The It Girl(64)

She landed heavily, but picked herself up almost at once and began to run around the side of Cloade’s, in spite of the pain in her knees and thigh. She wasn’t sure who had grabbed her, but she knew that she didn’t want to wait and find out. What she had done was strictly against the rules, and if a tutor or a member of college staff found out, she would be in trouble.

“Oi!” she heard from behind her, as whoever she had kicked recovered himself. It was a man’s voice, but oddly high, almost falsetto. “Oi, you, stop!”

Hannah pushed herself to run faster and rounded the corner into the passage that led into New Quad.

And then whoever it was behind her tackled her.

She felt a whiplash jolt as the pursuer grabbed at her collar, jerking her back, and then her feet were hooked out from under her. She went down in a rush, elbows and knees onto the graveled path, all the wind knocked out of her. She felt a man’s body land heavily on top of her, covering her almost completely, his hips pressing into her backside, his chest crushing hers against the ground. There was an arm across the back of her neck. She couldn’t breathe—but she could smell something—something horribly familiar—that sickening musty smell of body odor and damp.

Panic engulfed her.

“Get off me!” she choked, but the words came out so smothered they were barely audible; he was grinding her face into the path, she could hardly get any air in. Her hands were wet with sweat, her whole body shaking with fear, her lungs screaming for oxygen. She felt his hips grinding hers into the ground—and she felt something else too, something hard and thick and urgent, pressing against her. “Ge—” she tried again, but the words dissolved into a sobbing gasp. Stars were beginning to explode against the inside of her skull, obscuring her vision. “G-ge—”

And then another voice, a deeper one, unfamiliar.

“What on earth is going on here, Mr. Neville?”

“I found this person climbing over the wall—” Neville panted. He got to his knees, putting his weight painfully on Hannah’s arm as he did. She lay there, gasping and trembling as he lumbered slowly to his feet, feeling the crushing sensation in her chest slowly lifting.

“Well still, but I’m not sure—”

Hannah didn’t wait around to hear any more. She had only one instinct—to get away.

As the last of Neville’s weight came off her she twisted like an animal in a trap and wrenched herself out from underneath him—and then she was gone, stumbling around the corner of the quad, into staircase 7, up the stairs, three at a time, until at last she was in the sanctuary of the set, the good, solid wooden door of her bedroom hard against her back—and then she sank down to the floor and burst into tears.





AFTER


“So,” Ryan says, with another of his lopsided smiles.

They are sitting in his living room, nursing cups of tea that Hannah has made under his direction.

“What brings you here, then?” He puts on a plummy accent quite at odds with his normal one and intones, “Rumors of my death have been much exaggerated.”

Hannah laughs at that, she can’t help it. He’s still Ryan, still stupid, piss-taking, sarcastic Ryan, even after everything he’s been through.

“I can’t believe how well you look,” she says, and he grins.

“Aye, well, you should have seen me a few years ago. Adult nappies, surgical hoists, the whole shebang. Pretty sexy it were.”

“And how’s Bella?”

“She’s grand. She’s been my lifeline, her and the girls.”

The girls. Of course. She had almost forgotten that Ryan has two little girls now.

“How old are they?”

“Mabel’s almost four and Lulu’s two. Mabel was born right after I had the stroke. Bella always said I couldn’t stand to share the”—he pauses, frowns infinitesimally as though searching for a word, and then his brow clears and he finishes—“limelight. Had to make it all about me.”

“Will and I are expecting,” Hannah says. She pats her stomach, feeling like a performative fool, but she still can’t quite get over it—the fact that it’s there, their baby, a melting pot of her and Will growing inside her. “Did you know?”

“Aye, Hugh said. Congratulations. They’ll pull your life apart and stick it back together with vomit and shit, but it’ll still be more beautiful than you ever thought possible.”

Hannah smiles at that, and Ryan smiles back, a little sadly this time. Maybe he’s thinking of how their own lives were ripped into little pieces after April’s death.

“I didn’t know you kept up with Hugh,” she says, as much to change the subject as anything.

“Yeah, it’s funny, I wouldn’t have put us down for pen pals neither, and I never heard from him much after college. But he got in touch after my stroke. He’s been a good mate.”

Better than you and Will. The words hang in the air between them. Ryan doesn’t say it—he wouldn’t reproach them like that, and Hannah knows it—but it doesn’t stop it from being true.

Hannah swallows. She needs to bring it up—she can’t stand the way they’re both dancing around her betrayal, not mentioning the years of silence, the lack of visits.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “Ryan, I’m really sorry we never came to see you. And I know Will feels bad about it too. It was just—I don’t know. I was running from everything about Pelham for so long. It’s why I ended up in Edinburgh. And I don’t want you to think Will and Hugh and I formed this cozy little clique up there, it wasn’t like that. Will came to find me. I don’t think I would ever have sought him out off my own bat—it was all just too painful. And Hugh…” She stops. She has never thought about why Hugh ended up in Scotland. “I guess Hugh followed Will,” she says finally. “Or I think he had some kind of surgical residency there at one point—maybe he just liked it there. But I never meant to drop you the way I did—or Em. It was more like…” She stops again, groping for the words. “More like I was just trying to survive.”