The Other Half Lives

3

A noise startles me: my house, breaking its long silence with a sharp ringing. The woolly feeling in my head clears. Adrenalin gets me moving. I crawl into the lounge on my hands and knees to avoid putting weight on my injured foot, and manage to grab the phone on the third ring, still holding the blanket I’ve been using as a shawl around my shoulders. I can’t say hello. I can’t allow myself to hope.

‘It’s me.’

Aidan. Relief pours through me. I clutch the phone, needing something solid to hold on to. ‘Are you coming back?’ I say. I have so many questions, but this is the one that matters.

‘Yeah,’ he says. I wait for the part that comes next: I’ll always come back, Ruth. You know that, don’t you? For once, he doesn’t say it. The thudding of my heart fills the silence.

‘Where have you been?’ I ask. He has been gone longer than usual. Two nights.

‘Working.’

‘You weren’t at the workshop.’ There’s a pause. Does he regret giving me a key? I wait for him to ask for it back. He gave it to me when I first started to work for him, the same key for Seed Art Services as for his home. It was a sign that he trusted me.

I spent parts of both Friday and Saturday nights in his messy room behind the framing studio, crying, waiting for him to come back. Several times, drained and exhausted, I fell asleep, then came to suddenly, convinced that, if Aidan returned at all, he would go to my house. I’m not sure how many times I drove from one end of town to the other, feeling as if wherever I went I would be too late, I would miss him by a fraction of a second.

‘We need to talk, Ruth.’

I begin to cry at the obviousness of it. ‘Come back, then.’

‘I’m on my way. Stay put.’ He’s gone before I can reply. Of course I’ll stay. I’ve got nowhere else to go.

I crawl back to the hall, where I was before Aidan phoned, where I’ve been sitting cross-legged since six o’clock this morning, staring up at the small monitor on the shelf above the front door. My body is stiff and sore from being in one position too long. The underside of my damaged foot looks like decayed puff pastry. I don’t feel strong enough to clear up two days’ worth of mess, but I must.

The remote control: if Aidan sees it on the floor he’ll know I’ve been watching the tapes. He’ll be angry. I glance up at the screen, scared that if I take my eyes off it, I’ll miss something. The image changes a second later: a grainy black and white picture of the path outside my house, with English yew hedges sculpted into rounded abstract forms bordering the grass along one side, is replaced by the cluster of poplars on the other side of the house and a clear view of the park gates. Nobody coming in or out. Nobody.

I pick up the remote control, try to stand at the same time, and knock over the stinking, overflowing ashtray that’s been keeping me company lately. ‘Shit,’ I mutter, wishing I’d thought to ask Aidan how far away he was. Will he be back in five minutes or two hours? As well as the upturned ashtray and its contents, there’s an empty wine bottle next to me and an empty packet of Silk Cut. My blood-soaked shoe lies on its side by the front door, where I dropped it on my way to the bathroom to clean myself up on Friday.

If I’d told Charlie Zailer I’d got something in my shoe, she’d have said, ‘Take it out, then.’ How could I have explained why it was so much easier to pretend it wasn’t there?

There’s still some blood in the bath. I should have given it a proper scrub on Friday afternoon, but I couldn’t face it. It was hard enough to hobble down the hall, put my foot under the tap and turn it on. I’d come home to find my boiler had packed in again. The house was as cold as the park outside, and the water coming out of my taps was colder. I kept my eyes closed as I rubbed the torn, pulpy flesh with my hand, shivering, trying to dislodge the thing that had cut me. My foot throbbed as liquid cold flowed over it. I felt sick when I heard something hard hit the enamel.

Walking on my heel, I throw my ruined shoes in the outside bin, along with the wine bottle and cigarette packet. Moving thaws my chilled bones a little. I sweep up the ash and cigarette butts, put them in the bin too. Then I give the bath a good going over, stopping now and then to get my breath back when dizziness threatens to lay me low. I’ve eaten nothing today but a Nutri-Grain cereal bar and a packet of Hula Hoops.

We need to talk, Ruth.

I have to keep moving, or I’ll imagine all the worst things Aidan might say to me. I’ll panic.

I’m about to pick up the remote control and put it on the shelf next to the monitor when I hear a noise outside, a movement in the trees close to my lounge windows. I stop, listen. Almost a minute later, I hear another sound, louder than the first: branches moving. Someone is standing next to my house. Not Aidan; he’d come straight to the door. I sink to my knees in the hall, slide across into the lounge and position myself behind an armchair.

