The Other Half Lives

11

‘Your turn,’ I say to Mary when she looks up from my letter. ‘You promised. A fair exchange, you said. Where’s Aidan?’

‘Aidan Seed,’ she says softly. ‘The man you’re so sure I know.’

‘Did he kill Martha Wyers? Did you? Both of you together?’ The painting is still imprinted on my mind. I don’t think I’ll ever forget it. No one would paint someone dead like that, in such lurid detail, unless they relished the death in some way, wanted to savour it. The picture had an atmosphere of triumph about it; I don’t think I can have imagined that. I want to see it again, but I’m scared to go charging upstairs like I did before, scared that Mary wouldn’t be here when I came back down. I’m not letting her out of my sight, not until she’s answered my questions.

‘Martha killed Martha,’ she says, lighting a cigarette. ‘She hanged herself. I suppose you think I’m sick, painting her like that.’

I don’t acknowledge the question. She’s getting nothing from me until she gives me something back.

‘People deal with grief in different ways.’ Her voice hardens, as if it angers her to find herself caught up in justifications. ‘When you lose everything that matters to you, you want something to show for it.’

‘You loved Martha.’

‘Very much. At the same time, nowhere near enough.’

‘You think you could have saved her?’

‘Could and should.’

‘What happened?’ I ask, leaning forward in my chair. I don’t know what time it is, but it’s late. Dark outside. Mary hasn’t closed the curtains. Every now and then she looks out at the lamplit street beyond the window, her sharp eyes scouring the night. For Aidan?

‘This man,’ she says, waving my letter at me. ‘Was there anyone before him? Men, boys? Girls?’ She smiles.

How many more questions will she make me answer before she answers mine? ‘At first I only dated good Christian boys,’ I say. ‘The sons of my parents’ friends.’

‘I’m surprised they let you date anyone,’ says Mary.

‘Only once I was sixteen, and only trips to public places like the cinema. When I left home and they couldn’t keep tabs on me as easily, I went for anybody who was nothing like the people I’d known through church. The further removed from that world, the better. I went for the sort of men who would have reduced the church boys to quivering wrecks.’

‘That sounds dangerous.’

‘Not really. I didn’t respect or care about any of them. I just wanted to prove I could sleep around and the world wouldn’t fall apart. And it didn’t. The first man I really felt anything for was… Him.’

‘What about Aidan Seed?’

‘What about him?’

‘You love him.’

‘Yes.’

Mary smiles at my hesitation. ‘A man who tells you he’s killed someone who you know is alive: me. A man who fucks with your brain so badly that it drives you half insane.’

I hate this.

‘Don’t you see the pattern?’

‘You’re not a shrink,’ I tell her. She hates Aidan. Hates him more than anything. With this insight, the conspiracy I’ve constructed in my mind-Mary and Aidan against me-starts to dissolve. At first I’m relieved-I can forgive him anything but that, anything at all, I know I can-but the respite doesn’t last long. Not good enough, I think to myself. Not the same as being able to forgive him anything, not unconditional.

‘I could be a shrink,’ says Mary. ‘I don’t believe I’d need any training whatsoever. All I’d need is experience, which I’ve got, and a brain, which I’ve got.’

‘We made a deal. I’ve told you everything.’

‘No, you haven’t.’

How does she know? My mind fills with all the things I’ve kept back: the Access 2 Art fair, Aidan’s prediction about the nine paintings, his insistence that I bring Abberton to him as proof. Proof that he didn’t murder Mary. Why would anyone who knew they’d strangled someone demand to see proof that they hadn’t? Sometimes, because my understanding nothing has become normal, I forget how little sense it all makes. Then I remember again and am as shocked as if I were realising it for the first time.

‘We made a deal,’ I say again.

Mary lets air out through clenched teeth, a hiss of disgust. ‘You’re here because you want the truth about Aidan. You think I must be able to explain it to you. You don’t care how bad it is-you want to know.’

‘That’s right.’

‘You’ve still got a choice. You could leave this house, forget him, forget about Martha. Forget me. The safe option.’

‘I don’t want to be safe. I want to know.’

‘I don’t know Aidan Seed,’ says Mary, looking past me into the distance.

No. Not possible.

‘I used to, though. I knew him a long time ago.’

‘I haven’t seen Aidan since the day Martha died. The tenth of April, 2000.’ Mary puts my letter down on the table and bends over it, pushing her bushy hair out of her eyes. ‘When were your seventy-two hours?’

I don’t need to ask what she means. To me, that number will only ever mean one thing. ‘Later.’ I force myself to give her one more piece of information, of my life. ‘It started on April the twenty-second.’

‘Close enough,’ she says. Then her face goes blank. ‘Aidan was there when Martha jumped.’

I hardly dare to breathe.

