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

Was it revenge you had in mind at first? Do what she’d done to you? Did you want to get your hands on her picture so that you could obliterate it? Or did you only want to see it? You hadn’t known she was a painter until I told you. Did you want to see her work, see what it was like? Whether she was any good? Did you fantasise about killing her when you heard she’d called her painting Abberton ? She was taunting you. You knew that, Mary being Mary-being Martha-she’d see it through to the end, that Abberton would be followed by Blandford , Darville , Elstow and the rest: the buyers who’d never existed and never bought your work, named after the boarding houses at her school.

What you said to me at the workshop after Waterhouse and Charlie Zailer left, about seeing the future: that if you hadn’t killed Mary Trelease already then maybe you were going to-was that the threat Mary took it for? Did you want me to tell her you’d called her a bitch and said she should get out of Spilling, go somewhere you wouldn’t find her? No, it was more than that, even if that was part of it. Waterhouse had just told me how the real Mary Trelease died-strangled, naked, in a bed. You never wanted me to know the terrible details of what you’d done. I think that was the moment you realised: if I stuck around, if we stayed together, I’d end up finding out the whole truth. You wanted to protect me. You knew I’d be terrified if you started talking about seeing the future-you wanted to drive me away so that I wouldn’t be sullied by you or your past crime. And maybe you wanted to frighten me because you were angry, too. I didn’t trust you enough to tell you the full truth about so many things. I told you I went to the police, but I didn’t mention that it was Charlie Zailer I’d spoken to, the woman whose face is all over my bedroom wall. I never told you why I stopped working for Saul, not really.

You didn’t need to try to scare Mary, if that was your intention. She was afraid of you anyway, obsessively so. She called the police to Garstead Cottage regularly, made them check you weren’t hiding in there, waiting to take your revenge. She couldn’t believe retribution wasn’t lying in wait for her, couldn’t conceive of a world in which a person might get away with a crime as serious as hers. She doesn’t care two hoots about what she did to Gemma Crowther-that, in her eyes, was justice. It’s what she did to your paintings that she can’t bear. That’s why she can’t stand to hear me say the nine names, why my asking ‘Who’s Abberton?’ at Saul’s gallery had the effect on her that it did.

At the art fair, at your insistence, I described the picture I’d seen on TiqTaq’s stand: the outline of a person, not recognisable as male or female, stuffed with what looked like scraps of painted cloth. Pieces of your pictures: that’s what she used to fill in the human form. Did you want me to get Abberton for you to prove I wasn’t lying about having seen it, or because it had those pieces in it and you wanted your pictures back, even in shreds? Maybe both. I think you wanted to have the scraps of your work rather than let her keep them.

I hear another bone-splitting crunch.

‘Don’t do that,’ says Waterhouse. ‘How can you do that to yourself?’

‘Easy. I don’t paint with my left hand.’

When I told you Saul had given me Mary’s address, the look on your face… you hadn’t realised until then that she was living in your old house, where you killed the real Mary Trelease. You must have been able to see that I was telling the truth, that the address meant nothing to me, but it’s hard to banish doubt once it’s crept in. You didn’t believe my love for you was unconditional, not after the way I’d reacted to your confession. And Mary-Martha-knew what you’d done. You knew that eventually she’d use that knowledge, use the power she had over you.

‘Hold on for the ambulance, Ruth. It should be here any minute.’ Waterhouse is talking to me. All I want is to know if Aidan’s alive or not. Why won’t he tell me that?

‘You’re not as clever as you think you are,’ I hear Mary say.

‘How clever is that?’

‘I followed you to London. You were following Aidan. You didn’t see me, did you? You took me straight to Gemma Crowther’s flat.’

‘You killed her,’ says Waterhouse.

‘Not me. Aidan.’ She knows I’m too weak to contradict her. She’s enjoying it: lying in front of me, knowing I can’t stop her.

‘You’re holding the hammer you used to knock her teeth out and hammer nails into her gums,’ says Waterhouse.

‘Aidan did those things. Why would I kill her? He wanted revenge for what she did to Ruth. Anyone would.’

‘If he was the one holding the gun on Monday night, how come he ended up getting shot?’ There’s a pause. ‘You’ve got no answer for that, have you?’

‘I’m not saying I didn’t shoot him . I’m saying I didn’t shoot Gemma.’ He’s made her angry. ‘You’re no Sherlock Holmes, are you? It’s okay, you don’t need to be. I can tell you what happened. ’

‘Go on.’

‘Where do you want me to start? Aidan had to find out about Gemma and Stephen for himself. Ruth told him nothing-can you believe that? No communication whatsoever. A relationship like that can’t last. If Ruth didn’t want him to know, she shouldn’t have kept so many trauma keepsakes. That’s very common, to do that. Did you know that?’

‘No.’

I feel as if I’m hearing the conversation from a distance. It’s like listening to a far-away radio. I could so easily drift out of the range of the voices.

‘Aidan found a box full of souvenirs under her bed, everything she’d kept from Gemma’s trial.’

When? I want to ask. I can guess the answer: after the art fair, after he moved in with me. He searched my house, looking for evidence that Mary and I were in league against him.

‘He looked Gemma and Stephen up on the internet and found what he expected to find,’ Mary tells Waterhouse. ‘Their attack on Ruth, all that. But the name Gemma Crowther kept coming up in another context too-on Quaker websites. That’s how he found out which meeting she went to. He started going too. He wanted to find out if she was the same Gemma Crowther who’d nearly killed his girlfriend.’

‘Told you all this at gunpoint, did he?’

‘He didn’t have to say anything he didn’t want to. Neither do I. I’m telling you because I want to, no other reason.’ Mary’s voice is full of scorn.

‘Did he find out, then?’ Waterhouse asks. ‘That she was the same Gemma Crowther?’

‘Not at first. Not until she mentioned that she used to live near Lincoln. Then he knew. He asked her why she moved to London. That was the test: to see if she’d changed. If she had, he said, she’d have told him the truth: what she’d done to Ruth, and that she was sorry, that she was a different person now. At the very least she’d have mentioned having been in prison, even if she didn’t say what for. But she didn’t. She lied-made up some story about wanting a change of scene and career. He knew she was a fake when she told him that.’ Mary laughs. ‘She was a healer, did you know that? What a fucking hypocrite! No loss to the world, that’s for sure.’

‘Why did Aidan give Gemma Crowther your painting?’ Waterhouse asks.

Silence. Or else they’re talking but I can’t hear them any more. When I hear Mary’s voice, I’m relieved. ‘He said they deserved each other. Gemma and the picture.’ She’s crying. ‘As if a painting’s a moral agent, as if it can deserve anything. Monday night was going to be the last time he saw her-he told me. He wanted nothing more to do with her, or me. He was going to leave Abberton with her because it seemed appropriate , he said. And then he’d be rid of us both for ever, me and her.’