one-hit wonder Read online

  My God, thought Bee, it’s finally happened‌—I’ve turned into my mother. She shuddered at the thought and pulled the curtain back again to peer out into the road. She looked at her watch: 11:15 A.M. Where the hell were they? They’d been due at eleven. And then she heard a crunching, of tires on grit. A small white ambulance emblazoned with the legend HIGH CEDARS pulled into her driveway. They were here. Oh God. They were here. She let the curtain fall and smoothed down her hair, her neat blouse, her smart tailored trousers. She looked down at her feet‌—pumps‌—flat navy pumps. Weird. And then she caught sight of herself in the mirror. At the pale, unlipsticked mouth, the softly mascaraed eyes, the discreet gold earrings. She did. She looked just like her mother. Oh Jesus. She pulled on a coat, took an enormously deep breath, and strode out into the driveway.

  “Hi,” she said, putting out a hand to the care assistant who was unlocking the back of the ambulance. “Belinda Wills. Nice to meet you. Did you have a good journey down?” I wish it was you, she thought, looking at the pimple-faced boy, I wish it was you. I wish that all I had to do was shake your hand and welcome you into my house and make you chicken. That would be so easy. So easy compared to what I have to do now.

  She peered into the ambulance over the care assistant’s shoulder, and there he was. He caught her eye and looked away again.

  “Zander!” she said, trying to inject her nerve-racked voice with enthusiasm and lightness. “At long last. Welcome.”

  seventeen

  Carol in the Spar knows everything. Absolutely everything. She knows that Mrs. Wills‌—Belinda‌—bought the cottage in October 1997; that Tony Pritchard from the real estate agent up on the seafront sold it to her. She knows that she bought her curtains from the posh interiors shop on the High Street and she had a mural done‌—Carol saw the van‌—SPECIALIST PAINT EFFECTS, it said. She knows that Mrs. Wills had originally been due to move in with her husband‌—but he’d never been seen, maybe they split up or something, she didn’t like to ask. And then in January 1998, this boy had started visiting. Yes‌—that’s right. A disabled boy. That’s 1.20, love, thanks. About twelve years old. Although it was hard to tell, with him being in a wheelchair and everything. No‌—she never met the boy, never even saw him really, except from a distance. He turned up on Saturday mornings and left on Sunday nights, and then Mrs. Wills went home on her motorbike, with her cat strapped on the back in a box. She’d been into the Spar a few times, not regular or anything, for tea and sugar and basics like that. Not with the boy, though, and she was always in a hurry to get back. Carol asked after the boy sometimes‌—she’d say, “How’s your boy?” and Mrs. Wills would always smile, that beautiful smile of hers, and say, “He’s fine, thank you for asking.” She didn’t chat, but then, Londoners don’t, do they? And as for who the boy was‌—well‌—she presumed it must be her son, but no, she didn’t know that for sure. That’s 3.74 please, love. Thanks, love‌—say hello to your mum. And did you know, says Carol, did you know that apparently Mrs. Wills‌—Belinda‌—used to be a pop star? Yes. She was a pop star in the eighties. She had a hit with that song, you know, “Groovin’ for London,” or something, wasn’t it? Carol wiggles her hips and giggles. You could tell it about her, when you thought about it, she says. She had that quality, you know‌—star quality. Even in her old Barbour jacket and wellies‌—she was definitely a star. Oh yes. Definitely . . .

  Lol, Ana, and Flint all flopped onto the lipstick-pink sofas and sighed in unison.

  “Barbours. Wellies. Weekend trysts with Tiny-bloody-Tim.” Lol kicked off her stilettos and massaged the soles of her feet. “Fuckin’ hell, Bee. What the fuck were you playing at?”

  “So. What d’you think? Was he her son?”

  Both Flint and Lol shook their heads vehemently.

  “Why not?”

  “Because Bee was never pregnant, that’s why. A small matter of biology.”

  “So why the hell was she spending weekends with this boy? I mean‌—why?”

  Flint rubbed his face into his hands. “I can’t get my brain round any of this stuff right now. There’s nothing we can do today to answer any of these questions. I think we should just chill out, get something to eat, watch a bit of telly. And then tomorrow, we can phone around some children’s homes, hospitals. That sort of thing.”

