Hanging Hill

‘This is Steve. If you’d like to leave a message I’ll…’

She cancelled the call and stood in the glaring sunshine, her hands on the roof of the car, breathing hard, the truth coming down on her like a cloud.

Someone, somehow, knew exactly what she and Steve had done to David Goldrab.

22

The motel was one of those places with sealed windows to stop the traffic noise, squeezy soap mounted on the walls and vending machines in the foyer. Signs everywhere guaranteed your money back if you didn’t get a good night’s sleep. It was ten miles outside London on the M4, and the moment Zoe saw it she pulled off the motorway and booked a room. She didn’t intend to sleep there – all she needed was a place to lie down for a couple of hours and think – but she dutifully carried her helmet and few belongings in, and asked the receptionist for a toothbrush in a plastic wrap.

In the room she opened the window a crack, took off her boots and lay on her back, legs crossed. She draped her bike balaclava over her eyes, crossed her hands over her chest and began shuffling her thoughts around, trying to make them sit down in a proper straight line so she could decide what to do next. Whether to keep champing at the Mooney bit or call it a day and head back to Bath. What would it mean to her if she saw Goldrab dead, and all the things he knew about her past locked away? Did she think that now she’d apologized to Sally it was going to make her clean suddenly? Clean like Debbie Harry? The sort of clean Ben would like? She had the idea that uncleanness was a state of mind, which, once installed, never went away. Like Lady Macbeth’s spot of blood.

She took long, calming breaths. Began working it all out. But the travel and the last few sleepless nights got the better of her. Within five minutes she was asleep.

She dreamed of the room again, the nursery with the snow falling outside. Except this time she was on the floor, feeling very small and very scared and, terrifyingly, Sally was standing above her. She was holding the broken hand over Zoe. It was wrecked, with bones sticking out at all angles, and the blood dripped out of it, rolling in fat plops on to Zoe’s face.

She pushed her legs out, scrambling away from Sally, flipping herself over and stumbling for the door. Sally followed close behind, her hand raised. ‘No!’ she was crying. ‘Don’t go – don’t go!’

But Zoe was out of the door, tumbling down the stairs, breaking into a run, pelting through the streets. It was Bristol, she realized. St Paul’s. Ahead she saw a doorway, a red light coming from it, a hand beckoning her. Hurry up, someone yelled. Hurry up! This is the way through. In here! And then, suddenly, she was standing on a stage, an audience looking expectantly up at her. In the front row were her parents, her first-form teacher and the superintendent. Do something, shouted the superintendant. Do something good. The lighting man frowned from the box at her, and at the back the maintenance man leaned on his broom, grinning up at her. Get on with it, someone yelled. Do something good. Someone was pushing her from behind. When she turned she saw David Goldrab, as a young man, London Tarn.

Zoe, he said. Lovely to see you again, Zoe!

She woke in the hotel room, her hands clutching the sides of the bed, her eyes wide. Her head was aching. She breathed in and out, in and out, staring at the headlights racing to and fro across the wall. After a while she rolled over. The display on the bedside table said 11:09. She groped for her phone – the signal was strong, but no one in that time had tried to call her or text. She wondered who she’d been hoping for. Ben? It was eleven o’clock. He and Debbie would be in bed, maybe sharing a nightcap or cocoa. Or something else.

Debbie. Clean, clean, clean.

She put the phone into her pocket, swung her legs off the bed, went into the bathroom and splashed cold water on her face. Then she straightened and considered her reflection. ‘Damn it,’ she hissed. ‘Damn it and fuck it to all hell.’

She knew what she was going to do. She was going to go back to Mooney’s.

23

‘Millie, go to bed.’ A hundred miles to the west, Sally sat at the kitchen table in Peppercorn Cottage, watching her daughter rummage in the fridge for a late-night snack. ‘You’ve got school in the morning. Go on. It’s late.’

‘Jesus.’ She gave her mother a disdainful look. ‘What’s the matter with you? You’re so messing with my head.’

‘I’m only asking you to go to bed.’

‘But you’re acting totally weird.’ She turned from the fridge with a carton of milk and gave the wine glass next to Sally’s elbow an accusatory nod. ‘And you’ve drunk tons. I mean tons.’

Sally put a hand protectively over the glass. It was true: she’d drunk the whole bottle and it hadn’t changed a thing. Not a thing. Her head was still hard and taut, her heart racing. ‘Just pour a glass of milk,’ she said, in a controlled voice, ‘and take it to bed.’

‘And how come all the doors are locked? It’s like being in a prison. I mean, it’s not like he’s going to find us all the way out here, for Christ’s sake.’

‘What did you say?’

‘He doesn’t know where I live.’

‘Who doesn’t know where you live?’

Millie blinked, as if she wasn’t quite sure whether she’d heard Sally right. ‘Jake, of course. You’ve paid him now. He’ll leave me alone.’

Sally didn’t answer. The muscles under her ribs were aching, she’d been so scared all day. It was an effort to hold the panic locked inside. After a while she pushed the chair back and went to the pantry for another bottle of Steve’s wine. ‘Just pour the milk. Take it to your room. And leave the windows closed. It’s going to rain tonight.’

Millie banged around the kitchen, getting a glass, pouring the milk. She slammed the carton down on the worktop and disappeared. Sally stood motionless in the pantry, listening to her clump off down the corridor, and slam her bedroom door. She took a breath, rested her head against the wall, and counted to ten.

It was nearly nine hours since Steve’s plane had taken off in Bristol. Nine hours and it seemed like nine years. Nine centuries. Wearily, she pushed herself away from the door, uncorked the wine, carried it to the table and filled her glass. She sat down and checked the display on her mobile. Nothing. He’d be landing in fifty minutes. She’d left several messages on his voicemail. If he switched on his phone before he got into Immigration he’d get them all within the hour. He’d know something was wrong. She raised her eyes to the window, the lighted kitchen reflected in the dark panes. All the surfaces and cupboards and her own face, white as a moon, in the middle of it. Earlier, after picking up Millie from school, she’d gone round the house and locked all the doors and windows, closed all the curtains. But then the idea that someone could be standing unseen outside one of the windows had crept into her head and eventually she’d thrown the curtains open again. When it came to the choice of being watched or not being able to see what was happening outside, she’d chosen being watched.

Watched…

She’d been sure, so sure, that night that no one could be watching her and Steve in the garden. So how could it be? How could it be? What had she overlooked?

She pulled the laptop towards her and opened Google. When Google Earth had first come out she and Millie used to spend hours looking at it – zooming in on friends’ houses, going into street view and taking virtual walks down streets they knew. Streets they didn’t know. Streets they might never visit. Now she zoomed it in on Peppercorn. The familiar double-pitched roof of the garage, the grey gables – three at back and front – the stone chimney and the thatch. The photo had been taken in midsummer and the trees were as fluffy and fat as dandelion clocks, casting short, puffy shadows on the lawn. She traced her finger across the screen in a huge circle around the