Charlie Zailer. I left my coat at the police station. She might have brought it back. I pray it’s her-someone who won’t hurt me-even though on Friday I couldn’t wait to get away from her.

Then I hear laughing, two voices I don’t recognise. I edge out from behind the chair and see a teenage boy framed in my lounge window. He is undoing his flies, turning back towards the path to shout at his friend to wait for him while he has a slash. A shaving rash covers his neck and chin, and he’s wearing jeans that reveal a good three inches of the boxer shorts beneath. I close my eyes, steady myself on the arm of the chair. It’s nobody, no one who knows about or is interested in me. I hear the more distant voice, the friend, calling him an animal.

As he walks away, I watch to check he doesn’t look back. He adjusts his jeans and scratches the back of his neck, unaware of my eyes on him. If he turned round now, he would see me clearly.

It was one of the things I liked most about this little house, the way the lounge stuck out like a sort of display box at the front of the park, with large stained-glass-topped windows on three sides. Malcolm told me he’d had trouble finding a tenant after the last one left. ‘No privacy, you see.’ He pointed as we approached the park gates, keen to list Blantyre Lodge’s flaws before I crossed the threshold: there were bollards I’d have to lower and raise every time I drove my car into or out of the park. The lounge and bedroom weren’t perfect squares-each had a corner missing, as if a triangle had been cut out of the space. ‘I might as well be honest,’ Malcolm said. ‘It’s not as if you wouldn’t notice.’

‘Privacy’s the opposite of what I want,’ I told him. ‘If people can see me and I can see people, that suits me fine.’ I was surprised by my own words, unsure if this was the truth or the exact reverse of how I felt. I remember thinking, if I’m invisible, nobody will be able to help me if I need help.

‘Get yourself some good net curtains,’ Malcolm said, and I flinched, imagining faces obscured by densely-patterned white material: His face and Hers.

‘No,’ I made a point of saying, and making sure Malcolm heard me. I doubt he cared one way or the other, but I needed to assert myself. ‘I want to be able to see the park, if it’s going to be my garden.’ I was happy to share it with children, joggers, passers-by. A garden I wouldn’t have to touch but that would always be well maintained because it was a public resource; a beautiful green space that was neither secluded nor enclosed-it was ideal.

‘The last tenant had some big Japanese screens,’ said Malcolm, apparently oblivious to what I’d just said. ‘You know, the sort people use for dressing and undressing. He put one at each window.’

‘I won’t cover the windows with anything,’ I said, thinking that I might even take down the curtains, assuming there were some. I’d spotted two large square lights attached to the side of the house facing the wide path that cut the park in half. ‘Do those come on automatically when the natural light falls below a certain level?’ I asked. Malcolm nodded, and I thought, So they’ll show colour, even in the darkness. At night, each of the lodge’s windows would be a stunning still life of trees, plants and flowers: rich, deep greens, reds and purples, all bathed in a gold glow. Whoever was responsible for planting in the park knew what they were doing, I thought, looking at the blue hob-bits and astilbes that circled a large pink-edged phormium. ‘When can I move in?’ I asked.

‘You’re keen. Don’t you want to see inside first?’ Malcolm laughed.

I shook my head. ‘That’s my house,’ I said, standing back to take a mental photograph of the small building in front of me with feathery red Virginia creeper leaves all over its roof. I could have gazed at it for hours. Its pleasing aspect was bound up, in my mind, with the idea of getting better. It was seeing a beautiful object-a painting-that had first tripped something inside me and made me realise I could rejoin the world if I wanted to. Blantyre Lodge wasn’t art; it was a place to live: something functional, something I needed. Yet to me it was also beautiful, and I felt at the time that each beautiful thing I saw and felt a connection with-made a part of my spirit, however pretentious that sounds-took me one step closer to recovery.

That’s why I stood still and carried on staring, even when Malcolm started to walk on ahead without me: whenever I experienced that sensation of suddenly being one step closer, I felt, perversely, that there was no hurry. I could afford to take a few seconds to appreciate the moment.

I haven’t felt that way since London. The pictures on my walls that took so long to collect, all the wire sculptures, the carved wood, the pottery, the abstract metal forms that I’ve stuffed my house full of-they don’t work any more. Until I know what’s wrong with Aidan, until I can make it right, nothing will work.

