‘The tall bloke in the donkey jacket you were looking for?’
I nodded.
She sighed, and seemed to soften. ‘I’ll do my best,’ she said, ‘but if the buyer comes to pick it up, there’s not an awful lot I can do.’
I left without saying thank you or goodbye. I’d wasted enough time already. She was right. Assuming
Abberton
really was sold and she wasn’t lying, the person who had bought it could arrive to collect it at any moment. I ran outside and stuck out my arm to stop a taxi, then realised there weren’t any, only several people who looked as if they were waiting. One glanced at his watch, sighed and walked off down the road.
‘Come
on
,’ I breathed through gritted teeth. A taxi had to come. I had to get back to the hotel—that’s where Aidan would be. He’d have gone back there to check out, to pick up our bag and the Gloria Stetbay. A taxi appeared, and a woman in a grey trouser suit with a mobile phone pressed to her ear moved forward to greet it. She opened the back door. I ran at her with my wallet already open and offered her twenty pounds if she’d let me take it instead. It was an emergency, I told her. She looked unconvinced, but took the money and stepped back, relinquishing the cab.
At the Drummond, I told the driver to wait outside for me. I didn’t have the patience to wait for the lift, so I ran up four flights of stairs to room 436. I banged on the door and called Aidan’s name. ‘Please be here,’ I whispered. ‘Please.’
The door opened, but not very far. I heard footsteps walking away. I pushed the door fully open, banging it against the wall. Aidan stood in the centre of the room with his back to me. Short of leaving me stranded outside in the corridor, he couldn’t have been less welcoming. I didn’t care; I knew this bad patch would end as soon as he’d heard what I had to say. ‘Mary Trelease, ’ I panted.
He swung round.
‘What does she look like?’
‘I don’t know. That depends how long it takes a body to decay. You’d need to ask a pathologist.’
‘Skinny, masses of black curly hair that’s starting to go grey, cut-glass accent, bad skin—lined, like a much older woman’s. Pale brown mole beneath her lower lip that’s shaped like . . . like a double-ended spanner, sort of. Or how you’d draw a dog’s bone in a cartoon . . .’
Aidan roared and flew across the room at me, clamping his hands around my arms. I screamed, frightened by the strength of his reaction. ‘What are you saying?’ he demanded. ‘Where did you get that description from?’
‘I’ve met her. Aidan, you’ve got to listen to me. You haven’t killed her. She isn’t dead. She’s an artist, isn’t she? Remember the woman I told you about, the one I had a run-in with at Saul’s gallery? It was her! The picture she brought in, the one I wanted to buy—I’ve just seen it at the art fair, on a stall belonging to a gallery. TiqTaq, they’re called. The painting’s called
Abberton
. It’s of a sort of person, but with no face . . .’
Aidan released me, staggered back across the room as if propelled by a physical force. ‘No,’ he said. Flecks of white had appeared at the corners of his mouth. He wiped them away with his hand. He’d started to sweat. ‘Shut up. Shut up. You’re lying. What are you trying to do?’
‘You got it wrong!’ I told him triumphantly. ‘You didn’t kill her, years ago or at any other time. She’s not dead. The picture I saw,
Abberton
, it’s dated 2007. It wasn’t framed when I met her six months ago, but since then she’s had it framed. She’s alive, Aidan.’ I didn’t need to ask if the woman I’d described was the right one; his face was white with terror.
‘I killed Mary Trelease,’ he said. ‘But maybe you’ve known that all along. Maybe that’s why you turned up at the workshop asking for a job, and why you’re telling me this now.’ Fury blazed in his eyes. ‘Who are you really, Ruth Zinta Bussey?’ His sarcasm shook my heart. ‘What was the plan?’ He walked towards me slowly. ‘Make me fall in love with you and then wipe me out? Drive me insane? Is that going to be the extent of my punishment, or is there more to come? Are you going to go to the police?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about!’ I sobbed. ‘There’s no plan. I love you! I’m not trying to punish you, I’m trying to make you see that you’ve done nothing wrong. Come back to Alexandra Palace with me and I’ll show you the picture,
Abberton
. I’ve got a taxi waiting outside.’
He looked at me, through me. ‘
Abberton
,’ he said in a hollow voice. ‘You’re telling me I’ll find a picture called
Abberton
, by Mary Trelease at the
Access 2
Art fair?’
