The It Girl(48)

Hannah



Then she closes down her email, shuts off her phone, flushes the toilet, and goes back to join Will in the living room.





BEFORE


Hannah was cold and wet by the time she got back to Pelham. It was also gone nine—she had heard the clocks striking as she turned onto the High Street—and the porters began locking up the back entrances at 9:00 p.m. She had been planning to slip through the Cloade gate on Pelham Street, in order to avoid going past the Porters’ Lodge at the main entrance. Now she might have no other option. Still, it took them a while to get round, sometimes. It was worth a try.

As she turned into Pelham Street she heard the quarter past chime from the chapel bell tower, and she quickened her step. She could see the dark arch of the gate in the long wall just a few meters ahead. “Don’t be locked,” she found herself whispering under her breath. “Don’t be locked.”

And, amazingly, it wasn’t. The wooden door was still open. Inside there was nothing but a metal grille with a card reader cutting off the general public from the quad.

Hannah’s fingers were cold and numb as she fumbled in her pocket for her Bod card, wondering all the time if she would see the figure of John Neville lumbering across the courtyard to lock up, but at last she found it. She swiped the card, held her breath, and when the lock clicked back, she pushed open the heavy metal gate and slipped inside.

The rain-soaked quad was crisscrossed black and gold, with light from the warm bright windows of the rooms in Cloade’s reflecting back off the rain-soaked flags, and as she passed in front of the building, Hannah couldn’t help turning to look up at the third floor, where Will’s room was.

His curtains were open, his window a glowing amber square, and even through the rain Hannah could see him, hunched over his desk, writing. As she watched he raised a hand to rub his eyes tiredly, and she turned away, feeling like an intruder, and ducked beneath the cloisters.

Why? she asked herself as she walked away, forcing herself not to glance back over her shoulder. Why did she torture herself like this? Watching Will unawares, finding her gaze tracing the line of his jaw over breakfast, or the shape of his broken nose as he stared up at high table during formal hall. He was April’s boyfriend, completely off-limits, even if they broke up. You couldn’t date your best friend’s ex. It just wasn’t the done thing.

And in spite of everything, that’s what she and April were. Best friends. In spite of the differences in their backgrounds and personalities, in spite of the fact that right now this second April was drinking Vespers in a private members’ bar, while Hannah trudged home in the rain. They had been thrown together by the simple expedient of being roommates, and out of that had grown an improbable but genuine affection.

She couldn’t betray that. Not now, not ever.

New Quad was quiet, no sound apart from the pattering rain as she stepped out from under the shelter of the cloisters. The gravel path crunched beneath her feet as she crossed the quad. Under the arch of staircase 7 she folded her umbrella, shook off the worst of the water, and made her way slowly up the stairs. Behind each door was a different sound. The silence of study; the laughter of friends congregating; the quiet thump of someone’s music, the volume just slightly too low for Hannah to recognize the song.

When she turned the corner of the last landing, she stopped. Dr. Myers’s door was closed. But the one opposite—the door to their set—stood ajar. Had April beaten her back? Taken a taxi, maybe?

Frowning, Hannah put her hand to the wood and pushed.

And then there was the sound of her umbrella falling to the wooden boards with a clatter and a flap of wet fabric, and her own shocked gasp.

“What are you doing here?” The words that came out of her throat were oddly low and guttural, uttered in a voice that didn’t sound like her own.

“And a good evening to you too.” John Neville straightened from where he was bending over the coffee table in the middle of the room. She could smell him—that faint musty scent of BO that made all her nerves shudder.

“What are you doing in my room?” she demanded again, her voice rising in spite of herself.

“Well I like that,” Neville said. He was fully upright now, a foot taller than her, his head almost touching the delicate ceramic chandelier April had fitted over the regulation light fitting. His shape threw a long shadow over the room. His broad face was a picture of injured innocence, and he held up something wrapped in brown paper. “You had a parcel, wouldn’t fit in your pigeonhole so I thought I’d do you a favor and bring it up. If this is the thanks I get, I won’t bother next time.”

“Thank you,” Hannah said in a strangled voice. She held out her hand for the parcel. She was shaking, but she hoped the fact wasn’t perceptible to Neville. She had only one thought. Get him out of her room. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m very tired.”

“Where’ve you been anyway?” Neville said conversationally. “You look like a drowned rat. Catch your death in that little raincoat.” He was making no move to leave, or to hand over the parcel, and Hannah had a sudden panicked thought. What if he didn’t go? What if he just—stayed? She couldn’t physically make him leave.

Suddenly, she couldn’t do this anymore. She pushed past him to her bedroom, opened the door, and walked inside, locking it behind her, and then she stood with her back to the solid oak, feeling a strange light-headed sickness.