I am bending to pick up the remote control when the front door opens. It’s him. He’s wearing the shoes he had to wait two years to have made-one of the first stories he ever told me-and his black jacket, his only jacket. It’s got shiny patches on the shoulders and makes him look like someone who empties dust-bins for a living, or who did, in the days before everyone started to wear fluorescent yellow jackets to perform any sort of public service.

I am about to speak when I see that he’s noticed what I’m holding. He walks over to me, takes the remote control from my hand. ‘Not again,’ he says, and sounds as if he is talking about the future: he will not let me watch again. He presses a button and the screen goes black.

People wouldn’t see the monitor and VHS player above the door if they came into my house and walked into any of the rooms, only if they turned back on themselves, or perhaps on the way out. There are no people, anyway. No one comes here apart from me, Aidan and Malcolm. It’s a strange thought: the Culver Valley’s area manager for parks and landscapes could probably draw every inch of my home from memory, while my own parents have never seen it and never will.

‘He’s been back,’ I tell Aidan. ‘This morning. He walked up the path and stared at the house, like he always does.’

‘Of course he’s been back. He walks his dog in the park. Don’t do this.’ His expression is pained. This isn’t what he wants us to talk about.

‘Where have you been?’ I ask.

‘Manchester.’ He pulls off his jacket. ‘Jeanette had some pieces that needed reframing. Had to be done on site.’

He’s taken his jacket off. He’s staying. ‘It’s like the Arctic in here,’ he says. ‘Is the boiler knackered again?’

I stare at him, wanting to believe his story. Jeanette Golenya is the director of Manchester City Art Gallery. She’s used Aidan before, used both of us. It’s at least a three-hour drive from Spilling to Manchester, but Jeanette’s always happy to pay for our travel and accommodation. Aidan’s the only conservation framer she knows who never cuts corners. He’s the best at what he does. He told me that too, the first time we met.

‘Ask her if you don’t believe me,’ he says.

‘Why didn’t you ring me? I’ve been going out of my mind.’

‘I’m sorry.’ He wraps his arms around me. ‘Before I went to Manchester, I went to the police,’ he whispers in my ear, his voice uneven.

The shock is like a cold wall in my face. ‘What?’

‘You heard.’

I pull away, look at his eyes and see that something in him has changed. He looks… I can’t think how to describe it. Settled. The silent war that’s been playing out in his head since London has stopped. I steel myself, scared of what he will say next. I don’t want anything to change.

Then why did you wait for Charlie Zailer outside the police station?

‘They’d have caught up with me eventually. They always do. I couldn’t stand the waiting, so I went to them.’

‘So did I,’ I blurt out. He can’t be angry, not when he’s done the same thing.

‘You went to the police?’

I could tell him I waited for Charlie Zailer, but I don’t. It would feel too much like confessing to an illicit attachment.

Aidan smiles, his eyes gleaming the way they always do when anger or some other emotion overpowers him. ‘You believe me,’ he says. ‘Finally. You believe I killed her.’

‘No!’

‘Yes. You wouldn’t have gone to the police otherwise.’

‘I don’t. I don’t! Aidan, what’s going on?’ I sob. ‘How could I believe you killed her when I’ve seen her with my own eyes, alive and well?’

He doesn’t answer.

‘What did the police say?’

‘The same as you. I had a visit yesterday from a detective, Simon Waterhouse…’

‘Yesterday? You mean here, a detective came here?’ While I was at the workshop trying to do the work of two people alone, looking in every hiding place I could think of for Mary’s picture. ‘I thought you were in Manchester yesterday.’

A long pause. Then Aidan says, ‘Don’t try to catch me out, Ruth.’ He makes no attempt to reconcile what he’s telling me now with his earlier lie.

I know I ought to let it go, but I can’t. ‘Where’s the painting? What have you done with it? Where did you spend last night? At Mary’s?’

His face pales, freezes. ‘You think I could go there even if I tried? I’d wipe that shit-hole off the face of the earth if it was up to me.’

I couldn’t go there either. Last night, when Aidan didn’t come back, after I’d been to the workshop and not found him there, and waited and waited, I decided I had to go to Megson Crescent again. At two thirty in the morning I got into my car, using the heel of my wounded foot to work the clutch, and told myself I had to drive to Mary’s. I’d done it before, and anything you’ve done once you can do again. But I couldn’t. When I turned on to Seeber Street and saw the Winstanley estate’s mesh-fenced play-ground in front of me, the decades-old paint peeling off the swing, slide and roundabout, my good foot slammed down on the brake. I had to turn round and drive home. However infinitesimal the chance, I couldn’t risk finding Aidan at Mary’s house. I couldn’t have stood it.

