one-hit wonder Page 26

  Ana nodded. Hugh cleared his throat. “I have to leave tonight, unfortunately. Early meeting tomorrow morning. So I’m afraid that . . .”

  “Do you think they’ll let us talk to him? Without an appointment?” said Ana.

  “Let’s talk about it tonight, eh? In the car?”

  Hugh, now unhappily picking up the complicity between Ana and Flint and the fact that he was somewhat excess to requirements, took his mug of tea and sauntered over to the sofa, where he started fiddling around in the voluminous pockets of his windbreaker. He eventually pulled out a small packet of papers and a pouch of tobacco and proceeded to make a neat and very professional little roll-up.

  “So,” he said, lighting it, inhaling, and then picking a piece of tobacco off the tip of his tongue, “Bellsie. Are you going to phone your mother?”

  Ana tore her eyes away from the screen and looked at Hugh pointedly. She tutted. “Yeah,” she said, “I suppose so.”

  “She really is very worried about you, you know.”

  “Yeah. Sure she is. She’s not worried about me. She’s just worried about herself. About her shopping . . .”

  “Well‌—don’t you think that’s fair enough? I mean to say, she is all alone.”

  “And whose fault is that?”

  “Ooh,” said Hugh, inhaling and scowling, “that’s a little harsh, wouldn’t you say? The poor woman’s lost a husband and a daughter within a year. That’s tough for anyone.”

  “Well‌—she should have been a bit nicer to both of them while they were still alive, shouldn’t she? I really think that if you haven’t appreciated people while they’re living, you’ve got no right to mourn them when they’re dead.”

  “She loves you, you know.”

  “She does not. She doesn’t love anyone.”

  “She does. She cried, Bellsie. She did. Cried.” He ran his fingertips down his cheeks to demonstrate the tears.

  “Jesus‌—what is this? Bee ignored me for ten years, cuts me out of her life, and all of a sudden the world and his wife is telling me how much she loved me. Now my evil witch of a mother, who won’t even let me touch her, is bursting into tears and claiming undying love for me. I should have come to London a long time ago. . . .”

  Hugh rested his roll-up in an ashtray and walked toward Ana. “Bellsie,” he said, massaging her bare shoulders with his funny, muscular little hands and making Flint’s flesh crawl, “come home. Eh? Come home with me now?”

  “No,” said Ana more firmly than Flint had heard her say anything up to that point, “I’m staying. And I’m not coming home until I find out why Bee died.”

  “Ah,” said Hugh, reaching back into his windbreaker pockets, “that’s another reason why your mother sent me.” He pulled out a sheaf of paper and handed it to Ana. “It’s the coroner’s report. On Bee,” he added unnecessarily.

  Flint jumped from his chair and stood next to Ana while she opened the letter with slightly trembling hands. “Oh God,” she said, and Flint found himself, before he’d even had a chance to think about it, putting an arm around her shoulders and giving them a reassuring squeeze. It was the first time he’d touched her bare flesh, and it was nice. She didn’t seem to notice. She unfolded the letter and held it up for both of them to read. Flint’s eyes scanned the typewritten report, looking for the bottom line, looking for the verdict.

  “Suicide,” said Ana suddenly, the tip of one finger hitting a spot farther down the sheet. “Well‌—there it is. . . .” She sat down heavily on the sofa, and her lanky body collapsed in on itself. Hugh plonked himself down next to her and started stroking her hair.

  Flint felt himself go numb. Bee had killed herself. But‌—she couldn’t have. Of course she hadn’t. I mean. Just. She couldn’t have. He took the page from Ana’s limp hand and surveyed it again, searching for something he might have missed, something that would tell him she hadn’t really killed herself, that it was an accident, that there was nothing Flint could possibly have done to have stopped it. Because as long as he’d been able to think of it as a tragic accident, he hadn’t had to accept any responsibility. As long as he’d thought Bee hadn’t meant to die, the pain he felt was the pain of futility instead of the pain of guilt and the pain of knowing that he hadn’t been a good enough friend, that he hadn’t phoned her for more than two weeks before she died, that he hadn’t been to her flat for weeks, that he’d just made assumptions that she was fine, that she was coping, that she was Bee and that Bee was always all right. Even when she left her beloved Belsize Park flat and moved into a desperately miserable flat that didn’t suit her at all. Even though she hadn’t had a boyfriend in years. Even though she had no job, no function, no purpose in life. Even though she’d been on anti-depressants half her life. Even though he couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen her do that Bee thing of tossing back her head and opening up her mouth and laughing a laugh so loud that it scared the birds from the trees. That despite every warning sign that his so-called best friend was unhappy and spiraling downward to somewhere dark and lonely, he’d just left her to it.