  “That’s the first sensible thing you’ve said all day, Lennard,” said Lol. “I’m going to have forty winks in the garden.” She pulled herself to her feet and put her hands on her hips. “What are you two going to do?”

  Ana and Flint looked at each other and shrugged. “Fancy a ride?” said Flint.

  “I beg your pardon?” said Ana.

  “On the bike. D’you fancy a ride on the bike? I’ve got keys. Bee gave me a spare set. We could go down to the seafront, get some chips or something. Go for a paddle?”

  “Oh,” said Ana, flushing slightly, “yeah. Why not?”

  “OK, then. I’ll just go and get the bike ready. I’ll be a couple of minutes.”

  “Yeah,” said Lol, addressing Flint’s back, “and you make sure you look after her all right. No showing off. All right? And none of your macho bullshit. Stick to the speed limit. No wheelies and no monkey business. And get us some dinner, will you? Get some pizza or summat. I’m fucking starving.”

  A couple of minutes later, Ana opened the door to find Flint outside, sitting astride the enormous red and yellow Honda, revving it urgently and proffering a crash helmet.

  She walked toward the huge machine in wonder. She’d always had a bit of a thing about motorbikes, and this really was a fine specimen. “Wow,” she said, running her hands over the brightly colored paintwork, “this is incredible.”

  “It is, isn’t it?” he said. “And you know the funny thing that just occurred to me. This monster probably belongs to your fucking mother now. Do you think she’ll like it?” He grinned his grin and Ana laughed, the image of her mother mounted on this huge beast of a machine running through her mind. “I can’t imagine Bee on this, either,” she said. “She was so tiny.”

  “Yeah. She did look a bit out of her league on it. But she loved it. It was the first thing she bought after her dad died, after she inherited all his money. She really hated cars, you see.” He stroked the bike tenderly. “Hop on.”

  Ana didn’t need asking twice. She threw one long, spindly leg across the bike. “Ooh,” she said, settling herself into the pillion seat and pulling on the helmet, “it’s ever so comfy.”

  “Blimey,” said Flint, staring at Ana’s knee, which was jutting out at a ninety-degree angle and resting very nearly in the crook of his knee, “Bee’s leg only used to come up to there.” He indicated his hip. “You ready?”

  Ana jiggled around a bit and nodded.

  “Arms.”

  “What?”

  “Put your arms around me.”

  “Oh. Yes. Right.” She gently brought them around and strapped them around Flint’s substantial torso. He was wearing just a T-shirt and she could feel everything: every last rib, every muscle, the beating of his heart, the warmth of his blood, the dampness of his sweat.

  “Tighter.”

  She fastened them tighter, and now she was close enough to be able to smell him, her nose only a centimeter or two from his T-shirt. She breathed in deeply and held his smell in the back of her throat, like cigar smoke. He smelled of unponced-about man. A bit musty, a bit sweaty, and run all the way through with a seam of the indescribably delicious smell of sun-warmed flesh.

  The sun was starting to get low in the sky, and it cast long shadows on the country lanes. As they neared Broadstairs, it hung over the sea and threw an orange-yellow glow over the bustling seaside resort. Ana’s heart filled with joy as she saw the sea, as the smell of brine hit her nostrils and the agitated squawk of seagulls assaulted her ears. She missed the sea.

  They parked the bike by the seafront. Flint ran his fingers through his tufty hair and laughed. “I must look a right state.”
/>
  “I’ve got a comb, if you like.”

  “Cheers.” He took it from her and combed his hair. Ana watched him. It was a vain thing to do, she thought, but he made it look unconsidered and masculine. “Thanks.” He passed it back to her, and they stood and surveyed the view for a while. The sea breeze was taking the edge off the late August heat and Ana felt herself shivering a little. “What sort of things do you like doing at the seaside, then, Ana?”

  She shrugged, felt her head tie itself up in a knot as she tried to find an answer to Flint’s simple question. What do I like doing at the seaside? She thought desperately, what the hell do I like doing at the seaside? And why the hell is this man making me so nervous? She glanced at him. He was squinting into the distance. Not many men fell into the category of “handsome.” It was easy for a woman to be thought of as “beautiful.” Just by not being “ugly” and making an effort and being young-looking and having nice hair and a good figure, a woman could be described as beautiful. But it was different for men. Men could be cute or good-looking or sexy, but rarely handsome. And Flint was handsome.

