Hanging Hill - Mo Hayder [22]
Still, it had to be done, she thought, as she got up the morning after Lorne had been found, and padded barefoot into the kitchen to make breakfast. There weren’t any choices in this new world of hers. She switched on the kettle, set a pan of milk on the hob, arranged cups and plates on the table. Steve was still asleep so she didn’t put the radio on. Anyway, it would all be about Lorne Wood and she didn’t know if she could face listening to any more of that. She put some croissants into the oven. The tarot cards were still sitting in an untidy pile on the table where she’d dumped them last night. Now she paused and studied the one of Millie. It wasn’t that the paint was fading, she saw. It was that something corrosive had blistered the surface, worming and chewing at Millie’s face. Feeling suddenly cold, she raised her eyes and looked out of the window at the fields that strained limitlessly to the bottom of the sky. The canal where Lorne had died was miles away. Miles and miles and miles.
You don’t believe in stuff like that, do you?
Of course not.
She turned the card face down and went to switch on the kettle. Millie was safe. She was fifteen. She knew how to look after herself. And, anyway, sooner or later you had to learn to take a step back.
10
On the other side of town, in her living room, Zoë stood with a cup of coffee in her hand and studied the photos on her wall. Most of them came from the trip she’d taken eighteen years ago. Just her and the bike. She’d been everywhere. Mongolia, Australia, China, Egypt, South America. Getting the money together for the adventure had been one of the toughest things she’d ever done – it had just about ripped the skin from her back. Had taken her places, made her do things she never wanted to think about again. But the trip itself turned out to be the most important time in her life. It had taught her all she knew about self-sufficiency, survival, determination. It had sprung her from the trap she’d lived in since childhood.
Lorne Wood would never have the chance to learn any of those things, she thought now, as the sun powered into her kitchen through the bay windows. That was a whole chapter of Lorne’s life that would never be opened.
She put down the coffee and wandered around the room, opening cupboards and drawers until she found a tube of Slazenger tennis balls. They’d been there for two or three summers, since she’d got it into her head she was going to beat every woman in the constabulary tennis club at Portishead. She’d done it within six months. Then she turned her attention to the men. But none of the men would play with her after that, so she’d got bored and dropped it.
Ben was still in bed, still asleep. Zoë sat on the sofa arm with her back to the stairs and popped open the tin. The balls smelt of rubber and old summer grass. She tipped one out and bounced it once on the floor, then blew on it to clean off the fluff and grit. She rubbed it on her sleeve, opened her mouth wide, and pushed the ball in as far as it would go.
It went in surprisingly easily, lodging at its widest point between her teeth – half in, half out of her mouth. The dry, chemical-tasting nap pushed her tongue to the back of her mouth, kicking in the gag reflex. The impulse was to rip the ball out – she really believed she could hear