The Other Half Lives

29

‘Do you think he’s all right in there?’ I ask Saul for about the twentieth time. We’re in Sam Kombothekra’s car in the car park at Long Leighton prison, waiting for Aidan, Charlie and Sam to come out.

‘I think he’s more than all right,’ Saul says, as he has twenty times already. ‘What about you? Can you face what might happen? ’

‘If Aidan can, I can.’ Yesterday I donated my entire collection of self-help books to Word on the Street, where I’d bought most of them. This morning I took down my Charlie Zailer wall. None of that was real. The progress Aidan and I have made since that night at Garstead Cottage-that’s real. Substantial.

Saul pats my hand. ‘I’m going to tell you something Aidan made me promise not to,’ he says.

‘What?’ My heart dips. ‘We agreed no more secrets. When did he…?’

‘He’s going to ask you to marry him. Later today, whatever happens in there. He’s got an engagement ring in his pocket. What will you say?’

I feel faint with relief. ‘Yes. Obviously.’

‘Good. I knew that would be your answer.’

‘Then why tell me and spoil the surprise?’

‘There have been enough surprises already,’ said Saul. ‘With any luck, there won’t be any more for a good long while.’

I open the car door, seeing Charlie walking towards us across the car park. Something’s not right. She’s looking purposeful, walking too quickly. ‘I need you both to come inside,’ she says.

‘I don’t want to see him,’ I tell her, panicking. ‘Aidan doesn’t want me to…’

‘You won’t see Len Smith. You’ll be nowhere near him.’

‘Is Aidan all right?’

‘He’s doing fine. He’s doing brilliantly.’

‘Then what…?’

‘It’s better if I show you. I’m assuming neither of you’s got your passport or driving licence with you.’

‘No.’

Saul shakes his head.

‘Then leave everything in the car-wallets, bags, the lot.’

‘But…’

‘Be quiet and listen. Until we get back here, your names are Tom Southwell and Jessica Whiteley. You’re both here for a job interview-English teacher, education department. You handed over your passports this morning-they’ve got them-and you’ve just nipped out for lunch. Right?’

I’m about to tell her I can’t do it when I hear Saul say, ‘Right.’ I make a face at him behind Charlie’s back, but he doesn’t notice. He’s busy mouthing, ‘Tom Southwell’ to himself.

When we reach the glass-sided hut that’s set into the high wire-mesh fence, Charlie says her name with confidence, for our benefit as well as that of the uniformed guard inside. ‘You’ve got my ID already. There I am.’ She points to her name on his list. ‘Oh, it wasn’t you before, was it? Sorry.’

‘No probs.’

‘Same with us,’ says Saul easily. ‘Tom Southwell and Jessica Whiteley.’

‘In you come,’ says the guard. He has to unlock three gates for us. Charlie tells him we know where we’re going and he leaves us to it.

‘Where are we going?’ I ask.

‘Patience, Ruth,’ says Saul. I give him a look. He’s the one who’s supposed to dislike surprises; he’s all talk.

‘To the education department,’ says Charlie.

‘I don’t want to teach English in a prison,’ I tell her. ‘What’s going on?’

Eventually, we come to a wide corridor with green-painted walls. I think of the last time I followed Charlie down. It feels like a lifetime ago. Like that one, this one has pictures on the walls, the prisoners’ artwork, some of it excellent. Charlie stops in front of a picture, and when I look at it, my heart surges up to fill my throat.

‘Her,’ I say, feeling the same horror I’d feel if she were to materialise in front of me, back from the dead. I’d recognise her style anywhere. I recognise the picture, too, from Aidan’s description.

‘We were right,’ says Charlie. ‘I’m sorry. I know it’s a shock, but you had to see it. I couldn’t not show it to you. We were right, and my boss was wrong. Ex-boss,’ she corrects herself.

‘The Murder of Mary Trelease,’ I say. ‘So she did do a copy. But… how did it get to be…?’

‘She visited Smith in prison,’ says Charlie. ‘It occurred to me on the way here that she might have. Why wouldn’t she? She wanted to get close to Aidan in any way she could, as long as it wasn’t too risky. She knew Aidan didn’t see Smith or have any contact with him. She couldn’t resist.’

‘You mean… you asked Len Smith…?’

Charlie shakes her head. ‘Sam and Aidan are with him. I haven’t seen him. No, I asked one of the wardens if I could see a list of Smith’s visitors. There was a Martha Heathcote on the list. Heathcote was her house at Villiers. I checked. The warden I asked was very helpful. He remembered Smith being extremely distressed after the visit. It’s the only visit he’s had since he’s been here-everyone thought he’d be delighted but he wasn’t. The opposite. Ms Heathcote brought him two presents, both of which he wanted nothing to do with. He told the prison staff to burn them. One was this picture. The other was a book.’

‘Ice on the Sun,’ I murmur.

‘Yes. Which is now in the prison library,’ says Charlie. ‘Resources are finite, here like everywhere else. They weren’t about to throw away a book that could go in the prison library or a painting they could stick on the wall.’

‘It’s not signed,’ I say, staring at the picture. Aidan has described it to me, but seeing it-or rather, seeing Martha’s replica-is something altogether different. The painting is of a bedroom at night. The room’s dark, but some light’s coming in through the curtains. It looks as if it might be the early hours of the morning. There are three people in the bed: an older man, asleep, wearing a sweat-stained vest, turned on his side, a yellowing pillow beneath his head, a dribble stain by his mouth. Then there’s a naked woman in the middle of the bed. Her eyes are wide open and there are faint bruises on her neck. I’m not sure anyone would say with certainty that she was dead unless they knew. On her other side, there’s a young man, or an old boy, wearing a T-shirt and a pair of shorts, sitting up, hugging his knees and crying, looking at the person looking at the picture. Aidan. She’s captured him perfectly: how he must have looked, how he must have felt.

‘He needs to see this,’ I say. ‘Can he use it to prove what happened if… if his stepfather won’t…’

Charlie’s shaking her head. ‘He won’t need to, though. Smith will do what Aidan wants him to do. It’ll be okay, you’ll see.’

‘It will,’ Saul echoes, squeezing my arm.

‘Even if she’d put the right title on it…’ says Charlie.

‘What do you mean, the right title?’ I look carefully, but can’t see a title anywhere. There’s no writing at all on the picture.

‘I thought she’d have called it The Murder of Mary Trelease,’ says Charlie. ‘I can’t understand why she didn’t. It’s as if she hasn’t quite got the courage of her convictions.’

‘What did she call it?’ asks Saul, leaning in close to the wall to look at the back of the picture. Of course: that’s where the title would be, if it were anywhere.

Carefully, with both hands, Charlie lifts the painting off the wall and turns it round so that Saul and I can read the label on the back. Tears spring to my eyes as I read Mary’s handwritten words, words that make no sense to Charlie or to Saul, and won’t to Aidan either.

Words that make sense only to me. Four, in total.

The Other Half Lives.