  He held up the report and looked at it again. “Diazepam 150 mg, temazepam 300 mg, paracetamol 310 mg, alcohol 25 units.” Jesus, he thought, that was certainly no accident. She’d taken at least eighty pills and the best part of a whole bottle of tequila.

  He read on: “Food contents largest amount first: uncooked fish, rice, wheat cereal, bread, cooked fish, seaweed, milk, tea, chocolate.” Oh God, thought Flint, these are the contents of Bee’s stomach. This is what Bee put into her body on the day that she died, on the day she decided that she didn’t want there to be a tomorrow. Flint could feel tears bruising the back of his throat. Wheat cereal. She’d eaten cereal. And chocolate. And seaweed. And uncooked fish. Sushi. She’d eaten sushi. He gulped. It was a shared passion. He’d introduced her to sushi way back in the eighties when there were only about five Japanese restaurants in London. He’d taught her how to pick up the sushi and dunk it so that the soy didn’t touch the rice. He remembered her picking up a large glob of acid-green wasabi with her chopsticks, murmuring, “What’s this green stuff?” before popping it in her mouth too fast for Flint to tell her not to. She’d turned purple when the horseradish heat had permeated her nostrils, puffing and panting like a sweaty horse, her eyes bulging and watering, swearing and not caring that everyone in the restaurant was looking at her. He remembered her hitting him with her little handbag and blaming him for not telling her, and he smiled to himself.

  How could he have let her do this? They’d been so close, particularly after the events of 1986. How could he have let their bond whittle itself down to such a spindly little thing? Because he was selfish, that’s why. Selfish selfish selfish. All he cared about was his car and his kendo and his degree course and keeping his life all neat and well ordered. That was why he was friends with Bee in the first place‌—because she was low maintenance. And that was why he didn’t have many other real friends. Because they were all too much like hard work. They made demands, and, Flint suddenly realized, he’d cut himself off from any sort of relationship that would call on him emotionally in any way. But that wasn’t an excuse. It just wasn’t. He was a bad person. As simple as that.

  “Are you OK?” Ana and Hugh were both looking at him with concern. Flint looked down and realized that the coroner’s report was screwed up in his fist. And then he realized that he was crying. He loosened his grip on the paper and wiped away the tears with the back of a fist. “Shit,” he said, “sorry. It’s just . . . it’s‌—poor Bee,” he said, looking Ana desperately in the eye, “d’you know what I mean? Poor poor Bee.”

  Ana nodded and picked up his big hand in her thin hand and rubbed it and squeezed it, and Flint looked at her and decided that the new Flint started here. He was going to be a good person from this point on.

  “Funny old world, isn’t it?” said Hugh, pulling the report gently from Flint’s open hand as if it were a surrendered gun.

  Flint looked a
t Old Domehead and nodded.

  Hugh stayed all afternoon. Flint wanted to like Hugh, would have been happy to have let Hugh grow on him, but it didn’t happen. Instead, every moment spent in his company increased his dislike of him by leaps and bounds. He didn’t dislike him the same way he’d disliked Ed‌—that had been to do with Ed’s creepiness and the general lack of trust he felt toward him. The dislike he had for Hugh was based purely on the fact that he wasn’t good enough for Ana, but that he obviously thought he was much better than her. He patronized her. He acted like Ana was just the luckiest gal in the world to know him, should be so grateful that he’d packed his horrible little knapsack and come all the way down here to check up on her. And in fact, seeing Ana with Hugh just served to crystallize the feelings he’d been having ever since he’d first set eyes on her. Seeing her with someone so wrong gave her a context, made him see clearly what was right for her. And suddenly Flint knew‌—he was right for her. And how weird was that? Bee’s sister. A girl who didn’t wear makeup. A girl with half a centimeter’s stubble growing under her arms. A girl who wore the same clothes three days in a row. A very tall girl. A very shy girl. A girl who was so different from his usual type in every way, it was almost comical.

