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.