‘Yes! Dated 2007. But you’ve got to come now—the woman on the stall told me it was sold. I think she was lying, but I’m not sure, and if someone comes to collect it . . .’
Aidan picked up his wallet and the black hold-all, and pushed past me into the corridor. He left the Gloria Stetbay picture—my engagement ring substitute—leaning against the wall. Watching him slam the door on it, I knew the answer to the question I was too scared to ask. Our engagement was off. Aidan wouldn’t mention it again.
By the time I got to the taxi, he was sitting in it as if he’d been there for hours, shoulders hunched, his face a grim mask. ‘Get in,’ he said. I didn’t understand. He was acting as if he was forcing me to go with him, when I was the one who had suggested it. ‘Alexandra Palace,’ he told the driver. ‘As fast as you can.’
‘Talk to me, Aidan, please,’ I begged him. ‘What happened between you and Mary Trelease? Why did you think you’d killed her? Why do you think I’m trying to drive you mad? Why would I?’ I’d been so certain that the nightmare would be over as soon as I told him about
Abberton
, but it wasn’t; I couldn’t bear the disappointment. I buried my face in my hands and started to weep.
‘Don’t cry,’ said Aidan. ‘It won’t help.’
‘Please, tell me what’s going on!’
‘I shouldn’t have told you anything. I should never have mentioned her name to you.’
‘Why don’t you trust me? I don’t care what you’ve done—I love you. I should have said that last night, as soon as you told me, but I was confused. I knew it wasn’t right—I knew you could never kill anyone!’
‘Keep your voice down.’
‘That’s why I clammed up, not because what you’d told me changed how I felt about you but because I didn’t believe it could be true. And the name Mary Trelease—I knew I’d heard it before, but I couldn’t remember where. I must have seen it when I worked for Saul, on a bill or something.’ I stopped, out of breath.
Aidan didn’t look at me, but he took hold of my hand and squeezed it. He was staring out of the window, thinking hard, concentrating on something I couldn’t see or share, something from his past. Almost whispering, I asked, ‘Did you and Mary Trelease have some kind of . . . physical fight?’ I pictured Aidan pushing her, her falling, knocking her head against something. Aidan panicking, fleeing the scene, assuming he’d killed her . . .
‘Shhh,’ he said, drawing out the sound as he exhaled slowly. As if I was a child, still young enough to accept comfort without substance. I knew then that there was no point asking him anything else.
We arrived at Alexandra Palace and I paid the driver. ‘Do you remember the stall number?’ Aidan asked me.
‘It’s opposite Jane Fielder’s stall, number . . . number . . .’ The churning in my head had dulled my memory.
‘One seven one,’ he said.
I followed him as he pushed past people milling in the aisles, browsing idly as Aidan and I had the day before. It seemed like a lifetime ago. ‘There it is,’ I blurted out when I saw Tiq Taq’s sign from a distance. I looked at my watch: three o’clock. I’d left to go back to the hotel at half past one. My throat tightened. Blood pounded in my ears.
The woman with the dyed blonde hair had gone. In her place was an older woman with a pre-Raphaelite hairstyle—a long plait coiled into a conical bun at the nape of her neck. She was wearing a white linen suit, a clingy red scoop-necked T-shirt and brown sandals with coloured beads on them. Her face, hands and feet were tanned. As we approached, Aidan said, ‘There’s nothing there that’s anything like what you described.’ He turned away in disgust.
Mary’s painting had gone. A picture of exactly the same size hung in its place, of an ugly naked woman standing next to a chicken. She had straggly hair and limbs as thick as a rugby centre forward’s. I hated her, whoever she was. She had no business being there, where
Abberton
ought to have been. I thought, I knew this would happen.
I knew it.
All the way to Alexandra Palace in the taxi, I’d had a feeling not of hope but of dread: I was convinced
Abberton
would be gone, though I’d tried to deny it to myself. I’d read about negative expectations leading to negative outcomes, and now I blamed myself for the picture having vanished. ‘Whoever bought it must have picked it up,’ I said to Aidan. ‘It was here, I swear it.’ I grabbed his arm, tried to make him look at me, but he pushed me away.
‘Excuse me?’ I said to the woman with the coiled plait, loud enough so that Aidan could hear me from the other side of the aisle. ‘I was here at lunchtime. I spoke to your colleague, the one with blonde hair.’
‘Ciara,’ said the woman, smiling. ‘She’s gone, I’m afraid. I’m Jan Garner. TiqTaq’s my gallery. Can I help you?’