‘Why would I go back to the place where I killed her?’ he demands, his face crumpling in pain. ‘Why would I?’

‘But… didn’t this detective tell you she isn’t dead? Didn’t he see her, speak to her?’ I ask, feeling my hold on the situation start to unravel. I’ve felt this way so often lately, I’ve almost forgotten there’s any other way to feel.

‘He says he did.’ Aidan paces the room, back and forth. ‘Whoever he saw claimed she didn’t know me. She’d never heard of me.’

‘What do you mean, “whoever he saw”?’ A cold ripple of panic passes through me. ‘Didn’t he check…?’

‘She showed him her passport and driving licence. The woman he spoke to was Mary Trelease. His description of her fitted the one I’d given him, detail for detail.’

‘Aidan, I…’

‘So, that’s it.’ His voice is loud and forced. ‘They don’t believe me. It’s over as far as they’re concerned.’ He lets out a humourless laugh, jeering at himself. ‘No one’s going to come and arrest me in the middle of the night, no one’s going to cart me off to jail. We should celebrate.’

‘Aidan…’

‘Three cheers for me.’ He looms over me, a droplet of his saliva landing on my face. ‘Why don’t you crack open a bottle of champagne? It’s not every day your boyfriend gets away with murder.’

I didn’t meet Aidan by chance. I planned it, though it took all the self-discipline I could muster to put the plan into action. On the twenty-second of August last year, I got up, threw on the T-shirt, jeans and flip-flops I’d worn every day for the past two months, and got into my car without giving myself time to think or change my mind.

I had Aidan’s details written on the back of a receipt in my jeans pocket. I knew where Seed Art Services was, didn’t need reminding, but having the address with me, written in black and white on a piece of paper, made it harder for me to avoid what I knew I had to do. A positive prescription, my books call it. I’d tried the technique a few times and it seemed to work.

I parked at the bottom of Demesne Avenue, where it gives way to the unmade road that runs alongside the river, and walked under the overhanging trees, counting my footsteps to take my mind off the task ahead. I’d got as far as forty when I reached the small, flat-roofed grey-brick building, with a wide wooden door that had buckled at the bottom where the wood was cracked and blistered, flaring out like a skirt. The door stood slightly ajar. On its inside were two large iron hinges and two even bigger bolts. Rust clung to them, looking like an exotic species of chestnut-coloured moss. Had the door been closed, I’m not sure I’d have been brave enough to knock.

Saul Hansard, my boss at the Spilling Gallery until two months earlier, had promised me Aidan would be pleased to see me. He could have told me thousands of times and I wouldn’t have believed him. Wherever I went, I felt unwelcome. I stared at Aidan’s open door and listened to the music that was coming from inside the workshop: ‘Madame George’ by Van Morrison. I knocked and waited, feeling my heartbeat in my throat, staring in through the long rectangular pane of PVC-framed glass on my right-the only window, as far as I could make out. It ran the length of one side of the building. Through it I saw neon strip lights, a concrete floor, dozens of planks of wood, some plain and some painted, leaning against a wall; two large tables, one covered with what looked like velvet cloths in different colours, a small radio with a paint-spattered aerial. On the other table there was an enormous roll of brown paper, scissors, a pair of pliers, a Stanley knife, lots of what looked like catalogues in a pile, a few bottles of glue and tins of paint.

No Aidan Seed.

I shivered in spite of the heat, jumpy and nauseous, every nerve in my body on alert. Why was nothing happening? Where was he? Aching to run away, I told myself I had the perfect excuse. If I knocked and no one came, what was I supposed to do? I couldn’t walk in uninvited. My fingers closed around my car keys, tightening their grip. I flexed my toes, ready to move at speed once I gave myself permission. Go, then. I never wanted to set foot in another picture framer’s studio as long as I lived. I could leave and no one would know; Aidan Seed, whoever and wherever he was, wouldn’t know I’d been here.

Saul Hansard would know.

I stayed where I was and knocked again, louder and more insistently. Saul would never let it lie. I didn’t want any more messages from him, any more fatherly concern. Even thinking about him made me feel ashamed. I had to convince him I was all right, and there was only one way to do that.

That’s a negative reason. Think of a more positive one.

