Hanging Hill

‘How about out the front on the road?’

‘Oh, stop. Now you’re really talking madness.’

‘It’s nice to see something so loved.’

‘Treasured,’ she corrected. ‘Treasured.’

He straightened and came to the table. ‘Mind you…’ he picked up his own glass and turned to look around the room ‘… you in a house at all is a bit of a revelation. Before we got together I sort of pictured you living in the back of a jeep or something. But look.’ He opened his hands, spun around as if he was amazed. ‘You’ve got curtains. And heating. And real live electric lights.’

‘I know. It’s so cool, isn’t it?’ She leaned across to the wall and flicked the kitchen light on and off. ‘I mean, look at that. Magic. Sometimes I even flush the toilet. Just for fun.’

Ben carried his glass around the room, idly turning over pots and glasses and books, studying the photo collage on her wall, which had never been planned but had started as a couple of photos Blu-tacked there to keep them out of the way and grown to cover the entire wall. Talking of first impressions, Amy in the barge had been right, Zoe thought. Ben really was hysterically good-looking. Almost ridiculous that anyone could look that good. And his appearance, she had to admit, did make you wonder about him. She’d worked with him for years and it had come as a total shock to find that, not only was he heterosexual, he was full-throttle heterosexual. When he’d first kissed her, in the car park at a colleague’s drunken retirement party, her response had been to blurt out, ‘Oh, Ben, don’t tit around. What’re we going to do if you come home with me? Share waxing secrets?’

He’d taken a step back, nonplussed. ‘What?’

‘Oh, come on.’ She’d given him a playful poke in the chest. ‘You’re gay.’

‘I am not.’

‘Bet you are.’

‘Bet I’m not.’

‘OK. I bet there’s not a single body hair on you. Bet you go to the barber’s and get a weekly BSC.’

‘A what?’

‘Back, sack and cr…’ She’d trailed off. ‘Ben – come on,’ she said lamely. ‘Don’t mess around.’

‘What? You head case – I’m not gay. Je-susssss.’ He undid his shirt and showed her his chest. ‘And I’ve got body hair. See?’

Zoe glanced down at his chest and clamped her hand over her mouth. ‘Good God.’

‘And more down here too. Hang on.’ He was tugging at his zip. ‘I’ll show you.’

And that had been Zoe and Ben spoken for, stuck into a twenty-four-hour mission for Ben to prove to her how ungay he was. She’d emerged from it screaming and giggling and doing a naked jig at the open window, like a rain dance, singing a victorious whoop-whoop-whoop out across the city. That had been five months ago and they were still sleeping together. He wasn’t intimidated by her height, or her messy thatch of red hair, or her never-ending legs, which should have been in a kick-boxing movie. He didn’t care about her drinking and her tempers or the fact she couldn’t cook. He was addicted to her.

Or, rather, he had been. But lately, she thought, something was different. Recently a serious note had crept into the equation. That resilient, good-humoured man, the one who’d come back at Zoe in a blink, had transformed into someone quieter. It wasn’t a change she could put her finger on, just something about the length of silences between sentences. The way his eyes sometimes strayed in the middle of conversations.

Now, while Zoe pulled another bottle from the rack and shoved in the corkscrew, Ben went to the little pantry to get a bag of crisps. He stood for a while, considering what was on the shelves. ‘You’ve got stacks and stacks of food in here.’

She didn’t glance up. ‘Yeah – in case I get ill and can’t go out.’

‘You couldn’t just ask someone to go out and shop for you?’

Zoe stopped struggling with the corkscrew and raised her eyes to him. Just ask someone? Who the hell was she supposed to ask? Her parents weren’t here – she spoke to them sometimes on the phone, visited them in Spain every now and then, when she felt she ought to, but they were thousands of miles away and, honestly, things had always been strained with them. She hadn’t seen Sally in eighteen years – at least, not properly to speak to, just briefly in the street – and that was all the family she had locally. As for friends, well, they were all cops and bikers. Not exactly born nursemaids, any of them.

‘I mean, you’d do it for someone if they needed it, wouldn’t you?’

‘That’s not the point.’

‘What is the point, then?’

She went back to opening the cork. ‘Being prepared for the unexpected. Didn’t they do a module on that in training? I’m sure I remember it.’ She topped up her glass and set it to one side. Then she reached into her bike satchel and pulled out the file on Lorne. She spread the photos of the post-mortem on the table. Ben emptied the crisps into a bowl, brought it over to the table and looked down at the images.

‘“All like her”?’ Zoe used her forefinger to trace the words on Lorne’s leg. ‘What does that mean?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘There are letters missing. Before and after. They’re smudged.’

‘That’s just part of the message. I guess it’s up to us to fill in the rest. If it’s important.’

She picked up the photo of Lorne’s abdomen. The words ‘no one’. ‘What the hell?’ she murmured. ‘I mean, really – he’s nuts, isn’t he? What’s he talking about – “no one”?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘That she’s no one to him? That she’s nothing. Dispensable? Or that no one understands him?’

Ben sat down. ‘God knows. Bloody nightmare, isn’t it? And I keep going back to what she said outside the barge: “I’ve had enough.” I spoke to the OIC when she was missing, and there was nothing unusual about the chat she was having, according to her mate at the other end of the line.’

‘Alice.’

‘Alice. So when Lorne said, “I’ve had enough,” what was she talking about? And why didn’t Alice say anything about it?’ He gazed wearily into his drink, sloshed it from side to side. ‘Someone’s going to have to speak to her parents in the morning.’

‘The family liaison’s with them overnight.’

‘I don’t even want to think what they’re going through.’

‘Exactly. Another good reason not to have children. Someone should have read them the warnings on the pack before they got into the procreation thing.’

Ben stopped sloshing his wine and raised his eyes to her. ‘Another good reason not to have children? Is that what you said?’

‘Yes. Why?’

‘Sounds a bit flippant.’

She shrugged. ‘Not flippant – rational. I just don’t see why people do it. When you look around yourself at the world – see how overcrowded it is – and then you see people having to go through what the Woods are going through, I mean, why do it?’

‘But you don’t not have children because you’re afraid of losing them. That’s crazy.’

Zoe stared at him, a little pulse beating at the back of her head, irrationally annoyed by that comment. He’d made it sound pitying. As if not wanting children meant she was ill, or defective. ‘Crazy or not, you won’t ever catch me with a football up my sweater.’

Ben gave her a long, puzzled look. A car went by on the street outside and a cloud covered the moon. After a while he stood. He put a hand on her shoulder. ‘I think I’ll go to bed now. Got a big day tomorrow.’

She raised her chin, surprised by his tone. His hand on her shoulder was friendly, but it wasn’t the touch of a lover. ‘OK,’ she said uncertainly. ‘I won’t disturb you when I come up.’

He left the room and she sat for a long time, gazing at the place on the stairs his feet had disappeared, wondering what on earth she’d said. Wondering if the natural evolution of her life was always going to be the same – always saying the wrong thing at the wrong time.

Sally had always been the baby of the family. Dolly Daydream. Wide blue eyes and blonde ringlets. Everyone’s favourite – and completely lost now that the family was gone and there was no one left to look after her. Once,