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 overha
nging 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.
The Other Half Lives aka The Dead Lie Down Page 7