If I go through with this, I told myself, if I’m brave and ask Aidan Seed for a job, I’ll start to earn money again. I’ll be able to afford to stay in Blantyre Lodge, to buy more paintings to put on the walls. I needed to be able to do that. The book on my bedside table at the time was called What if Everything Goes Right? Its blurb promised to train me to make decisions based on hope, not fear.

I knocked again, and this time an impatient voice, deep and male, shouted, ‘Coming,’ as if I’d already been told several times and was being unreasonable. Aidan appeared in the doorway, holding a threadbare blue towel. His rough hands looked red and damp; he’d been scrubbing at them. ‘Yeah?’ he said, looking me up and down.

More vividly than anything else about that day, I remember my utter surprise at the sight of him. It had nothing to do with attractiveness, though I registered that he was unusually attractive. This is the man, I thought. I’d never seen him before, but I recognised him as being the right person. Right for what, exactly, I couldn’t have said. All I knew was that I wanted to keep him there, keep myself there with him for as long as possible.

‘I’m busy,’ Aidan said. ‘Do you want something?’

I’d almost forgotten, in the shock of seeing him, why I’d come. ‘Um… Saul Hansard from the Spilling Gallery told me you’re looking for someone to work for you,’ I mumbled, taking in the shiny shoulder patches on his black jacket, the dark stubble on his chin and above his mouth. His hair was so dark it was almost black. It hadn’t been combed recently, if ever. A scar formed a lopsided cross with the line of his upper lip, cutting his stubble diagonally in half. When he moved nearer, I noticed his eyes were dark blue with flecks of grey around the pupils. I guessed that he was in his early forties.

He was inspecting me closely too. ‘I’m not looking for anyone, ’ he said.

My spirit withered. ‘Oh,’ I said faintly.

‘Doesn’t mean I don’t need someone. Just haven’t got round to looking yet. Been too busy.’

‘So… does that mean you’d be interested in…’

He gestured towards the workshop. ‘I can’t do it all myself,’ he said, as if I’d told him he must. ‘Why, are you looking for a job?’

‘Yes. I can start straight away.’

‘You’re a framer?’

‘I…’ The question had floored me, but I did my best not to show it. I wasn’t a framer-in all my time working for Saul I hadn’t framed a single picture-but I sensed that ‘no’ would be the wrong answer. I was as eager to prolong my conversation with Aidan as I had been to leave a few moments earlier. I couldn’t let him dismiss me. It scared me to feel such a strong, irrational need for a stranger who owed me nothing. ‘At the moment I haven’t got a job,’ I said. ‘I used to work for Saul at the Spilling Gallery, but I didn’t…’

‘How long were you there?’

‘Nearly two years.’

‘Right,’ he said. Was he grinning at me or sneering? ‘What did you think of Hansard’s framing skills?’

‘I… I don’t know. I…’ Surely one picture-framer’s methods would be much like another’s, I thought. Again, I sensed this would be the wrong thing to say, so I kept quiet.

‘Did he train you?’ Aidan asked.

‘No. I never actually did any framing.’ Better to admit it straight away than be caught out trying to wing it, I decided. ‘Saul took care of that side of things. I did some admin for him, answered the phone, took care of sales…’

‘In two years, you never framed a picture?’

I shook my head.

Aidan jerked his in the direction of his workshop. ‘If I put you in there and told you to get started, would you know what to do?’

‘No.’

He pushed his fringe out of his eyes with his paint-spotted right arm. ‘In that case, you’re no use to me. I’m a picture-framer. I need a picture-framer to help me. Frame more pictures, ’ he said slowly, as if I was stupid.

‘I can learn,’ I told him. ‘I’m a quick learner.’

‘You’re a receptionist. I don’t want a receptionist. Hansard doesn’t listen. No surprise there-his head’s all over the place. You must know that if you’ve worked for him.’

Was he testing me? I wasn’t about to be disloyal to Saul, who had always treated me well.

‘You can’t be a picture-framer and run an art gallery at the same time,’ said Aidan. ‘Hansard spreads himself too thin, ends up making a hash of everything. That’s why I asked what you thought of his framing. I’ve seen his work-it’s shoddy. He doesn’t use acid-free tape or backing card.’

I must have looked mystified, because he sighed heavily and said, ‘The essence of conservation framing is that it’s all reversible. You’ve got to be able to undo everything you do, and end up with the picture exactly the same as before it was framed, however long ago that was. That’s the first thing you need to learn.’

‘You mean…?’ It sounded as if he was offering me a job, unless I’d misunderstood completely.

‘You’re Ruth, right?’

