The Dead Lie Down by Sophie Hannah Page B

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.