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

‘So. Are you going to tell me?’ Simon sat on Charlie’s lounge floor, knees pulled up to his chin, an unopened can of lager in his hand. His skin looked grey and grainy. Charlie could see specs of grit in the parting in his hair. Hadn’t he showered before coming out?

She stood in the middle of the undecorated, unfurnished room, trying not to howl. They were missing their engagement party for this, to be mired in this grim atmosphere, this stilted conversation. ‘It doesn’t matter, Simon. For Christ’s sake!’

‘So you’re not going to tell me.’

Charlie groaned. ‘It’s a TV programme. About four women who live in New York, all right? They’re friends, they screw lots of men-that’s about it.’

‘Everyone’s seen it. Everyone except me.’

‘No! Probably there are loads of people who have never even heard of it.’

‘Repressed weirdos. To quote your brilliant speech.’

‘It was brilliant.’ Charlie tried to harden her misery, turn it into anger. ‘I’ve explained why I did it. Kate Kombothekra told me everyone was taking the piss out of us. I thought I’d steal their thunder by doing it myself.’

Simon sprang to his feet. ‘I’m going home.’

Charlie put her body between him and the door. ‘You came back here so that you could ask about Sex and the City and then leave? Why are you here, Simon? Did you overhear someone at the party talking about our sex life, or lack of? Kate says they were all at it. Maybe you wanted everybody to see us leaving together and draw the wrong conclusion.’

‘It’s what I heard you saying that’s the problem!’ Simon shouted in her face. ‘Foul-mouthed, loose-living, promiscuous, bent on self-destruction. Lucky for me my parents had left by then.’

‘Scared of Mummy and Daddy finding out, are you? What I’m really like?’

‘You’d still have done it, wouldn’t you? Even if they’d been there.’

‘They weren’t there! You’re being ridiculous. This is all about your vanity.’

‘It’s about your distortions, your… exhibitionism! That story about the primary school-was it true? Since the rest of what you said was a load of shit, I have to wonder.’

‘You think it was just an excuse, a convenient way into slagging off Catholics?’

‘Oh, you don’t discriminate-you’ll slate anything that moves. The more defenceless the better!’

Charlie stepped back, away from his anger. Stacey Sellers got off lightly, she thought. ‘Who’s defenceless, Simon?’

‘So it really happened? The teacher said, “Put your hands together for Grace,” and you didn’t know what she meant? Sorry, but…’ His words tailed off. He turned away, rubbed his face with his hands.

‘Sorry but what ?’

‘Do we have anything in common? Do we even inhabit the same world?’

This can’t be happening. It can’t be. ‘Do what you have to do,’ Charlie said. ‘I’m not going to talk you out of it.’ She left the room and went upstairs.

In her bedroom, she decided not to slam the door. Instead, she closed it carefully. She wasn’t a child; she wouldn’t be treated like one and she wouldn’t behave like one. Lizzie Proust had liked her speech. Debbie Gibbs had liked it. Her awful speech. What had possessed her? Foul-mouthed, loose-living, promiscuous … Simon had misremembered the last bit: bent on annihilating themselves and everyone around them. ‘Oops,’ said Charlie out loud. The sound fell heavy in the silent air. She wondered what Kate Kombothekra had thought of what she’d said; would it be a thumbs up or a thumbs down from the person who’d put her up to making a laughing-stock of herself in the first place?

The door opened. ‘Talk me out of what?’ said Simon. He didn’t look happy. He never looked happy.

‘Dumping me. Here’s your ring.’ Charlie dragged it off her finger. ‘I’m not going to haggle over the world’s smallest diamond. ’

‘I’m not… that’s not what I’m trying to do. Look, I’m sorry. I got angry.’

‘Really? I must have missed that part.’ Charlie would sooner have died than let him see how relieved she was. She was furious with herself for being relieved at all. How many men might she be engaged to at this very moment who would have found her Grace story hilarious? Billions. Dozens, at least. Most of whom would probably want to have sex with her.

‘I had a bad day at work,’ Simon told her. ‘I had to tell a man-’

‘Oh, diddums! Did the canteen run out of steak and kidney pie before you got to the front of the queue?’

‘Shut the fuck up and put your ring back on,’ said Simon.

‘I had an evil day yesterday, as it happens,’ Charlie snapped. ‘It totally fucked up my day off today, in fact, but in spite of that, I seem to be able to behave like a civilised human being. Or rather, I seemed to be able to, until you started on me!’ She blinked away tears as she slipped her ring back on. The world’s smallest diamond. She shouldn’t have said that. It wasn’t true and it was an unforgivable thing to say. ‘I’m sorry. I love this ring. You know that.’ If our marriage is going to happen, she thought, if it’s going to work, he’ll ask me about my rotten day before telling me about his.

‘I spent all afternoon with a man who’s confessed to a murder, ’ said Simon. ‘Trouble is, the woman he reckons he murdered isn’t dead.’

Charlie’s mind flattened out; all other thoughts fell away. ‘What?’

‘I know. Strange. Actually, it gave me the creeps-he wasn’t someone I enjoyed being in a small room with.’ Simon opened his can of lager. ‘Do you want a drink, or is this the last beer?’

‘Tell me,’ Charlie heard herself say. It was as if the party and their row had never happened; she was back in the reception room at the nick, trying not to stare at the ribbons Ruth Bussey had wound round her thin ankles. Ruth Bussey with her limp and her frail, reedy voice, who was frightened something was going to happen, but didn’t know what…’

No, no, no. I can’t have got it all wrong, not again.

‘I wasn’t there for the beginning,’ said Simon. ‘I only got dragged into it today. When he came in yesterday, Gibbs talked to him.’

‘Yesterday? What time? What’s his name, this man?’

‘Aidan Seed.’

‘I don’t believe it.’

‘Do you know him?’

‘Not exactly. What time did he come in yesterday?’

Simon screwed up his face, thinking. ‘Must have been some time between one and two.’

Charlie let out the breath she’d been holding. ‘At ten to twelve, his girlfriend was waiting for me when I turned up for my shift.’

‘His girlfriend?’

‘Ruth Bussey, she said her name was.’

Simon nodded. ‘He mentioned her. Not her surname, just as Ruth. What did she want?’

‘Same as him, by the sound of it. Told me her boyfriend was adamant he’d killed a woman called Mary Trelease…’

‘Right.’ Simon nodded.

‘… but that he couldn’t have, because Trelease is still alive. I thought she was deranged at first, so I asked a few background questions. The more she talked-’

‘The more you thought she seemed sane?’ Simon cut in. ‘Preoccupied, upset, but sane?’

‘Preoccupied’s an understatement. I’ve met human wreckage before, but this woman was in a worse state than anyone I’ve seen for a long time. Shaking with fear, crying one minute, then staring into the distance as if she’d seen a ghost, telling pointless lies that made no sense. She had something wrong with her foot, and claimed at first that she’d sprained her ankle. When I said it didn’t look swollen, she changed her story and said she had a blister.’