELHAM STRANGLER’ CONVICTION TO BE QUASHED, SAYS THAMES POLICE

JOHN NEVILLE INNOCENT. HOW DID THE POLICE GET IT SO WRONG?

APRIL’S KILLER—JUSTICE AT LAST?



She clicks through to one at random, and there they are. Neville, glowering out of the page from his college ID picture, April in a photograph taken from her Instagram page, glancing flirtatiously over her shoulder in an emerald-green handkerchief dress.

Hannah looks at them both—and for the first time in ten years, she finds she can meet their eyes, even though her own are swimming with tears.

She reaches out and touches their faces—John’s, April’s—as though they can feel it through the glass, through ten years, through death.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers. “I’m so sorry, I let you both down.”

She doesn’t know how long she sits there, staring into their faces: April’s laughing, full of secrets; John’s dour and filled with resentment. But then her phone vibrates with the warning of a new email, and a little alert pops up. It’s from Geraint Williams. The subject line is How are you doing?