Hanging Hill - Mo Hayder [18]
The bike was a classic – a black 1980 Harley Superglide Shovelhead – and had been her only friend on the year she toured the world. It had cost her two and a half thousand pounds and some long, sleepless nights when a drive belt gave up or the carburettor jets blocked in the middle of an Asian mountain range. But she still treasured it and rode it to work now and then. That night, at half past eleven, when the city outside the bay window was lit up like a carpet of lights, the bike was still cooling off, its engine making little noises. Ben Parris turned from Zoë’s fridge and came to crouch in front of it. He was carrying a saucer of milk, which he put at the front wheel. ‘There you go, favoured object.’ He patted the tyre. ‘Fill your boots. And never forget how loved you are.’
‘It’s not a bloody affectation, you 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