I felt my confidence start to drain away, as if there was a hole in the pit of my stomach, and thought back to the last message Saul had left on my voicemail. I gave you a glowing reference-Aidan’ll snap you up if he knows what’s good for him.

‘Why do you want to work here?’

Was this my interview? ‘It sounds corny, but I love art.’ I spoke quickly to hide my nerves. ‘There’s nothing that’s more…’

‘The way I heard it, you’re a liability,’ Aidan talked over me, his voice hard and cold. ‘You upset one of Hansard’s clients, lost him a lucrative source of business.’

I tried to keep calm. ‘Who told you that?’

‘Hansard. Who do you think?’

I didn’t see why he would lie. Fury sprang up out of nowhere, crushed me like a lead weight. Saul had encouraged me to come here, without saying a word about how he’d pre-empted me and sabotaged my chances. I stared down at the dirt path, mortified, trying not to explode with defensive rage. This wasn’t an isolated incident: in my mind it acted as a magnet, attracting, like iron filings, memories of all the terrible moments in my life so far. Same horror, different incarnation. After what I’d been through, no bad feeling ever seemed new to me: I had already felt them all, recognised them like familiar relatives each time they paid a visit.

‘Sorry I bothered you,’ I said, starting to walk away.

‘Can’t take criticism very well, can you?’

His mocking tone made me want to kill him. If I hadn’t been furious with Saul, I wouldn’t have dared to do what I did next. Most of the word ‘courage’ is the word ‘rage’-which book was that in? I turned and walked back to Aidan, counting my steps. ‘The essence of asking a conservation framer for a job is that it’s reversible,’ I said in a deliberately pompous voice. ‘You’ve got to be able to undo everything you do. I’m undoing asking you for work, and I’m undoing coming here at all. Goodbye.’

I ran back to my car, and this time he didn’t call after me. I slammed the door and sat in the driver’s seat, panting. I tried to brainwash myself: I’d been wrong about Aidan. I’d seen nothing in him, nothing at all. And I’d been wrong about Saul; I’d thought he cared about me, but he’d set me up for a fall.

Where else could I go? What could I do? Nothing that brought me into contact with pictures or artists, nothing in a gallery. The Spilling art world was too small; this latest humiliation had brought that home to me in the most painful way. If Saul had told Aidan, who else had he told? I could go to London, but then I’d have to give up my little house that I loved. Something told me that if I lost that, I’d lose everything.

I could get the sort of job anyone could get-serving fast food or cleaning toilets. Even as I had the thought, I knew I couldn’t. However much I needed money-and I did, urgently-I wasn’t the sort of person who would do anything to get it. I didn’t see any point in prolonging my life purely for the sake of it; if I wasn’t able to do something that mattered to me, I’d rather stop doing altogether.

I turned on the ignition, then turned it off again. Carbon monoxide poisoning. Probably the easiest way, I thought. After all, I had a car. I was in it now. If I had a length of rubber hose-pipe with me, I could do it right here, get it over with.

My mind started to wander aimlessly. Him and Her came into my thoughts, but for once there was no friction. I wondered idly if, by ending my life, I would alter the balance of blame between us. I was so tired of blame-of hoarding it all for myself, of giving it out. Someone else could take over the precise measurements, the minute calculations, that were necessary for its correct distribution.

A knocking sound near my head made me jump. My vision was blurred. I felt dizzy, and couldn’t see what was outside my car at first. Then I recognised Aidan; he was tapping on the window. Funny, I thought. I’d almost completely forgotten him in a few seconds; he’d drifted far away, along with the rest of the world I was preparing to leave. I ignored his knocking.

He pulled open the car door. ‘What’s wrong with you?’ he said. ‘You look terrible.’

‘Leave me alone.’

‘Are you sick? Do you need help?’

I needed a drink. I’d eaten and drunk nothing all day; I’d been too nervous. I imagined a hot cup of tea, fizzy Coke, even flat Coke. I started to cry. How could I want to die and want flat Coke at the same time? ‘I’m a stupid fuckhead,’ I told Aidan.

‘You can talk me through your CV later,’ he said. ‘Look… you don’t want to let the likes of me upset you. My interview technique’s a bit rusty. I’ve never had anyone work for me before. It’s always just been me.’ He shrugged. ‘If you still want the job, it’s yours.’

‘I don’t want it,’ I whispered, trying to wipe my face.

