The Other Half Lives aka The Dead Lie Down

I’ll find a picture called Abberton, by Mary Trelease at the Access 2 Art fair?’

‘Yes! Dated 2007. But you’ve got to come now-the woman on the stall told me it was sold. I think she was lying, but I’m not sure, and if someone comes to collect it…’

Aidan picked up his wallet and the black hold-all, and pushed past me into the corridor. He left the Gloria Stetbay picture-my engagement ring substitute-leaning against the wall. Watching him slam the door on it, I knew the answer to the question I was too scared to ask. Our engagement was off. Aidan wouldn’t mention it again.

By the time I got to the taxi, he was sitting in it as if he’d been there for hours, shoulders hunched, his face a grim mask. ‘Get in,’ he said. I didn’t understand. He was acting as if he was forcing me to go with him, when I was the one who had suggested it. ‘Alexandra Palace,’ he told the driver. ‘As fast as you can.’

‘Talk to me, Aidan, please,’ I begged him. ‘What happened between you and Mary Trelease? Why did you think you’d killed her? Why do you think I’m trying to drive you mad? Why would I?’ I’d been so certain that the nightmare would be over as soon as I told him about Abberton, but it wasn’t; I couldn’t bear the disappointment. I buried my face in my hands and started to weep.

‘Don’t cry,’ said Aidan. ‘It won’t help.’

‘Please, tell me what’s going on!’

‘I shouldn’t have told you anything. I should never have mentioned her name to you.’

‘Why don’t you trust me? I don’t care what you’ve done-I love you. I should have said that last night, as soon as you told me, but I was confused. I knew it wasn’t right-I knew you could never kill anyone!’

‘Keep your voice down.’

‘That’s why I clammed up, not because what you’d told me changed how I felt about you but because I didn’t believe it could be true. And the name Mary Trelease-I knew I’d heard it before, but I couldn’t remember where. I must have seen it when I worked for Saul, on a bill or something.’ I stopped, out of breath.

Aidan didn’t look at me, but he took hold of my hand and squeezed it. He was staring out of the window, thinking hard, concentrating on something I couldn’t see or share, something from his past. Almost whispering, I asked, ‘Did you and Mary Trelease have some kind of… physical fight?’ I pictured Aidan pushing her, her falling, knocking her head against something. Aidan panicking, fleeing the scene, assuming he’d killed her…

‘Shhh,’ he said, drawing out the sound as he exhaled slowly. As if I was a child, still young enough to accept comfort without substance. I knew then that there was no point asking him anything else.

We arrived at Alexandra Palace and I paid the driver. ‘Do you remember the stall number?’ Aidan asked me.

‘It’s opposite Jane Fielder’s stall, number… number…’ The churning in my head had dulled my memory.

‘One seven one,’ he said.

I followed him as he pushed past people milling in the aisles, browsing idly as Aidan and I had the day before. It seemed like a lifetime ago. ‘There it is,’ I blurted out when I saw Tiq Taq’s sign from a distance. I looked at my watch: three o’clock. I’d left to go back to the hotel at half past one. My throat tightened. Blood pounded in my ears.

The woman with the dyed blonde hair had gone. In her place was an older woman with a pre-Raphaelite hairstyle-a long plait coiled into a conical bun at the nape of her neck. She was wearing a white linen suit, a clingy red scoop-necked T-shirt and brown sandals with coloured beads on them. Her face, hands and feet were tanned. As we approached, Aidan said, ‘There’s nothing there that’s anything like what you described.’ He turned away in disgust.

Mary’s painting had gone. A picture of exactly the same size hung in its place, of an ugly naked woman standing next to a chicken. She had straggly hair and limbs as thick as a rugby centre forward’s. I hated her, whoever she was. She had no business being there, where Abberton ought to have been. I thought, I knew this would happen. I knew it. All the way to Alexandra Palace in the taxi, I’d had a feeling not of hope but of dread: I was convinced Abberton would be gone, though I’d tried to deny it to myself. I’d read about negative expectations leading to negative outcomes, and now I blamed myself for the picture having vanished. ‘Whoever bought it must have picked it up,’ I said to Aidan. ‘It was here, I swear it.’ I grabbed his arm, tried to make him look at me, but he pushed me away.

