The Other Half Lives aka The Dead Lie Down

am now, you’d forgive anything I’d done in the past, no matter how bad. I’d forgive you anything, anything at all. There’s no crime so terrible that I wouldn’t instantly forgive you for it. Obviously the feeling isn’t mutual.’

He was breathing hard and fast in my face, waiting for my response. I said nothing. He kept using words that paralysed me like shots from a stun-gun, words that had been repeated endlessly in court seven years ago: a defenceless woman. Parcel tape over my mouth…

By the time I recovered and realised I had said nothing, that I’d failed to respond, Aidan was walking away. ‘Wait!’ I shouted after him, but he’d turned a corner. I ran as fast as I could, trying to keep my eyes fixed on the point at which he’d disappeared from view, but by then I was hysterical, shaking, babbling nonsense to myself, convinced I’d driven him away for ever. There were too many corners, too many intersections between one row of stalls and another. Every junction looked the same as all the others. I looked down one aisle, then a second, then a third, but saw no sign of Aidan. In desperation, I asked some of the artists who were sitting in little white cubicles decorated with their own work. ‘Have you seen my boyfriend? He might have come down here a minute ago. He’s tall, wearing a black jacket with shiny patches on the shoulders.’ Nobody had seen him.

I ran and ran, up and down the aisles in both halls. Aidan wouldn’t have left without me. He couldn’t have. He would never abandon me like that. Completely by accident, I found myself at Jane Fielder’s stall, number 171. I didn’t ask the woman standing next to it if she was Jane Fielder, or tell her how much I liked her painting that I’d bought from the Spilling Gallery-finding Aidan was the only thing in my head. Anything, I thought. I’d forgive him anything. ‘Have you seen a man with dark hair, tall, wearing a black jacket with shiny patches here?’ I tapped my shoulders. The woman shook her head.

‘I saw him,’ a voice called out from across the aisle. ‘He walked past a minute ago. Like a sort of donkey jacket, is it?’

I turned, saw a young woman. Hair dyed yellow, with black roots showing, a red patterned scarf wrapped round her head. Skinny legs, cerise fishnet tights over black sheer ones, heavy black boots to halfway up her calves. She was minding the stall opposite, sitting beside a large free-standing sign that said, ‘TiqTaq Gallery, London’.

I ran over to her, nearly colliding with her chair and knocking her to the ground. I managed to stop myself just in time. ‘Which way did he-?’ I broke off as something caught my eye. I blinked, breathed. No. No. I backed away. This was some sort of hideous practical joke; it had to be.

‘Which way did he go?’ the young woman asked on my behalf, seeing I was having trouble getting the question out. ‘That way-towards the exit there. Are you okay?’

I wasn’t. I had to get away, but felt too weak to move. I leaned against the partition that separated Jane Fielder’s stall from the one beside it, and stared at the TiqTaq Gallery’s space from across the aisle, rubbing my forehead with my left hand, pressing my fingers hard against my skin.

‘Careful, you’re leaning on a picture,’ said a voice behind me. I couldn’t speak, or shift my weight elsewhere. I couldn’t do anything except stare past the woman with the dyed blonde hair at the painting in a green-stained wood frame that was hanging behind her. It stood out from all the others. It would have even if I’d never seen it before; it was in a different league from everything else TiqTaq had to offer.

Abberton. Framed, signed, dated 2007. I forced myself to close my eyes, then open them and look again, to make sure it was real. I walked towards the picture, seeing nothing else; it might have been the only thing in an otherwise empty room. Now I understood why the name of the woman Aidan said he’d killed had sounded familiar, even though she’d never introduced herself to me. I’d done plenty of paperwork for Saul; I’d probably sent her a bill or a receipt, or seen her name on one of the ‘Work Pending’ lists Saul used to pin up everywhere.

That same name was painted in neat black letters in the bottom right-hand corner of the painting in front of me: Mary Trelease.

It took me about four seconds to realise that if Mary Trelease had painted Abberton in 2007, Aidan could not have killed her years ago. He’d made a mistake. I felt myself swell with relief. Of course he wasn’t a killer. I’d known that all along. All I needed now was to find him so that he could see the picture for himself, but the woman from the TiqTaq Gallery had said she’d seen him heading for an exit. What if he was in a taxi on his way to King’s Cross?

