The It Girl(84)

“Thank you, Hugh,” Hannah says. Her voice is husky and her eyes are prickling. This is the first time they have ever discussed this, the first time she has ever heard Hugh’s version of events. Before the trial they were told strictly not to discuss the case, for fear of prejudicing each other’s evidence. And afterwards—afterwards the last thing she wanted was to wallow in the pain and horror of that night. Now she is ashamed to realize that what Hugh went through was just as bad, maybe even worse. He has lived all these years with the memory of April’s dead lips on his, of his failure to save her. “Hugh, it wasn’t your fault, you know that, right? April was already dead—she was strangled. You couldn’t have saved her.”

Hugh says nothing. He only shakes his head. His eyes, behind the horn-rimmed glasses, are squeezed tight shut, as though holding back tears. When he speaks it’s with a catch in his throat and a little grating laugh.

“I’m sorry, I—I wasn’t expecting this. I would have bought a larger glass of wine if I’d known.”

“I’m sorry too,” Hannah says, and she means it. “I should have warned you. It wasn’t fair to spring this on you.”

“It’s all right,” Hugh says. He tries for the suave, urbane smile he probably uses on his patients, though it’s not completely convincing, not to someone who knows him as well as Hannah does. “God knows, I should be over all this by now. These days we’d probably all be offered free therapy. Back then it was, Oh well, chin up, and we’ll go easy on you in the exams, you know?”

Hannah nods, though the truth is that she doesn’t know. She never went back to Pelham. Hugh, Will, Emily, and Ryan, they all returned—shaken and traumatized, but they returned—and eventually they all graduated. But not Hannah.

Instead she moved back to her mother’s house. She would return to Pelham eventually, she told herself. Take a year out, perhaps. But then a year turned into two. Going back to Pelham became moving on to the University of Manchester. Or Durham. Anywhere else.

And then gradually that goal disappeared too, fading into the distance, along with the memories of her friends, her essays, and the girl she used to be. Only Will remained. Will, whose letters kept arriving, regular as clockwork, in his distinctive spiky handwriting, telling her about May balls and end-of-term parties, about rowing on the river and fluffing exams, about essays and tutors and rags and, eventually, about graduation ceremonies and MAs and postgraduate training.

She had thought at the time that nothing could survive April’s death, that she had been burned out by it, left a shell of the girl who had gone up to Pelham so hopefully that bright October day. And for a while that had been true—or almost true. Because one thing had survived. Her love for Will. It was the only thing that had endured.

“So… do you think it was Neville, then?” she forces herself to ask. She picks up her glass and takes a sip.

Hugh shrugs.

“I don’t know. I thought so at the time but now you’re making me wonder. I mean it’s not like—”

He stops.

“It’s not like?” Hannah prompts. Hugh, unexpectedly, flushes, a splotch of bright color appearing high on his cheekbones. He tosses his hair out of his eyes with that nervous tic she remembers so well from the very first time they met. He looks embarrassed.

“What were you going to say?” Hannah says, frowning.

“Oh, I feel like a shit,” Hugh says. He looks really pained now, but Hannah shakes her head.

“Go on, just say it. We’re in a safe ‘no judgment’ space here.” She puts air quotes around “no judgment” and Hugh laughs shakily, as she had intended, breaking the tension a little.

“Oh… if you must. Well, look, all I was going to say was… it’s not like she didn’t have her enemies.”

“Enemies?” Whatever Hannah had expected Hugh to say, it wasn’t this, and she looks up at him, surprised. “What do you mean, enemies?”

“Well, I mean. You know. Her constant pranking. It… it pissed people off, you know?”

“They were just jokes—” Hannah says, but Hugh raises an eyebrow, cutting her off.

“Jokes to her, maybe, but not always very funny to the person being pranked. Remember how annoyed Ryan was when she made him flush his weed? And the call to the Master? I don’t think he found that very amusing. I got off pretty lightly in comparison. That stupid mobile phone thing, and a blow-up sex doll in my bed one night—God, I had a job smuggling that out without everyone seeing. It’s amazing we all let her get away with it.”

There’s an edge to his voice that surprises Hannah. When they were at university he was always so meek and pliable, passing everything off as a joke with a good-natured laugh. She never thought of Hugh as really minding anything. But now she remembers—a thousand tiny moments, a thousand small cuts, the way April bossed him around, took the piss out of him. She remembers even that very first night, Hugh trying to excuse himself gracefully from playing poker, and April’s flat Shut up, Hugh. Nobody cares. She remembers Hugh’s expression as he sat back down, a kind of tense, mutinous fury.

“Hugh…” she says slowly. “Hugh, did you actually… like April?”

There is a long silence. Then Hugh sighs, as if he is releasing something long pent up.