  Ana didn’t really like handsome men. Or even good-looking men, come to that. She found something offensively ostentatious about an overtly attractive man. She liked nice but strangely unattractive men who had “something about them.” The sort of unattractive men who had that verging-on-arrogant air of confidence instilled by late-in-life mothers. Interesting men. Men with opinions and ideas. Men who liked to talk. Intense men. Educated men. Intelligent men. The sort of men who didn’t have a problem going out with women taller than them. The sort of men that other women didn’t fancy. Usually of quite an undernourished appearance, with the type of skin that tended away from tanning. Often with thin wrists and oddly fleshy mouths. Men who didn’t gossip, who didn’t bitch.

  Men like Hugh.

  There’d been good-looking blokes at college, guys that all the girls had fancied, but she’d never looked at them in that way. Attractive men came from a different planet in Ana’s opinion, and she was as likely to be attracted to one as to a Tibetan goatherd.

  But Flint was‌—Flint was‌—good God, she had no idea what Flint was. He was interesting, she supposed. There was something going on there, something underneath the bulk and the scars and the “cheers, mate” persona. Something that unnerved Ana. Messed with her cognitive functions. Her ability to form reasonable responses to ordinary questions. Like the one he was still waiting for her to answer right now. What sort of things did she like doing at the seaside? She shrugged. She gave up.

  “Whatever,” she said finally, her voice emerging as a gruff whisper that sounded like a Jack Russell coughing.

  “Well,” he said, “I’ll tell you what I like doing at the seaside. I like going to arcades.”

  That figures, thought Ana, picturing him wearing out his thumb pads on a space-invader machine or kicking the shit out of a virtual ninja. Or something.

  “Have you got any moral objections to gambling? As a concept?”

  She shook her head.

  “Got money on you?”

  She patted her tapestry knapsack and nodded.

  “Cool,” he said, “let’s go.”

  Broadstairs was prettier than your average seaside town, prettier than Bideford, thought Ana, where she’d walked on the beach with Tommy and her father in the winter, throwing sticks for the dog, bashing the sand out of their shoes before they got into the car and getting a pie on the way home. Steep cobbled streets ran away from the seafront, where bow-windowed, knock-kneed cottages lined the lanes.

  “Did you know,” said Flint, “that Dickens wrote The Olde Curiosity Shoppe here? In Broadstairs?”

  “Did he?” said Ana. “Really?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “How did you know that?”

  Flint grinned. “I dunno,” he said, “I thought everyone knew that.”

  “Oh,” said Ana, “right.”

  She glanced at people as they walked, and wondered what they were thinking, wondered what sort of a couple she and Flint made. Pretty eye-catching, she imagined, her being so tall and him being so huge, clutching their crash helmets. Nobody would guess, she was sure, that she was just waste-of-space old Ana Wills, unattractive and disappointing second daughter of Gay Wills, naive country bumpkin and pretty much born-again virgin. She probably looked like she lived in some funky, stripped-floorboarded flat, like she had loads of cool friends who all got stoned and went to parties together and like she had sex with Flint about twenty times a day while drinking tequila from the bottle and listening to really loud music.

  Ana suddenly felt like a character in a film. A little fizz went down her spine.

  The feeling soon evaporated as they entered the arcade. That smell. That smell of teenagers’ trainers, cold metal, and dirty money. And the noise‌—not just the rings and clunks and clinks of the old days, but the new sounds too; booming American voices, rapid gunfire, explosions, thwacks, grunts, and groans of Japanese warriors. This was home. This was Devon. This was Bideford and everything she hated about it. Bored teenagers and displaced aggression.

  She posted a five-pound note into a change-making machine and listened to the jackpot noise of coins being returned to her. And then she looked around for Flint but couldn’t see him anywhere. She looked at the Tekkan machines, the Sega Rally cars, lined up together at the far end. She looked at the pinball machines, Time Crisis, some big thing that looked like an army tank, but he was nowhere to be seen. Growing a little concerned now, her hands full of sweaty ten-pence pieces, she walked around the circumference of the arcade, and then she stopped in her tracks and just stared for a while at what suddenly struck her as one of the most endearing images she’d ever seen in her life. It was Flint. He was sideways to her, wearing a very earnest expression and patiently depositing two-pence pieces into a penny cascade machine. As she approached, a precariously quavering lip of coins crashed noisily into the metal spout in front of Flint. She saw him bunch up his fists triumphantly before scooping up the money and counting it.