I was unwilling to move from TiqTaq’s stall. I knew I couldn’t let Abberton out of my sight. It was my evidence-indisputable proof that Aidan hadn’t done what he thought he’d done. It occurred to me that there might be more than one Mary Trelease, but I quickly dismissed the idea. Even if there were dozens or hundreds of women with that name, the artist who had assaulted me in Saul’s gallery had to be the one Aidan thought he’d killed. She was a painter; he framed pictures. They both lived in Spilling. It couldn’t be a coincidence. Perhaps they’d had a fight. She might have attacked him-a hypothesis that seemed entirely consistent with what I knew of her character-and he’d defended himself… My mind raced ahead, going through the possibilities, but I couldn’t focus on anything for long. Shock was still slamming through me and I couldn’t think coherently.

‘I need to buy a painting,’ I said to the woman with the dyed hair. ‘That one there.’

She shrugged. If I wanted to forget about the man I’d been looking for and boost her profits instead, that was all right by her. ‘Great,’ she said, though her tone and manner conveyed little enthusiasm. She hadn’t looked to see which picture I’d pointed at. ‘Let me dig out the relevant forms.’ Languidly, like someone with all the time in the world, she bent to open a desk drawer.

‘Can you put the “Sold” sticker on first?’ I asked, trying not to sound as impatient as I felt. ‘I don’t want anyone else to see it and think it’s still for sale.’

She laughed. ‘You might not have noticed, but people aren’t exactly queuing up. I’ve barely had anyone glance in my direction since yesterday morning.’ Pulling the lid off a pen with her teeth, she said, ‘Right, I’ll fill in my bits, then I’ll hand it over to you to do yours. You know you pay the total upfront? It’s a fair, so there’s no deposit system.’

I nodded.

‘We take cash, cheques, all major credit cards. Which picture is it you want?’

‘Abberton,’ I said. It was a lie. I didn’t want it; it was the last thing I wanted. Neither did Mary Trelease want me to have it. She had made that clear enough. I couldn’t put a picture on my wall knowing the artist didn’t want it there. As soon as I’d found Aidan and shown him Abberton, I would give it away-to Malcolm, I decided. He often made admiring remarks about my art collection.

Please let Aidan still be in London, I thought. I didn’t want to have to take Abberton back to Spilling. The idea of having it in my home was unthinkable. Already I felt oppressed by it in a funny sort of way, even though I hadn’t touched it yet and didn’t own it. I had always known it was an object that possessed a certain power-that was what had drawn me to it in the first place-but now that its maker had traumatised and humiliated me, the force of the picture seemed wholly negative. It was ridiculous, I knew, but I was afraid of it.

‘Abberton,’ the woman repeated slowly, writing it on her form. ‘Artist’s name?’

‘Mary Trelease.’ I was surprised to have to tell her. Saul Hansard wouldn’t have needed to ask. How could she represent her artists properly if she wasn’t familiar with the titles of their work? Everything about her demeanour suggested indifference. I wondered how much commission TiqTaq took. Aidan had told me most galleries take fifty per cent, even the ones that make no effort to promote an artist’s work.

‘Mary Trelease?’ The woman looked up at me, seeming suddenly nervous. For a moment, I was terrified she was about to tell me something I knew to be impossible. You must be mistaken. Mary Trelease died years ago. She was murdered.

The young woman walked over to Abberton and tapped its surface with the biro she was holding. ‘This is the picture you want?’ The disbelief and annoyance in her voice let me know that I was making life difficult for her.

‘Yes.’ I took my credit card out of my wallet to show her I wasn’t going to back down, waited for her to say I couldn’t have Abberton-Mary Trelease had told her to sell the painting to anybody but me. But I hadn’t told this woman my name; how could she know who I was?

‘Sorry, my mistake,’ she said, a rueful smile appearing on her face. ‘It’s already sold.’

‘What? But… it can’t be. There’s no red dot on the label.’ I noticed for the first time that there was also no price, nothing written beneath the title and Mary Trelease’s name. All the other pictures on TiqTaq’s stall had prices apart from one or two that were labelled ‘NFS’-not for sale-and their labels were printed. Why was