The It Girl(24)

But maybe Hugh was less drunk than he looked, or more perceptive. Whichever it was, he shook his head.

“It’s fine. I’d like the fresh air—probably need sobering up, to be honest.” He took her arm. “Come on, old thing. Har fleag, har fleag, har fleag onwards! Toodoo, toodoo!”

He imitated a hunting horn, setting the crows that lived in the trees around the quad crying and wheeling in irritation.

Hannah laughed, and they set out into the night together.





AFTER


They made a mistake.

The words are ringing in Hannah’s ears as she shoves a tenner down on the table and shoulders her way blindly out of the cafe.

Outside she leans with her back against the wall, feeling the drizzle on her face, her breath coming quick.

They made a mistake.

Emily chose her words with care, but that “they” is a euphemism and they both know it. Because in spite of the police, and the forensic experts, and the judge, and the jury, and everyone else involved in convicting John Neville of April’s murder, there is only one person that “they” really applies to.

Hannah.

Because it was her evidence that sent John Neville down.

She was the one who told first the police and then the courts about his behavior. It was her name on the harassment complaint submitted to the Pelham College authorities, a complaint they brushed under the rug, later issuing fulsome apologies to both Hannah and April’s family for their dismissive attitude.

And it was she, Hannah, who saw John Neville that night, hurrying towards her out of the gloom, head down, away from staircase 7.

What “they made a mistake” really means is you made a mistake. You. Hannah.

You convicted an innocent man.

And suddenly she cannot do this. She cannot do this anymore—not any of it. Not the memories crowding her head, not the voices in her ears, not the faces in the crowd around her, looking at her curiously as she puts her hands over her face and screams silently, internally, wanting nothing more than for it to all just stop.

She becomes aware that she is making a strange sound, like a sobbing moan—and a woman touches her on the shoulder, her face full of concern.

“Are you all right, ducks? Is it the baby?”

“No,” she manages, though the word comes out like a wail. “No, I’m fine, leave me alone.”

“Maybe you’ve had a wee bit of a shock?” the woman asks kindly, but Hannah cannot take it—she cannot take the woman’s well-meaning concern, she cannot talk about any of this.

“No, I mean—just leave me alone!” she chokes out. “I’m okay!”

And then she pushes past the woman, stumbling away into the rain.

She is not okay. She is very far from okay.

But it is not because Em’s words were a shock.

It is the exact opposite. It is because Emily echoed the voice that has whispered in her sleepless ear every day and every night for ten years.

Did she? Did she make a mistake?





BEFORE


By the time the Michaelmas term drew to a close, just eight weeks after it started, Hannah found it hard to remember a time when she had not been a Pelham College student. The labyrinthine corridors and golden stone cloisters were as familiar to her as her old school halls back in Dodsworth, and outside the high walls of the college, even Oxford, with its off-putting patina of strangeness, was starting to feel like home. She had learned to call exams collections, the Thames the Isis, and that people studying the classics were taking Greats. She knew the difference between rectors, provosts, and wardens, and the place of Pelham’s own Master in that subtle pecking order. She had her favorite pubs and curry houses, and was beginning to figure out the shortcuts and winding back ways that students used for slipping between colleges and making their way to the Bodleian, when the college library didn’t suffice.

She let Emily drag her around the Saturday morning flea market, and Hugh take her to the History of Science Museum. She went to Oxford Union debates with Ryan, followed by furious political discussions in the pub after, and she adopted the weary tolerance the older students displayed towards the ever-present tourists, with their iPhones and their selfies.

She even got used to April—to her constant Instagram snaps, to her face staring out of the Tatler gossip pages, to the half-drunk bottles of Veuve Clicquot crowding the minifridge, and the scent of her strange, heavy perfume. After a few weeks it felt normal to find a Vivienne Westwood coat discarded underneath the sofa, or a Vera Wang camisole crumpled up with the laundry. Her trainers tangled companionably with April’s Jimmy Choos in a pile beneath the coffee table.

Only two things she did not get used to.

One was John Neville—who remained a constant, disquieting presence, hovering at the edge of her perception. She found herself taking the long way to the library to avoid passing the Porters’ Lodge, going in to collect her letters when she guessed he would be off shift, and entering college by the back gate to avoid passing through the main entrance.

The other was Will.

Somewhat to everyone’s surprise, it appeared that April and Will were now an item. It was never spoken, never articulated that April was anything as pedestrian as Will’s girlfriend, but from that first night when they had played strip poker together, Will became a semiregular overnight guest in April’s half of the set, and it was not uncommon for Hannah to wake to the sound of his deep voice coming through the wall, or to leave her room in the early morning, long before April usually awoke, to find him on their sofa, drinking coffee and looking across the dew-drenched quad.