  Flint had a mate called Terry who always went against the grain girlwise. He fancied Phoebe in Friends instead of Rachel. He fancied Willow in Buffy the Vampire Slayer instead of Buffy. He fancied Carmela in The Sopranos instead of Dr. Melfi. And now, with Ana, he could almost understand where Terry was coming from. There was something fascinating about the “other girl,” the supporting actress, the less obvious choice. For years Flint’s mates had given him a hard time about Bee, couldn’t understand how he could just be “friends” with such a one-hundred-percent babe. And he hadn’t even bothered trying to explain because he didn’t really know himself. And if he’d told the same friends that he was now fantasizing about Bee’s odd younger sister, they’d have had him sectioned.

  He asked himself if these feelings were related in any way to Bee’s death‌—some kind of strange knee-jerk reaction to loss and grief. But the answer was no. He just liked her. A lot. On many levels. Plain and simple. Full stop.

  At four o’clock Gill came back from the gym with her friend Di, and Hugh suddenly and repellently turned his attention away from an oblivious Ana and toward the two women. Neither Gill nor Di were exactly oil paintings, but he was still way out of his depth. But Hugh wasn’t even vaguely aware of his limitations, or the fact that Di and Gill both made gagging gestures at each other the moment he walked out the door to use the toilet.

  Hugh finally left at 5:30 P.M. In a sudden and entirely un-altruistic moment, Flint offered him a lift to Paddington. And he deliberately didn’t invite Ana, sensing that she wouldn’t appreciate it, but also because he was hoping to get a bit of insight into her from Hugh while they drove the three-quarters of a mile to the station.

  Hugh liked his car. Even Mr. Cool personified wasn’t able to feign indifference to a stretch Mercedes with tinted windows.

  “This must lap up the old juice,” he said, touching it gently with one hand.

  “About ten miles to the gallon‌—in town.”

  Hugh sucked in his breath. “Still,” he said, “I guess the punters in the back pay for that?”

  “And the rest,” said Flint, laughing and holding the passenger door open for Hugh.

  “So,” said Hugh in a pitiful attempt at blokey bonding, “have you ever had a female passenger who didn’t have enough cash on her?” He winked obscenely.

  Flint knew exactly what he was getting at but refused to humor him. “No,” he stated simply, “everything’s paid on account, through management companies and record companies. I don’t deal in cash.”

  “Oh,” said Hugh, rubbing his hands over his jeans, “right.” He turned to look out of the window.

  “So,” said Flint after a couple of moments’ silence, “how long have you known Ana?”

  Hugh shrugged, still smarting from Flint’s rejection of his all-blokes-together comment. “Seven years,” he said, “eight. Something like that.”

  “Really?” said Flint in surprise. “So‌—since she was eighteen? Or younger?”

  “Yeah. First loves.” He smiled.

  “You mean‌—you were Ana’s first boyfriend?”

  “Yup. I taught her everything she knows.”

  Oh grim, thought Flint. And if that’s really true, then get the girl to therapy‌—now. She must be traumatized.

  “She tells me she used to live in Exeter?”

  “That’s right. Just up the street from me. She left Exeter when her father died.”

  “Yes. She said. It sounds like she had a pretty tough time.”

  Hugh shrugged. “I dunno,” he said, “Bill was very old. Eighty-four or something. It’s not as if Ana wasn’t expecting it.” He sighed and craned his neck to view two skinny girls in pedal pushers and cropped tops tottering down Clarendon Road with a Rottweiler puppy.

  “Yes, but‌—everyone’s going to die at some point. Knowing it doesn’t make it any easier when they do. And it sounds like she was particularly close to her father.”

  “Yeah‌—she was. Unhealthily close, I often used to think.”

  “Why d’you say that?”