Aidan crouched down beside the car. ‘Ruth, Hansard hasn’t been bad-mouthing you. Far from it. All he said was that you offended one of his regulars without meaning to, and lost him a client he was happy to see the back of. If someone as mild as Saul Hansard says something like that the way he said it to me… Look, we’ve all got nightmare customers. Hansard, me-any picture-framer’d tell you. There’s the ones who can’t choose and force you to make all the decisions for them, then kick off when it’s done and they decide they don’t like it. The ones I hate most are the neurotics who spot tiny specks of dust on the inside of the glass, and insist on having the whole thing opened up and the glass cleaned, and then you have to reframe it, but they don’t pay for the second framing.’

I felt myself slipping, my hand moist on the wheel, my head lolling. Aidan caught me. ‘What’s wrong with you?’ he asked. ‘Do I need to take you to a hospital?’

‘I’m fine,’ I said, rousing myself. ‘Just tired, hungry, thirsty. I’ll go home and-’

‘No, you won’t. You’re in no state to drive. You’re coming with me.’

He helped me out of the car, supporting me with both his arms. I felt my skin fizz, like a sort of electrical charge, when he touched me. He turned me round, pointed me in the right direction, and I stumbled back to the workshop, leaning on him. ‘Have you got any flat Coke?’ I muttered into my hair, which was falling in front of my face. I started to laugh hysterically. ‘My interview technique’s even worse than yours,’ I said. ‘This is me applying for a job.’

‘I’ve already told you, the job’s yours.’

‘I don’t want it.’

‘Yeah, you do,’ he said mildly. He paused when we reached the door of the workshop, looked at me. ‘You want it and you need it. And I’m not only talking about money.’

‘I don’t-’

‘I’m the best at what I do. This is where you want to be working. I’m stubborn, too. See these shoes?’ I looked at his feet. ‘I waited two years for them. Someone recommended me a guy in Hamblesford, makes his own shoes. A proper craftsman. I went to the shop and he told me he had a two-year waiting list. I put my name down and I waited. I could have gone to another shoe shop and bought some mass-produced crap, but I didn’t. I waited the two years, because I knew what I’d be getting was the best. Rain and snow and mud were pouring into my old boots, but I still waited.’

Aidan looked embarrassed for a moment. Then he went on, ‘Hansard told me you were first-rate. He’s crap at framing pictures, but I trust him where people are concerned.’

I made the crassest, most idiotic comment: ‘Pity your shoemaker didn’t have any elves to help him.’

Aidan completely ignored it. Maybe he never read The Elves and the Shoemaker when he was little. ‘What were you going to say before?’ he asked. ‘About art?’

‘Nothing.’

‘You started to say, “There’s nothing more…” ’

‘It’ll sound stupid.’

‘So?’ he said impatiently. ‘I want to know.’

‘I’m… kind of obsessed with art,’ I told him, blushing. ‘That’s why… that’s how I came to be working for Saul.’

Aidan’s eyes narrowed. ‘You a painter yourself?’

‘No. Not at all. I’d be hopeless.’

He nodded. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Because it’s a framer I need.’ He led me through his messy workshop to an even messier room at the back. My eyes passed quickly over the unmade bed, the mounds of clothes, books, CDs, unwashed cups and plates. I forcibly silenced the voice in my head that was saying, ‘Okay for a bloke in his early twenties, not so okay for one in his forties.’ That was the sort of opinion my father might hold, and I didn’t want to share anything with him, not even an opinion about something trivial.

I smelled fruity soap, or shower gel. I scanned the room for a basin, but couldn’t see one. Where was Aidan’s bathroom? I wondered. On the other side of the workshop? I was about to ask when I noticed the walls, and as soon as I did, I couldn’t believe it had taken me so long to spot the only truly bizarre thing about this room. Three of the four walls were covered with what I imagined was Aidan’s handiwork: extravagant frames-one had a carved wooden crown attached to its top edge-as well as lots of ordinary ones, pale or dark wood, flat or slightly curved.

One thing was not ordinary: none of the frames had anything in them.

Aidan was squatting in front of his miniature fridge. ‘Cheese sandwich do you?’ he said. ‘Think it’ll have to. I’ve got a carton of orange juice.’ He sounded surprised.

When he stood up, he saw me staring. ‘I told you I was the best,’ he said. He crossed the room and started to point out individual frames. ‘This one’s a palladian,’ he said. ‘With the sticky-out corners. It’s based on the pattern of a Greek temple. This one’s called egg-and-dart, for obvious reasons. Can you see the pattern?’

