Sophie Hannah - The Other Half Lives aka The Dead Lie Down

No surprise that he didn’t. Hard to love a woman who proclaims undying love one minute then savages you the next.

‘Tell me the story you think you know about me,’ says Mary. She sits down beside me and draws her legs up to her chest, balancing the gun on her knees. If I could move my right arm, I could grab it.

I worked it out, put it all together in the taxi on the way back here. I have to do it again now, force my brain to keep going. ‘Phone an ambulance,’ I say. ‘You can’t let us die.’

‘Aidan’s been dead for a while,’ she says matter-of-factly.

‘No,’ I moan. ‘Please. It might not be too late.’ Martha came back to life. Aidan can’t be dead. I won’t believe it.

‘Look at us. One bleeding body, one corpse, and a husk who’s been half dead for years. No one who took an objective look at this room could think it was anything but too late, Ruth. For all of us.’ She twists her hair into a spiral.

‘Private detective,’ I whisper. ‘Told you… Aidan’s stepfather… in prison for killing Mary Trelease. You’d seen the painting…’ No. Can’t get it wrong, can’t waste words or breath. ‘You’d bought it- The Murder of Mary Trelease. Bought it and… destroyed it, like you did all of them.’

‘No.’ Mary’s voice is firm. ‘I’m an artist. I don’t destroy art.’

In my head, I see a picture of a man and a woman in a bed. Naked, or the woman is. The man’s hands round the woman’s neck. The man recognisable as Aidan, so that Mary-Martha-knew Len Smith wasn’t the killer.

‘Why did he kill her?’ I mouth the words, not sure if I’m making any sound at all. I feel deathly cold all over my body. Like ice.

‘He’d have told you if he wanted you to know.’ Mary smiles.

‘Martha. Wasn’t. Alone. Any. More,’ I exhale one word at a time. I can do it. I can get to the end. ‘An ally… another woman Aidan had… hurt. Mary Trelease.’

Mary puts the gun down behind her and leans back on her hands. ‘Show me anyone who’s survived an ordeal and I’ll show you a shrink in the making,’ she says. ‘Ally is a good word. What about you, Ruth? Aidan’s hurt you too, hasn’t he? Playing games with you, messing with your head. And Stephen Elton hurt you.’ She pulls a packet of Marlboro Reds and a lighter out of her pocket, lights one. ‘All women whose lives have been ruined by men are my allies. All of them. If we organised ourselves, we could be the world’s most powerful army.’

‘You called yourself Mary Trelease. You bought… house…’ I have to talk, to stop myself thinking about my own helplessness.

‘Shall we speed this up?’ says Mary impatiently. ‘I moved to Spilling when I found out Aidan lived there. What sort of man moves back to the town where he spent his miserable childhood? You might want to think about that.’ I turn my face away from her cigarette, breathing is hard enough without the smoke. ‘Fifteen Megson Crescent is the house he grew up in. I had to have it, obviously, so I bribed the owners out.’

‘You called yourself Mary Trelease.’

‘I changed my name legally. I am Mary Trelease.’

‘You started painting because painting… was his ,’ I murmur, pulling my mind back as it starts to drift. Get to the end. ‘Wasn’t… enough that you’d destroyed his work. Everything that… had been his…’

‘What? Ruth!’

She’s patting my face. ‘I’m still here,’ I say. Reassuring her. She wants to hear the story. ‘Painting. You… took it away from Aidan. Made it yours. You were good at it. Better.’

‘Yes,’ Mary stresses the word. ‘I was better than him. He gave up. I never give up. You only need to look at our backgrounds to understand why. The shrink I saw, the one who told me to write my story in the third person-you know what else she told me?’

I try to shake my head, but it won’t move. My body is numb, detaching from the pain. I can’t feel anything but my thoughts: frail, flickering threads I’m trying hard to hold on to.

‘Ninety-five per cent of her work is undoing psychological damage done to people in childhood, by their parents. Ninety-five per cent.’ Mary sounds angry. ‘Can you believe that? I was in the other five per cent, the tiny minority. I started from a position of safety and happiness: an adoring mum and dad, before I disgraced them and brought suicide and madness to the family. Money, and the best education it could buy. I’ve always believed in my own talents and abilities. Aidan never has. His childhood was an eighteen-year prison sentence.’

‘Why?’ I fight to stay conscious.

‘I suppose it wasn’t so bad before his mum died. Even then, they were dirt poor and lived in a slum. You’ve seen the house-it’s a slum, right? You wouldn’t keep animals there, let alone use it to house human beings. Aidan’s stepfather, Len, the one in prison-he was drunk all the time, violent. The sort of person you’d expect to find on a council estate-all my Megson Crescent neighbours are versions of Len Smith, or his family.’ I hear her laugh. ‘Knock on any door and there’s someone waiting to sell you a gun and teach you how to use it. From the day Aidan was born, he was in danger from his surroundings. That’s why he gives up so easily. That’s why he’s dead and we’re not.’

‘No…’

‘He gave up as soon as Gemma Crowther let me into her flat. Saw me and gave up.’

‘You shot her. Not Aidan.’

‘She had my picture. He gave her my picture.’

I force my eyes open, aware that what I’ve just heard is an admission.

‘I’m afraid I forgot all about you when I saw it,’ says Mary. ‘You and her, I mean-the history. I remembered too late, once she was already dead, that she ought to have suffered, ideally, instead of dying straight away. You’d have preferred her to suffer, wouldn’t you?’

There are some punishments no one should have to endure, not even Gemma Crowther. Death. Torture. No one deserves those things. No one has the right to mete them out.

‘No?’ Mary sounds irritated. Her face is a blur; I can’t see her properly any more. ‘In that case, you’ll be relieved to hear that she didn’t feel a thing.’ She giggles, high-pitched, like a little girl. ‘I did my best for you, anyway,’ she says. ‘Or, rather, I gave Aidan instructions and saw to it that he complied. He’s the framer, not me.’ She laughs, a low, raw noise from deep in her throat. ‘There’s nothing wrong with wanting and taking revenge. It’s the most natural thing in the world. Do you know what Cecily said? She and Martha had a huge row on the way home from Aidan’s private view, after Cecily had bought one of the paintings. Not that she got to keep it for long. It met with an unfortunate accident. Before Martha worked out how she was going to put a stop to Aidan’s success, she told Cecily she wanted him to fail. She wanted none of his pictures to sell, not a single one. She wanted him to fail more than she wanted to succeed herself. That’s the question the journalist from The Times should have asked, not life or work. Your own success or someone else’s failure. ’ In the short silence between ‘Survivor’ finishing and starting again, I hear the faint crackle of Mary’s cigarette as she inhales.

‘Cecily quoted some famous writer or other who’d said that writing well was the best revenge. “You’ve got your writing, Martha. Aidan’s talent doesn’t threaten yours. You don’t need him or his failure to prop you up. You can succeed without him.” That’s what she said. Have you ever heard anything so stupid? Writing well, the best revenge? What a load of shit! Is it a better revenge than killing someone, or fire-bombing their house? I don’t think so.’