The Other Half Lives aka The Dead Lie Down

went to sit in his car. Like me. At about half nine, Gemma Crowther and Aidan Seed walked up the road together.’

I try not to flinch.

‘Aidan opened the boot of his car, took something out, carried it into the house. I couldn’t see what it was-I wasn’t close enough, and there was a big white van parked behind Aidan’s car, blocking my view.’ Mary twists her hair round her hand. ‘The lights went on inside. Gemma closed the curtains. That’s when Waterhouse called it a night.’ Her smile is full of scorn for anyone who could give up so easily.

‘You didn’t?’ I guess.

‘No. There was a small gap in the curtains, but big enough to see through.’

Gemma Crowther and Aidan in a room together.

Mary waits for me to ask. When I don’t-can’t-she says, ‘There was a banging sound. He had a hammer in his hand. He was hanging a picture for her. Guess what picture?’

I freeze. It has to be, otherwise Mary would tell me. She wouldn’t make me guess. She blames me.

‘Yours,’ I say. ‘Abberton.’

‘My painting,’ says Mary, unemotional. ‘Yes. In the home of strangers. In the home of those strangers.’

‘I gave it to Aidan to prove to him that he couldn’t have killed you,’ I try to explain. ‘He kept insisting he had, no matter what I said. Abberton had your name on it, and the date: 2007. He told me he’d killed you years ago.’

‘How did you know I’d signed and dated it?’ Mary turns on me. ‘I hadn’t when I brought it in to Saul’s place last June.’

I tell her, as coherently as I can, about the Access 2 Art fair.

‘My God,’ Mary mutters, chewing her lip until drops of blood appear. When she next takes a drag of her cigarette, it comes away red at the end, as if she’s wearing lipstick.

‘I gave Aidan the picture and never saw it again,’ I tell her. ‘He wouldn’t tell me what he’d done with it. Mary, I’m sorry…’

‘A present’s a present,’ she says in a brittle voice. ‘I gave it to you, you gave it to him, he gave it to her.’

‘What did you do? When you saw it, I mean?’

‘What could I do? I got in my car and drove home. When I left, Gemma Crowther was alive and she was with Aidan Seed. That should tell you everything you need to know about your boyfriend.’

‘Why did the police talk to you?’ Why not me? Maybe they’d tried. I ignored everyone who came to the workshop yesterday; maybe one of those knocks was the police.

‘Some nosey bastard neighbour saw me and came and asked who I was-I should have lied but I didn’t think quickly enough. As it turned out, it was lucky she saw me. She watched me leave, and heard the two gunshots after I’d gone. Waterhouse had gone, I’d gone-the only person still there with Gemma was Aidan. Even the cops should be able to work it out.’

Something hard and huge is welling up inside me. Why do I feel as if I’ve let Mary down? It’s crazy. I owe her no loyalty. Aidan’s the person I love and ought to trust. He’s never intentionally hurt me, and she has.

It hits me then: I’ve forgiven her. If I can forgive Mary, then I can forgive Aidan, whatever he’s done. And after that? Where would I stop?

‘Ruth? What’s the matter?’

‘I’m the one,’ I tell her.

‘What do you mean?’

‘All this time, I’ve had this… this fear. I was scared of not being able to forgive Aidan once I knew the truth-or rather, that’s what I thought it was, but I was wrong. It’s the exact opposite: I’m afraid I’ll forgive him too easily, and not only him-everything and everybody. Aidan, you, even Stephen and Gemma. Once you start to imagine what another person’s pain and terror must have felt like…’ My throat blocks. I can’t speak.

‘How can you stop yourself forgiving them? Is that what you were going to say?’

I’m aware that I’m crying. It doesn’t seem to matter. ‘My parents used to say, “We’re Christians, Ruth. Christians forgive, always,” but I don’t want to forgive anybody!’

‘Why not?’ Mary’s voice is stern.

‘Because then there’d only be me who… who…’

‘You think you’re unforgivable. You don’t want to be the only one.’