‘Why’s there nothing in them?’ I blurted out. ‘Why have you framed… nothing?’

His expression hardened. ‘These are highly collectable,’ he said. ‘It’s not nothing, it’s black card. It’s a statement. The artist wants to make you think.’ His mouth twitched. Then he started to laugh. ‘I’m having you on,’ he said. ‘It’s just backing card.’

I don’t like being tricked. The joke over, he didn’t explain. I didn’t find out why he’d put frames on his walls with no pictures inside them. I didn’t particularly care. All I wanted was the orange juice and the cheese sandwich he’d offered me. I was so hungry that I was finding it hard to keep thoughts in my head. I was also worried my breath stank. Had I even brushed my teeth?

Standing in Aidan’s one-room home, the stark fact of how low I’d sunk in two months hit me like a boulder in the chest. What was wrong with me, that I’d let it happen? I could have reacted differently. Better.

‘What are you thinking?’ Aidan asked, cutting cheese with a paint-spotted Stanley knife.

‘Nothing,’ I said quickly.

‘Yeah, you were.’

He hadn’t answered my question about the frames, so I didn’t have to answer his. I knew he was as aware of this as I was.

He gave me my sandwich and a glass of orange juice. I sat cross-legged on the floor to eat it. It tasted divine. ‘Want another one?’ Aidan said, watching me devour the sandwich as if I’d never seen food before.

I nodded.

‘Want to tell me the story of why you left Hansard’s place?’

‘There’s nothing to tell. An artist brought in one of her paintings to be framed; I asked her if I could buy it; she said no, it wasn’t for sale.’ I recited woodenly. ‘I asked her if I could buy any of her other pictures, and she said none of her work was for sale.’

‘That’s crazy,’ said Aidan, his back to me as he foraged in the fridge again. ‘An artist who won’t sell any of her work? I’ve never heard of that before.’

I shivered. Crazy. Like having empty frames all over your walls, with no pictures in them.

‘So? What happened?’ Aidan asked.

‘She accused me of harassing her.’ I took a sip of my orange juice, hoping he would leave the subject alone.

‘Sounds like a standard shit day at work,’ he said. ‘Why did you leave? Hansard weighed in on your side, didn’t he?’

He sounded as if he was guessing. Saul hadn’t told him.

Aidan handed me another cheese sandwich. It had dents in the bread from his thumb and forefinger. He looked down at me, frowning. ‘You’ll have to toughen up,’ he said. ‘I’m not having you resigning on me after the first visit from some awkward bugger artist.’

I ate my food to avoid having to answer.

‘There’s something you’re not telling me,’ said Aidan, watching me carefully. ‘Isn’t there?’

I nodded.

For a second he looked wary, perhaps even afraid. ‘You’re just like me,’ he said. ‘I knew it, soon as I saw you. That’s why I gave you a hard time.’ He put his hand on my shoulder. ‘It’s okay,’ he said. ‘I won’t ask again.’ He stared at the empty frames on his walls, as if making some kind of silent pact with them.

I was smiling at him when he turned to face me, and he smiled back. Having established the ground rules, we could both relax. From that point on, we talked about art, framing-things we were happy to talk about. Aidan started-immediately, while I was still eating-to tell me everything he knew about his craft, everything he thought I should know. He told me that all the concepts and designs in picture-framing come from classical architecture. He dug out dusty hardback books from under piles of black T-shirts and faded jeans, and showed me photographs of tabernacle frames and trompe l’oeils and cassettas, explaining what each one was. He railed against people like Saul, who didn’t read up on the history of picture-framing, whose libraries on the subject were less extensive than his own, and against all the art books that contained photographs of unframed pictures, free-floating against a black background, as if the frame were not crucial to the work of art.

I remember being struck by his anger, his apparent determination to make my brain a replica of his, containing the same information. Apart from the bits that were missing, that is. He didn’t tell me, not then and not ever, why he had framed emptiness and hung it on his walls. And I didn’t give him the missing details from the story about why I’d left my job at Saul’s gallery. I’d made what had happened sound so straightforward, but it wasn’t at all-my reaction to the picture, my conviction that I had to have it, all the different ways I’d tried to persuade the artist to sell me some of her work, hounding her so that she had no choice but to lash out at me…

My fault. My fault, again.

And of course, the main thing I didn’t tell Aidan, because I didn’t know it at the time, I only found out months later: that the artist’s name was Mary Trelease.