‘You had a picture called
Abberton
. By an artist called Mary Trelease. It was there.’ I pointed to the naked woman and the chicken.
Jan Garner shook her head. ‘No,’ she said. ‘We didn’t and it wasn’t. You must be mistaken.’
I couldn’t speak. Well trained though I was in fearing the worst, I hadn’t foreseen this. Why was this stylish, polite, sophisticated-looking woman telling me a blatant lie? She must have known I knew she was lying.
‘It was here at half past one this afternoon,’ I insisted. ‘The girl—Ciara—said it was sold, someone had bought it yesterday. Whoever bought it must have come to collect it.’
‘I’ve always hated telling people they’re wrong, but I’m afraid you are.’ Jan Garner pulled a sheet of paper out of a file. ‘Look, here’s the list of everything we brought with us from the gallery: title and artist’s name.’
There was no
Abberton
on the list. No Mary Trelease.
‘But . . . it was here!’ I turned to look at Aidan, who had moved further away. I could see from the set of his back and shoulders that he was listening to every word while pretending to look at another gallery’s stall.
Jan Garner shook her head. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘When I took over from Ciara, she said we hadn’t sold anything so far. Which means the same pictures are up now as were up yesterday morning—nothing’s changed. Are you . . .?’
I didn’t hear the rest of what she said. Aidan had started to walk away, and I ran to catch him up. I was terrified of losing him again. ‘Wait!’ I shouted after him. ‘She’s lying! I swear on my life! Come back with me and I’ll prove it to you. We can ask the people on the stalls opposite. They must have seen
Abberton
.’
‘Shut up.’ He took my arm and dragged me out of the hall into the foyer. ‘I need you to tell me everything. Everything, Ruth—every detail.’
‘I’ve already told you . . .’
‘Tell me again. This
Abberton
picture—what is it, what’s it of? What did the other woman say to you—Ciara? What happened at Hansard’s gallery between you and the woman you think was Mary Trelease? What exactly was said?’
‘I don’t remember, not word for word—it was six months ago.’
‘I don’t care how long ago it was!’ Aidan bellowed. People nearby turned to watch. He lowered his voice. ‘I need to know. Start talking.’
So I did. I described the picture: the street scene background in greens, purples and browns, the outline of a human form filled with a kind of stuffing: stuck-on scraps of hard, gauze-like material, some painted, like curled-up jewels. Aidan let out little gasps through clenched teeth as he listened to my description, as if every word I uttered caused him terrible pain, but each time I stopped, worried about the effect I was having on him, he demanded I carry on.
I went over my conversation with Ciara. Aidan wanted to hear about every look that had passed across her face, every movement she made, the inflections in her voice. Then I told him as much as I could bear to about what had happened at Saul’s gallery. I didn’t mention the red paint.
That I didn’t understand no longer mattered to me. Aidan didn’t either; I could see that clearly, from the way the frown-lines on his forehead deepened as he listened to what I had to say. When he’s worked it all out, he’ll tell me, I thought. At least now he seemed to believe me. I comforted myself with the knowledge that Mary Trelease was alive.
Aidan said nothing in the taxi on the way to King’s Cross. Neither of us mentioned the Gloria Stetbay painting. Four thousand pounds, and it would probably be found by a maid and thrown in the bin. I should have gone back for it—I can see that now; it was criminal not to—but at the time I didn’t feel entitled to go back and claim it as my own, not once Aidan had decided to leave it in the hotel.
On the train, forty minutes into the journey, he finally spoke. ‘When we get back, we’ll go to mine to pick up a few things and then we’ll go to yours,’ he said. ‘I’m moving in with you. I’m not letting you out of my sight from now on.’ He said it as if he was passing sentence, suggesting something that would be unwelcome to me—a punishment—instead of what I’d wanted to happen since the day I met him.
‘Good.’ I searched his face for an indication of his meaning. Was he worried about me and wanting to stay close to protect me? Did he think Mary Trelease was a danger to us? Or was it a lack of trust that made him feel he had to watch my every move?
Did he regret not having killed Mary, now that he knew he hadn’t?
I had no way of answering any of these questions. ‘I’d love it if you moved in,’ I said.
But my punishment wasn’t over yet. Aidan said, ‘I’ll need that proof you promised me. If the painting you’re talking about really exists, if you didn’t make it up, find it. Find it and bring it to me.’