‘He also didn’t stop her.’

‘You were there too?’

‘Three’s a crowd,’ she says in a sing-song voice. ‘I don’t think Aidan wanted Martha dead. I’m the one he wants dead. Maybe he did. If he did, he’d have stopped wanting it when she jumped. Too late. You freeze, I suppose. It happens too quickly.’ Mary’s hands are shaking. ‘Once she’d gone down, there was no way I could get her up. I tried-’ She breaks off. ‘Aidan could have got her up, he could have lifted her, but he didn’t try. He called an ambulance. He ran to the phone. Ran away. He saw I was struggling, but he didn’t help me.’ She breathes hard, locked into the terrible memory. ‘He froze. When you can’t stand the situation you’re in, you tell yourself it’s not real-it’s an illusion. I told myself the same thing.’

‘Why didn’t he tell me any of this?’ I blurt out.

‘Did you tell him about Cherub Cottage?’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

I shake my head. ‘I couldn’t.’ Couldn’t tell anyone. Until I had to.

‘Maybe he wanted you to carry on loving him,’ says Mary. ‘How could you, once you knew he’d stood by and let someone die?’

‘He told me he’d killed you. Why did he say that?’

She rubs her thumb along her lips and back again. ‘He wants me dead. He’s going to kill me, or try to. It’s a threat.’

‘No! Aidan’s not a killer.’

She laughs. ‘Don’t kid yourself.’

‘It makes no sense. If he wanted to threaten you, why not do it to your face?’

‘He’s clever. I’d have called the police, wouldn’t I? I assume it’s an offence to threaten someone’s life.’

‘I don’t know.’ I can’t think straight, can’t process any of this.

‘Of course it is. It must be. There’d have been reprisals for him, and he doesn’t want that. He thinks he’s suffered enough.’

‘Why? Why has he suffered?’

‘His childhood,’ says Mary, assuming I know what she’s referring to.

I feel ashamed of my ignorance. Aidan never wanted to talk about his family. I didn’t push it; I was equally reluctant to talk about my parents. Don’t ask, don’t tell.

‘He tried to save her later,’ Mary mutters.

‘Aidan tried to save Martha?’

‘Once he’d rung the ambulance. He’s no weakling-well, you know that. It was easy for him to get her down. The emergency services operator must have told him to do it: lift her up, or cut her down or whatever. Stop the rope from strangling her.’

I don’t want to have to visualise it.

‘I’ve thought about this a lot,’ says Mary. ‘A man rings up saying a woman’s just hanged herself in front of him. If you were the person on the switchboard, what would you think? You’d assume he’d rushed to save her first, wouldn’t you, and only rung you afterwards? Soon as you found out she was still hanging there, dying while he wastes time on the phone, you’d tell him to get back in there and save her.’

I wince.

‘How do you feel about your boyfriend now? A man who only tries to save a dying woman once a disembodied official voice has told him to, who dreams up a sick, devious way to threaten my life. You know he described me in great detail, right down to my birthmark?’ She points to the patch of brown skin beneath her bottom lip. ‘That was him letting me know I’m his target. If he tells the police he’s strangled me, murdered me, what are they going to do when they find me alive and well?’

She lights another cigarette, coughing. ‘Alive, anyway. I’ve probably got lung cancer, the amount I smoke. The police aren’t very bright. Aidan knew they’d rush back to reassure him once they’d found out his story wasn’t true. Poor, deluded man, they’d think-what a shame. His determination to make them believe him sent them back here twice, three times. What if he’s right? they thought. Even though we’ve all met this woman he claims to have murdered, we’d better check again. And then you turn up, and I hear from you as well that he says he’s killed me…’

She stands up, wrapping her wild hair round her hand, yanking it straight. ‘Evil bastard! He knew it would scare me more than a straightforward threat. How do you think it feels to have your death discussed as if it’s already happened?

‘Why?’ I ask.

She looks at me oddly.

It’s a simple question, an obvious one. ‘Why would Aidan want to frighten you? Why would he want to kill you?’

‘Will you let me take you somewhere?’ she asks.

‘No. Where?’ I think of Charlie Zailer’s advice: Don’t go to Mary’s house.

‘Villiers.’ The name on the tea towel in Mary’s kitchen. I saw it last time I was here. ‘My old school. There’s a house in the grounds, Garstead Cottage. I use it for painting, when I’m not here. Martha used to write there. Her parents rent it from the school. We’ll be safe there. Martha was a writer-did I tell you that?’

‘No.’

Mary sighs, starts to rub her temples with her fingertips. ‘Then you don’t know how Aidan and Martha met.’

‘No.’ How could I? ‘Why did Martha kill herself?’

‘Come with me to Villiers,’ she says. ‘If you want the truth about me, Martha and Aidan, there’s something you need to see.’