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

She filled the last of the champagne glasses, lifted the yellow tablecloth and bent to put the empty bottles out of sight. Crouching by the table leg, she wished she could stay there for ever, or at least until tonight was over. She didn’t want to have to stand up and face everyone with a this-is-my-special-night smile.

Not that they were her guests, or Simon’s-that was part of the problem. Neither of them had been willing to host the party at home, so they, their friends, relatives and colleagues were all-for a price, of course-guests of the Malt Shovel in Hamblesford for the evening, a pub that, as far as Charlie knew, was known and loved by nobody present. It was the first place she’d phoned and been given the answer ‘yes’ to the question ‘Do you have a function room?’ Too busy to research the matter further, Charlie had decided it would have to do. Hamblesford was a pretty village with a green, a memorial cross and a church at its centre. The Malt Shovel had window boxes stuffed full of yellow and red flowers, a white-painted stone exterior and a thatched roof. It was advantageously positioned opposite a stream and a small bridge; it looked the part.

Because tonight was all about faking; Charlie knew that even if Simon didn’t. She couldn’t understand why he’d insisted on having an engagement party; it was so unlike him. Did he really want to make their relationship the centre of everybody’s attention? Apparently so, and he’d clammed up whenever Charlie had asked why. ‘It’s normal, isn’t it?’ was all he was willing to say on the matter.

It couldn’t be a bid to please his mother. Kathleen Waterhouse rarely left the house, apart from to go to church and to the care home for the elderly where she worked part-time. It had taken Simon weeks to persuade her to come tonight, and even when she’d agreed it had been with the proviso that she would only stay for an hour. Would she really leave on the dot of nine? She’d arrived at exactly eight, as Simon had predicted she would, clutching her husband Michael’s arm, white-faced, saying, ‘Oh, dear, we’re not the first, are we?’ Simon and Charlie had enthused about how nice it was to see them, but they hadn’t responded in kind. Nor had they brought a gift. Charlie had waited for them to say, ‘Congratulations’, but all Kathleen had said to her, shrinking against her husband as if she wanted to dissolve into him, was, ‘Do you know we’re only staying for an hour, dear? Did Simon tell you? I don’t like to be where people are drinking and getting rowdy.’ Her eyes had widened in horror as they took in the array of bottles and cans on the table at the entrance to the room. At the moment, Charlie thought, I’m not linked by marriage to a rabidly devout teetotaller, but all that’s about to change.

Something shiny appeared beside her arm as she rummaged under the table. She turned and saw a silver shoe with a heel so high it bent the foot it was supposed to support into a right angle, and, above it, an expanse of spray-tanned ankle. ‘Hiding, are you?’ DC Colin Sellers’ wife Stacey nudged Charlie’s shoulder with her leg, nearly making her lose her balance. ‘Yum!’ she said. ‘Lovely jubbly bubbly. You’re going to love the prezzie me and Colin got you.’

Charlie doubted it. Stacey had a sticker on her car saying ‘Honk if you’re horny’. Her taste in most things was poor. Husbands especially; Colin Sellers had been screwing a singer called Suki Kitson for as long as Charlie had known him. Everyone knew but his thick-as-a-brick wife.

Charlie waited until Stacey had moved away before coming out from under the table. She looked at her watch. Quarter to nine. Only fifteen minutes left of Kathleen’s hour. If Simon’s parents left promptly, as promised, the volume could go up again. As it was, Charlie could barely hear the Limited Sympathy CD that was playing in the background. Kathleen had asked for it to be turned down, claiming loud music gave her a migraine.

Charlie looked round the room, through the gaps in the clusters of sweaty bodies that surrounded her on all sides, trying to catch a glimpse of her future mother-in-law. Ugh, what a thought. Her next one was even worse, and made her eyes prickle with tears: It won’t happen. Simon doesn’t really want to marry me. He’ll pull out, when it’s almost but not quite too late.

Did she want it to be too late? she asked herself, not for the first time. Did she want to see Simon trapped, by his own foolishness and lack of self-knowledge, in a marriage that she wanted and he didn’t? She dug her nails into the palms of her hands to put a stop to the nonsense in her head. It was nonsense; of course it was. The one thing about Simon that was beyond dispute was his intelligence. Clever people didn’t propose marriage over and over again to people they didn’t want to marry. Did they?

Am I as stupid as Stacey? Charlie wondered.

The function room was like a sauna-a split-level, squalid one with mustard-coloured wallpaper in a geometric pattern of diamonds within diamonds, and sash windows with grease-smeared panes that were so original their frames were rotting. All the money that had been spent on the Malt Shovel in recent years had been spent on its exterior. Here’s to deceptive appearances , thought Charlie, raising her glass in a private toast. She looked around for a member of pub staff, someone who could turn off the heating.

Simon was over by the window, talking to DC Chris Gibbs and his wife Debbie. Charlie couldn’t catch his eye. She tried to beam the word ‘speech’ into his brain using telepathy. When that failed, she tried the word ‘parents’. Where were Kathleen and Michael? Charlie was annoyed, convinced she was more worried about them than Simon was. Please let them be having a pleasant chat with someone respectable. Inspector Proust and his wife Lizzie-that might not be a total disaster. On the other hand, Proust, though not a drinker, could be relied upon to open any conversation with a remark that would offend his interlocutor to the core. But then he generally let Lizzie do the talking when they were together, so maybe it would be all right.

Charlie liked the inspector’s wife a lot. Lizzie was petite with cropped white hair and a surprisingly youthful face for a woman in her late fifties. She was down-to-earth, socially adaptable, a pacifier rather than an agitator. Charlie felt guilty for calling her Mrs Snowman behind her back; it wasn’t fair to extend Proust’s nickname to his wife, whose warmth was one of the few things that could thaw her husband’s freezer-compartment demeanour.

Charlie spotted Giles and Lizzie Proust talking to Colin Sellers by the buffet table. Sellers was visibly drunk already, red in the face and dripping sweat. Proust looked unimpressed, but then that wasn’t unusual for the Snowman. He looked that way most of the time, even when not faced with a moist inebriate. Something jarred in Charlie’s mind: a twitch of discomfort beneath the surface of her thoughts. What was it? Something to do with Sellers… The woman yesterday, the one who’d called herself Ruth Bussey. Charlie had asked her if Sellers had put her up to telling that preposterous story about her boyfriend killing someone who wasn’t dead, as a prank to be revealed here at the party. If only.

Charlie didn’t want to think about her, whatever her real name was. She’d got the innocent waif look down to a T: waist-length golden wavy hair, flared faded jeans, cheesecloth shirt embroidered with flowers round the neck, irritatingly feminine shoes with ribbons wound round her ankles. No socks or tights-no wonder she couldn’t stop shivering. Unless that was all part of the act. Her pleading eyes, her helpless shrugs… Charlie had almost been convinced she was genuine. Then she’d found an article about herself in the pocket of the coat the woman had left behind. She’d needed to sit down and close her eyes for a few seconds until her panic subsided. She’d hardly slept last night, wondering, worrying. One more reason why she was in no mood for a party.