Her understanding strikes me as a small miracle. ‘I tried to brainwash Stephen against Gemma. I did everything I could to split them up, all the time thinking I was virtuous and honourable for refusing to have sex with him.’ I wipe my eyes with the palms of my hands. ‘I couldn’t see… Sex is just sex. Or, when it’s not, it’s love. Either way, it’s not toxic, like trying to control someone else’s mind. All the tactics my parents used on me, I used on Stephen. I know there’s no justification for what he and Gemma did to me-doesn’t mean it wasn’t my fault or that I didn’t deserve it.’

‘If you start forgiving everyone, you might get carried away and forgive your parents,’ says Mary. ‘Where would that leave you? They haven’t forgiven you, have they, in spite of their Christians-always-forgive slogans? You sent them an address and they’ve never used it. Quick to give up on you, weren’t they? And these are people who’ve devoted their whole lives to preaching mercy.’

‘Not only preaching it. Practising it too. After what happened to me, when they came to see me in hospital, they told me they’d forgiven Stephen and Gemma. They said I should too. In their whole lives, I’m the only person they haven’t forgiven.’

‘Which makes you the only unforgivable person in the world, right? The worst person in the world.’

‘Yes.’ Now that Mary’s said it, I feel deflated. As if something swollen inside me has been punctured. Is this what I’ve been so afraid of, this realisation? It’s a relief now that the fear’s gone and there’s nothing left except flat, grey exhaustion. My eyes start to close.

Mary taps me on the shoulder. ‘Wrong,’ she says. ‘If you want a unique selling point, how about this? You’re the only person who’s ever laid into them personally. You yelled at them, said some things that were pretty hard for them to take-probably no one else has ever done that. It’s easy to forgive attacks when you yourself aren’t the victim. “Stephen and Gemma? No problem: all they did was nearly kill our daughter. Someone shouting at us and telling us we’re wrong about things? Sorry: unforgivable.” Do you see what I’m trying to say?’

I think I do. If I can bring myself to forgive Stephen and Gemma, I’ll be better than my parents, more Christian than they are, even though I’m not a Christian and don’t believe in God. Aidan, Mary, Stephen, Gemma, Mum, Dad, me. I can maybe forgive us all.

‘My point is,’ says Mary, ‘your parents are two great big stonking pieces of shit. Fuck them.’

I manage a weak smile. ‘Tell me about Aidan and Martha,’ I say.

Instantly, the gleam in Mary’s eyes starts to fade, as if she’s been cut off from her energy supply. ‘On one condition,’ she says. ‘This is my story, so I get to be judge, jury and executioner. If you’re tempted to exonerate anybody, do it in the privacy of your own head. I’m not as enlightened as you.’

I nod. Mary is freer than I am. She doesn’t worry about balancing the blame books. She takes her unhappiness and does what she wants with it. Could I be like her from now on, or will I always feel as if there’s some kind of external moral arbitrator watching every move I make, unseen and infallible?

Mary lights a cigarette. ‘Martha and Aidan met at a job interview. Fellow Commoner in Creative Arts, Trinity College, Cambridge. Aidan got it, Martha didn’t. She put a brave face on it, went on until everyone was sick to death of her about how she didn’t get it because she wasn’t common enough.’ She smiles. ‘We had a student teacher once who asked us how many television sets our families owned. Martha had the most: seven. The teacher was shocked. She was a bit of a luddite grow-your-own-vegetables type. She asked Martha what rooms the tellies were in, and Martha listed six: one of the lounges, the kitchen, her bedroom, her parents’ bedroom, her den, the summer house. The teacher was waiting to hear about the seventh, and Martha must have realised how it would sound, so she clammed up. The teacher asked her outright. Martha turned as red as a tomato, and had to admit that it was on the jet.’

‘A private jet?’

‘She was the only Villiers girl at the time whose parents had one. Loads of families had helicopters, but their