Hanging Hill by Mo Hayder

know.’ Sitting at the table next to the window, Zoë upended the bottle of wine into her glass. ‘I don’t have anywhere else to put it. It’s as simple as that.’
    ‘There’s a back garden.’
    ‘But no way into it except through the house. I’d have to wheel the bike across the floor every day anyway so I may as well park it there.’
    ‘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, Zoë 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?’
    Zoë 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 Zoë 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 Zoë 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 Zoë 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