  “I don’t know. It just didn’t seem right somehow, a young girl spending so much time with such an old man. Although Bill was a very charming, very, er . . . switched-on old man. But I think she depended on him too much.”

  “And you?”

  “What about me?”

  “Did she depend on you? I mean‌—eight years‌—that’s a long time to be with someone.”

  Hugh puffed and scratched the back of his neck. “Yes,” he said, “yes, she did. Unfortunately. I always tried to encourage Ana to be independent. To stand on her own two feet. I think she expected rather a lot of me in the weeks after her father passed away. Expected me to hold her up, somehow.”

  “Well,” said Flint, “isn’t that normal? To be expected? You were her boyfriend, after all?”

  Hugh shrugged dismissively. “I don’t like to be used,” he said, and Flint wanted to punch him. “And I have no respect for people who can’t look after themselves emotionally. If you don’t do it for yourself, then you never grow as a person. You never develop. And Ana was in dire need of development.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well‌—she’s rather immature. For her age.”

  “No she’s not.”

  “She is. And excuse me if I sound rude, but you don’t really know Ana, do you? The only reason why Ana ever managed to make a life for herself away from home was because she had me. She’d never have done it on her own. I got her job for her, I helped her find a flat. All our friends were my friends. I thought her father dying, having to deal with his death, would be the making of her. But it wasn’t, I’m sad to say. The minute I wasn’t there to support her anymore, she let it all fall away. Reverted to teenagedom and moved back home.”

  Flint opened his mouth to say something, then snapped it shut again. He wanted to say‌—is it any wonder that Ana didn’t develop, when she had a boyfriend like you? Is it any wonder she gave up on everything after her father died, when the one person in the world who claimed to be on her side abandoned her? And cut all this “independence” bullshit, he wanted to shout, the reason you let Ana throw her life away was because you wanted to shag around. You wanted to shag around and you didn’t have the guts to dump her, so you waited until she was at her most vulnerable and let her do it for you. You sniveling little shit . . .

  All of a sudden Ana’s life story opened up like a book in front of Flint. Put down by a vain, preening, neurotic mother. Abandoned by a glamorous, unattainable elder sister. Her personality swamped by an overbearing, self-styled Svengali of a first boyfriend. The only person who truly loved her was sixty years older than her, and he died. Having made her completely dependent on him, her boyfriend then cuts her loos
e just when she needs him most and, instead of being able to work through her own grief, she is summoned to her childhood home to attend to the demands of her mentally unstable mother. A mother who has no interest in the emotional development or fulfillment of her daughter.

  Jesus.

  Paddington station loomed up on their left and Flint pulled up.

  “Well,” said Hugh, extending a hand, “Flint. It was nice to meet you.”

  Flint hesitated and then gave Hugh his hand to shake.

  “And thanks for the lift. Much appreciated.” He put his hand to his forehead and performed a daft little salute.

  “No problem.”

  Hugh lifted his knapsack from under his feet and let himself out of the passenger door. “And good luck,” he said before closing the door, “with tomorrow. Just call me if you need any help. You know?” And then he sauntered off with his knapsack slung nonchalantly over his shoulder, swaggering toward the concourse like Clint fucking Eastwood.

  Flint shook his head, put the car into gear, and headed back to Latimer Road.

  thirty-one

  “You used to go out with him?” said Gill, looking at Ana in wonderment.

  “Yes,” said Ana a bit sniffily. “We went out for about eight years.”

  “Really?”

  “What?” demanded Ana, knowing that Gill was getting at something.

  “Well‌—he’s a bit, you know . . . he’s not . . .”

  “He’s vile, Ana,” said Di, tipping a can of diet Coke to her mouth and emptying it of its last drops.

  “Well,” said Ana defensively, “looks aren’t everything, are they?”

  “I’m not talking about his looks, sweetheart. I’m talking about him.”

  “What about him?”

  “He loves himself. And don’t get me wrong. I’m usually quite partial to a man who loves himself. But only when they’ve got good reason. And that man has absolutely no reason, dammit.”

  Gill dissolved into giggles and dropped half a vol-au-vent on the floor.