‘Excuse me?’ I said to the woman with the coiled plait, loud enough so that Aidan could hear me from the other side of the aisle. ‘I was here at lunchtime. I spoke to your colleague, the one with blonde hair.’

‘Ciara,’ said the woman, smiling. ‘She’s gone, I’m afraid. I’m Jan Garner. TiqTaq’s my gallery. Can I help you?’

‘You had a picture called Abberton. By an artist called Mary Trelease. It was there.’ I pointed to the naked woman and the chicken.

Jan Garner shook her head. ‘No,’ she said. ‘We didn’t and it wasn’t. You must be mistaken.’

I couldn’t speak. Well trained though I was in fearing the worst, I hadn’t foreseen this. Why was this stylish, polite, sophisticated-looking woman telling me a blatant lie? She must have known I knew she was lying.

‘It was here at half past one this afternoon,’ I insisted. ‘The girl-Ciara-said it was sold, someone had bought it yesterday. Whoever bought it must have come to collect it.’

‘I’ve always hated telling people they’re wrong, but I’m afraid you are.’ Jan Garner pulled a sheet of paper out of a file. ‘Look, here’s the list of everything we brought with us from the gallery: title and artist’s name.’

There was no Abberton on the list. No Mary Trelease.

‘But… it was here!’ I turned to look at Aidan, who had moved further away. I could see from the set of his back and shoulders that he was listening to every word while pretending to look at another gallery’s stall.

Jan Garner shook her head. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘When I took over from Ciara, she said we hadn’t sold anything so far. Which means the same pictures are up now as were up yesterday morning-nothing’s changed. Are you…?’

I didn’t hear the rest of what she said. Aidan had started to walk away, and I ran to catch him up. I was terrified of losing him again. ‘Wait!’ I shouted after him. ‘She’s lying! I swear on my life! Come back with me and I’ll prove it to you. We can ask the people on the stalls opposite. They must have seen Abberton.’

‘Shut up.’ He took my arm and dragged me out of the hall into the foyer. ‘I need you to tell me everything. Everything, Ruth-every detail.’

‘I’ve already told you…’

‘Tell me again. This Abberton picture-what is it, what’s it of? What did the other woman say to you-Ciara? What happened at Hansard’s gallery between you and the woman you think was Mary Trelease? What exactly was said?’

‘I don’t remember, not word for word-it was six months ago.’

‘I don’t care how long ago it was!’ Aidan bellowed. People nearby turned to watch. He lowered his voice. ‘I need to know. Start talking.’

So I did. I described the picture: the street scene background in greens, purples and browns, the outline of a human form filled with a kind of stuffing: stuck-on scraps of hard, gauze-like material, some painted, like curled-up jewels. Aidan let out little gasps through clenched teeth as he listened to my description, as if every word I uttered caused him terrible pain, but each time I stopped, worried about the effect I was having on him, he demanded I carry on.

I went over my conversation with Ciara. Aidan wanted to hear about every look that had passed across her face, every movement she made, the inflections in her voice. Then I told him as much as I could bear to about what had happened at Saul’s gallery. I didn’t mention the red paint.

That I didn’t understand no longer mattered to me. Aidan didn’t either; I could see that clearly, from the way the frown-lines on his forehead deepened as he listened to what I had to say. When he’s worked it all out, he’ll tell me, I thought. At least now he seemed to believe me. I comforted myself with the knowledge that Mary Trelease was alive.

Aidan said nothing in the taxi on the way to King’s Cross. Neither of us mentioned the Gloria Stetbay painting. Four thousand pounds, and it would probably be found by a maid and thrown in the bin. I should have gone back for it-I can see that now; it was criminal not to-but at the time I didn’t feel entitled to go back and claim it as my own, not once Aidan had decided to leave it in the hotel.

On the train, forty minutes into the journey, he finally spoke. ‘When we get back, we’ll go to mine to pick up a few things and then we’ll go to yours,’ he said. ‘I’m moving in with you. I’m not letting you out of my sight from now