  “Twenty-four p,” he grinned at her, “twenty-four p! I’m ten p up!”

  He looked like a little boy in his Gap Kids-style outfit. He was so excited. Ana wanted to hug him, wrap her arms around him, and tuck her head into the crook of his enormous shoulders. He grinned at her again before turning back to the slot with a fistful of twopence pieces. Bless him to death.

  She tore her eyes from him and headed toward a one-armed bandit in the corner, where the shadows concealed her scarlet blush, and the metal stick in her hand cooled her sweaty palms.

  eighteen

  They found a pizzeria but it wasn’t due to open for another half an hour.

  “Fancy getting a drink somewhere?” asked Flint.

  They found a big noisy boozer a couple of streets away, and Ana offered to get the drinks. It was the least she could do, she said, after all the petrol Flint must have used getting here. He watched her at the bar from a small table in a corner, watched her fiddling inside her old tapestry knapsack for a purse, rubbing self-consciously at her elbows as she waited to be served, smiling tightly at the barman and then walking back toward him ever so carefully, a pint in each hand, careful not to spill a drop, careful not to look at Flint.

  “I got us some crisps too,” she said, dropping a packet of salt and vinegar onto the table from underneath her arm.

  “Ah,” smiled Flint, “ a girl after my own heart‌—a pint of lager and a packet of crisps. Lovely.”

  She picked up her pint and tipped at least a quarter of it down her throat. “Argh,” she exclaimed, “I needed that.”

  “Yeah,” laughed Flint, “I can see that. You’re not really like your sister, are you?”

  Ana laughed, too. “Aren’t I?”

  “No. Your sister was more of a cocktail girl. A high-maintenance woman, really.”

  “Yeah,” said Ana, “I can imagine.”

  “And your sister was a real loudmouth, too. L
ike Lol. Can you imagine it? When the two of them got together?” He winced and they both laughed. And then they both stopped laughing and fell into a sad silence. Flint cleared his throat. “So,” he said. “What sort of things have you been up to with Lol? In London?”

  “Oh. We’ve been to a couple of bars. In Ladbroke Grove.”

  “What‌—like, poncey places, you mean?”

  “Well‌—not really. Just sort of‌—fashionable places, I guess.”

  “Yeah. I know the sorts of places you mean. All scabby second-hand furniture and rank canals.”

  “Yeah,” smiled Ana, “something like that.”

  “If you don’t mind me saying, Ana‌—those sorts of places don’t seem very‌—you. I mean, from the look of you‌—you’re more of a pub girl, aren’t you?”

  Ana smiled. “I’ll try to take that as a compliment,” she said.

  “You want to come out with me one night when we’re back in London. I’ll take you to some proper London places. There are some amazing pubs in London. And some of the best beer. You’ve seen a bit of Lol’s London‌—I want to show you a bit of mine.”

  “Yes,” Ana said shyly, “that would be nice. Thank you.”

  Flint eyed her as she picked up her pint and took another sip. He’d enjoyed this little sojourn at the seaside with Ana. It was nice to get away from the indefatigable Lol for a while. Lol was great but she was also one of those people who didn’t leave any room in a situation for your own interpretation of things. You always got Lol’s version whether you wanted it or not. But with Ana, he’d been able to absorb the odd English seaside atmosphere, the sunset, the smells and sounds. Like being on his own but with someone.

  And there was something about her, he thought, but he found it impossible to put his finger on it. She was quite posh. But not posh posh, not public school and fine blond hair and skiing-tan posh. Not the sort of posh that he usually liked. Just a sort of low-key, middle-class, slightly hippified posh. And it wasn’t really about her looks. It wasn’t about what she had, as such, but about what she didn’t have. Like experience. Like sophistication. Like a sense of herself. Like the way she’d blushed just then when he’d suggested this drink. He’d almost been able to see her thoughts through her eyes‌—“If I walk into a pub with you, we’ll have to have a conversation, and that means I’ll have to reveal myself to you, and that makes me very nervous.” She didn’t give anything away and, in a world full of people prepared to bare their souls at the drop of a hat, she was coolly refreshing.