The Other Half Lives aka The Dead Lie Down

‘I’m sorry, I’m not sure I can help you there. We try to keep up with our old girls’ careers as best we can, but there are so many of them. Let me think…’

‘I’ll put it another way,’ said Charlie. ‘Do you know if any of these women definitely aren’t still writing?’

Olivia snatched the pen from her hand. Next to each name she wrote something, rolling her eyes as if Charlie ought to have known: ‘Still writing poetry about muddy puddles that no one buys.’ ‘Depends what you mean by “still writing”. She puts her name to about four books a year, but they’re all “co-written”, i.e. written by unknown skivvies.’ ‘Yes-she’s good-I tried to lend you one of hers but you vetoed it because it was set abroad and in the past.’

‘May I ask what your interest is?’ A note of caution had infused the impeccable voice, enough to convince Charlie that she and the woman on the other end of the phone were thinking, at that moment, of the same person: the woman Mary Trelease had painted dead. Charlie closed her eyes. The absinthe was starting to make its presence felt; her veins were buzzing.

‘It’s sort of personal,’ she said. ‘I can promise you that anything you tell me will go no further.’ Recklessly, she added, ‘I think you know which of these women I’m asking about, don’t you?’

‘I don’t think I’m going to be able to help you.’ Shrill and defensive. Was it something I said?

Beside the name of the woman Charlie had seen on Question Time recently, Liv had written, ‘Ideas above her station-thinks writing formulaic thrillers qualifies her to interfere in politics.’ Every name on the list had one of Liv’s mini-essays beside it apart from one: Martha Wyers. Charlie pointed to it. Liv shrugged, then, in case that wasn’t clear enough, drew a big question mark next to it.

‘Martha Wyers,’ said Charlie. ‘She’s not writing any more, is she?’

‘I cannot help you,’ the woman repeated firmly. ‘If you care about Martha or this school at all, please don’t pursue it. There’s been enough suffering already without journalists digging for dirt and causing even more.’

‘I’m not a journalist. Really, I’m not going to-’

‘I should never have given you her name.’ The words were breathy and indistinct, as if she’d pressed her mouth too close to the mouthpiece. She hung up.

‘Any luck with the computer?’ Charlie asked Liv.

‘You’re slurring your words. Of course not. That’s nine hundred quid you owe me, plus a two-thousand-word article about why endings are as important as beginnings in fiction.’

‘Instalments do you? Tiny ones? Where’s the nearest internet cafe?’ Charlie was already heading for the front door.

‘Right here,’ said Olivia drily. ‘I’ve set up my other laptop. You can use that. One condition: would you mind not hurling it at the wall?’

‘You’ve got two laptops?’

‘It’s handy-you never know when one’s going to be smashed up by a vandal.’

‘I’ve said I’m sorry…’

‘Sarcastically, yes. I don’t suppose it’ll matter to you, but I bought the second laptop to write my book, and that’s all I’ve ever used it for. I didn’t want it to be used for anything else.’

Charlie stopped at the entrance to the lounge. ‘I can go to an internet cafe,’ she said. ‘Make up your mind. Do you want to help me or not? Only in exchange for praise, presumably.’

‘Use it. I’ve set it up,’ said Liv wearily. ‘What’s going on, Char? Any chance you’re going to tell me?’

Charlie clicked on the Internet Explorer icon. When the Google screen appeared, she typed ‘Martha Wyers, Villiers, suicide’ into the search box. Nothing came up that looked right. The first page of results yielded a selection of science journal articles by a Dr Martha Wyers of Yale University. ‘Don’t give me this shit,’ Charlie moaned at the computer.

‘Are you sure it’s not the same person?’ Liv asked, peering over her shoulder.

‘I doubt it.’

‘Check,’ Liv advised.

‘Thanks for that tip. Of course I’m going to check,’ said the part of Charlie that, in the presence of her sister, was permanently frozen at the age of fourteen.

Google was bursting at the seams with Dr Wyers’ details and achievements. It didn’t take long to find a CV. ‘Born in 1947 in Buffalo. Never lived in the UK, never attended Villiers school…’

‘It’s not her,’ said Liv.

‘No.’

Charlie tried ‘Martha Wyers, British writer, suicide’ and ‘Martha Wyers, British writer, Villiers, murder’ with no success. Yale’s Dr Wyers wasn’t letting anyone else get a look-in.

‘You can find out, can’t you?’ she asked Liv. ‘Martha Wyers was a writer, you know everything there is to know about books…’

‘Was Martha Wyers killed by a stalker?’

‘What?’ Seeing her sister trying so hard, looking so helpful and enthusiastic and making completely the wrong connection made Charlie want to hit her. She ought to ring Simon again. Why had he sounded so riled? He was the one she needed to talk to. Would he pursue the Martha Wyers angle?

He’d tell you you’re crazy, that’s what he’d do. Aidan Seed says he killed Mary Trelease. Mary Trelease painted Martha Wyers, who killed herself. No reason to think Martha Wyers was murdered by Seed or anyone else. Except that Jan Garner had talked about murder, Mary mentioning murder in connection with the dead woman writer. ‘No, Martha Wyers wasn’t murdered by a stalker,’ Charlie told Liv impatiently. ‘Not as far as I know, anyway.’

‘You don’t know if she was murdered or if she killed herself, so why don’t you search for Martha Wyers, writer- keep it simple? ’

It wasn’t a bad suggestion, except that Charlie was unwilling to let her sister see her following instructions and infer from that that she’d made a good point. As luck would have it, Liv’s phone started to ring and she went to the kitchen to answer it.

Charlie typed ‘Martha Wyers, writer’ into the search box and was about to press ‘enter’ when Olivia reappeared, red in the face, agitated. ‘That was Simon.’

Automatically, Charlie stood up, holding out her hand for the phone. Why hadn’t he rung her on her mobile? When she saw the expression on Liv’s face, her arm fell to her side.

‘What?’ she whispered.

‘I’m sorry, Char,’ said her sister. ‘It’s bad news.’

Dear Mary 4 March 2008

This is something I never thought I’d do. Like you, I saw a therapist for a while, and like you I found that it didn’t achieve much. Unlike your therapist, mine recommended letter-writing, but I suppose it amounts to the same thing. You want my story-this is it.

In my old life, I was a garden designer-before I moved to Spilling I had nothing to do with art or artists. I had a thriving business and won awards for my work. In 1999 I won the principal BALI (British Association of Landscaping Industries) award for the third time in three consecutive years. There was a six-page feature about me in Good Housekeeping magazine, with pictures of my gardens that had won prizes, and interviews with the people I’d designed them for. As a result of this publicity, my services were in demand. I had a sudden influx of new clients and a waiting list three years long. Some people got impatient and decided to go elsewhere. Others were happy to wait their turn. Only one woman fell into neither of the above categories.

She phoned me and left a message, saying she needed to speak to me urgently. When I rang her back, she told me she was sick, and asked if there was any way I could fit her in sooner. She didn’t specify what was wrong with her, but said she didn’t know how long she had left to enjoy her garden, and as things stood there was, she said, ‘little about it to enjoy’. I considered telling her I had made prior commitments to other people and didn’t want to let them down, but decided in the end that, in such an unusual case, it was better to be flexible. None of my other clients or prospective clients was terminally ill.

She was a primary school teacher, in her early thirties, married with no children, and lived in a village close to the Leicestershire-Lincolnshire border, on Woodmansterne Lane, a narrow road with detached fake stone cottages, modern but trying to look old, hidden behind hedges as solid as concrete walls and thick-trunked trees that seemed