The Other Half Lives aka The Dead Lie Down

At this, Lund looked up and grinned. ‘I’m not a thug-for-hire. What’s your sister told you about me?’

‘I’m not asking you to give her a kicking.’ Charlie tried not to sound as if she was begging. ‘What about threatening her with a court case unless she takes the whole lot down and destroys it? Even if there’s no legal action we can take, she won’t know that. She’s a picture-framer, not a lawyer. She’ll be scared-anyone would.’

Lund shrugged, wiping his face with his napkin. His entire face, not only the area around his mouth. Now his cheek as well as his chin was smeared with orange grease. ‘And when she consults a lawyer and he tells her it’s a joke? That’s my reputation stuffed, isn’t it? Either I’m unethical or completely tonto. And if your woman’s got anything about her, she’ll take it to the press. I would.’

‘Please. There must be something you can do. I can’t bear it, knowing it’s there. I keep seeing it in my mind, wondering who’s seeing it in real life, reading all those things about me. Can’t you understand that? Are you telling me that’s not a violation of my privacy?’

‘The law doesn’t care how you feel,’ said Lund. ‘Legally, you’re trying to violate her privacy. I’d go to the papers if I were her, for sure. “I was harassed by psychopath’s ex-girlfriend, says picture- framer.” More headlines for her to stick up in her gallery, more infamy for you.’

‘Fuck you.’

‘What?’ Lund frowned. ‘Oh, come on. Let’s not pussyfoot around.’ He leaned back in his chair and stared up at the ceiling.

Charlie dug her fingernails into her palms as hard as she could. Focus on the physical pain. ‘I didn’t know he was a psychopath. I was another of that evil fucker’s victims.’ Seeing Lund’s expression, she said, ‘Not in that way. I just mean… it wasn’t my fault. The inquiry found in my favour, even if the shitty tabloids didn’t.’

‘I know all that,’ said Lund, yawning openly. ‘I’m telling you what the press would say, if this woman was canny enough to approach them.’

Charlie stood up, pushing back her chair. ‘Forget it,’ she said. ‘Invoice me for the hour you’ve spent ripping my self-esteem to shreds. You can pay for your own lunch.’

He waved away the suggestion. ‘They know me well enough here,’ he said. What the fuck was that supposed to mean? ‘Don’t take it out on me-I’m trying to help you. The best thing you can do is forget the whole thing: the psychopath, the gutter hacks, the woman-all of it. Why let it bother you? You should put it behind you.’

Charlie couldn’t breathe. He’d refused all her appeals for real help, and now he was trying to fob her off with hackneyed snippets of homespun wisdom. She wanted to kill him.

Lund smirked as if he’d remembered a filthy joke. ‘Olivia tells me you’re getting married.’

Charlie moved the words around in her brain. Liv hadn’t mentioned knowing Lund personally. ‘Have you seen my sister recently?’

‘Last week. Simon, isn’t it? Your fiance? Also a cop.’

‘How well do you and Liv know each other?’ Vogue, Elle, The English Home… The magazines Lund had suggested to Charlie were all ones Olivia subscribed to. No. Please, no.

‘How well does anyone know anyone? Liv can’t believe your parents haven’t tried to talk you out of marrying him,’ said Lund amiably. ‘Says she’s tried, but you won’t listen to her.’

Charlie’s insides had turned to lead. She opened her mouth to speak, but found she couldn’t. Every last word had declared itself unavailable.

‘My impression is that you don’t really listen to anyone,’ Lund added, his eyes drifting to the screen of his BlackBerry. Were there messages on it from Olivia?

Charlie pulled her handbag off the back of her chair and marched out of the restaurant. Outside, walking fast in no particular direction, she realised she’d broken the strap. She heard a stifled cry that must have come from her. Where to go, what to do next? Not Olivia’s flat. She’d kill her sister if she saw her now. Better to calm down first. Charlie pulled her phone out of her bag, made sure it was still switched off. She ached to ring Simon, but knew that if she spoke to him in her present state, they’d end up having a row. Simon, like Dominic Lund, didn’t understand why she hadn’t simply tackled Ruth openly about the newspaper cuttings. He thought the bedroom wall thing was odd, but didn’t understand why it had upset Charlie to the extent that it had. He thinks I’m overreacting.

A street sign caught her eye as she tried and failed to light a cigarette in the cold wind: ‘Charlotte Street’. How many Charlotte Streets could there be in London? Charlie answered her own question: more than one, easily. Still, it was possible. This seemed the right sort of area, and she could see what looked like a gallery further down the road.

She dropped her unlit cigarette and lighter back into her bag and broke into a run. A few seconds later, the possibility became a reality. There was the name, in orange and brown letters on the glass: TiqTaq. This was the gallery Ruth Bussey had mentioned last night. Charlie took a deep breath and went in.

Did a paper cut-out count as art? Charlie couldn’t ask the tanned middle-aged woman in the patchwork jacket who sat behind a battered wooden table at the back of the gallery. She was on the phone, trying to make an appointment to get her legs waxed, sounding upbeat at first, saying, ‘I completely understand, ’ and then increasingly impatient when it started to become apparent that even next week was fully booked. Charlie wondered if she was the older woman Ruth Bussey had met at the art fair: Jan something or other. TiqTaq’s owner.

If she was, presumably all work exhibited was approved by her. She evidently saw some merit in the framed lines of paper dolls holding hands that were up on the walls. Each had been cut out of different coloured paper and was a different size; each carried a price tag of between two and five thousand pounds. I could have done these, Charlie thought. A few big sheets of paper, a pair of scissors… What a scam.

‘Can I help you?’ The woman was off the phone. ‘Shall I talk you through the exhibition? I’m Jan Garner. TiqTaq’s my gallery.’

So Ruth Bussey had told the truth about that, at least. In fact, Charlie had believed every word of her story. Even feeling the way she did about Ruth at the moment, she could tell when a person stopped lying; the relief was unmistakeable. Simon disagreed; they’d argued about it last night, at some ungodly hour. ‘Anyone who’s lied once is untrustworthy always,’ he’d said.

‘Clever liars admit to old lies to distract you, so that you don’t spot the ones they’re in the middle of.’

Charlie shook Jan Garner’s extended hand. ‘Charlie Zailer,’ she said. ‘I’m hoping you can help me with something else, actually-nothing to do with the exhibition.’

‘Happy to if I can,’ said Jan. ‘Fancy a cup of tea?’

Could this work as a matey chat? Charlie wondered. Useful if it could, since she had no official reason to be here. ‘Yes. Thanks.’

‘Earl Grey, Lady Grey, lapsang, green with mint, green with jasmine, lemon and ginger…’

‘Earl Grey’d be lovely,’ said Charlie. The long list of fancy teas made her think of Olivia, who drank things like fennel and nettle, and would no doubt drink weeds stewed in dirty bathwater if it had the right label on it. Charlie pushed the thought of her sister away.

While Jan made the drinks, she pulled an information sheet out of a plastic rack near the door and read about the paper dolls exhibition. It was called ‘Under Skin’. The dolls weren’t cut out of coloured paper, as Charlie had assumed, but out of pages from road atlases which were then stuck together and ‘encased in watercolours’ so that each row looked like a continous, uncut piece of paper. How long must it have taken, Charlie wondered, and what was the point of it, apart from to show that appearances could deceive? Big deal. Did anyone need something so obvious pointing out to them?

Jan appeared from the back of the gallery with two tall china mugs. ‘Right, fire away,’ she said, handing Charlie her drink.

‘Are you familiar with the work of an artist called Mary Trelease? ’

The smile on Jan’s face instantly became strained. ‘Not in touch any more,’ she said.

‘I just wondered… I’ve seen some of Mary’s paintings and-’

‘You’ve seen Mary’s work? Where?’

‘At her house.’

Jan laughed. ‘She let you in and showed you her pictures? So I’m guessing you’re her closest friend, if not her only friend.’