‘Stunning,’ he agreed. ‘Possibly one of the nicest out-of-town properties of this age we’ve ever had on our books. And all the adjustments are so unobtrusive. And as for this view …’
They both turned to look at it again, casting their eyes upwards as a few fat droplets fell from the sky. ‘Shall we go indoors?’
Tony took Bee upstairs, showed her the stair-lift, the easy-access bath, the special toilet and the spectacular view from the bedroom windows, now rain-splattered and obscured. It was almost dark outside now as the cloud thickened overhead, and Tony switched on a few lights. Bee paced around on her own for a while, letting the cosiness overwhelm her. He’d love it here. This was no compromise. This was no sad, secret, sordid place. They wouldn’t have to pretend here, pretend to be happy. They actuallycouldbe happy. Imagine Christmas Day in front of that wonderful open fireplace with fairy-lights draped all over the place and Bing Crosby on the CD. Imagine summer afternoons in that garden, pottering around, sunbathing, playing Frisbee. Well – maybe not playing Frisbee. But just imagine, thought Bee, imagine the times they were going to have here. Together. Just the two of them.
‘I want it,’ she said to Tony as she descended the stairs. ‘I want to buy it. I want to offer the full asking price. And I want to pay cash.’
Tony did his best not to look overexcited and got to hisfeet. ‘Fine,’ he said, ‘fine. That’s great. And I’ve got to say – an excellent decision. Absolutely excellent. Well – we’d better get back to the office then. Get things going.’
He wandered around, switching off lights, and saw Bee to her bike under his umbrella. As she straddled it and perched her helmet on her head he looked at her, and a small smile began to play on his plump lips. ‘Has anybody ever told you that you look like Bee Bearhorn?’ he said.
Bee smiled. ‘Bee who?’ she said.
‘You know – Bee Bearhorn. That singer from the Eighties. With the bob and the red lipstick. “I’m groooooving, for Lon-don, for Lon-don, all night.” ’ He smirked as he finished his painful rendition of her one and only hit.
Bee grimaced and laughed. ‘Never heard of her,’ she said. ‘She sounds awful, though.’
‘Yeah,’ laughed Tony, heading back towards his car in the rain, ‘yeah. She was.’
15
It only took about half an hour to find Bee’s cottage once they got to Broadstairs. The estate agent’s particulars described it as being ‘in a secluded location about half a mile from the charming, Dickensian seafront.’ They stopped a few times and shoved the particulars under people’s noses until finally someone said, ‘Oh yes, I recognize the place,’ and pointed them in the right direction. And they knew for sure they’d found the right place when they pulled up outside the cottage and saw Bee’s huge Honda sitting in the driveway, wearing its canvas overcoat.
‘What the fuck is that doing here?’ said Flint, climbing from the driver’s seat and walking towards the bike.
The canvas was covered in grime and dead insects. Flint brushed them off and started pulling the cover away from the bike. Ana watched him with interest. It was the first time she’d seen him standing up, and Lol hadn’t been exaggerating. He was absolutely enormous. He was wearing knee-length khaki combat shorts, a grey V-neck T-shirt and a pair of Velcro sandals. His calves were the size of cantaloupes and his shoulders reminded Ana of those old Kenny Everett sketches with the US military man in the tank. She felt a sudden overwhelming urge to go and stand next to him, so she could feel for the first time what it might be like to be petite. His face was handsome but craggy, the face of a fine-featured young man who’d liveda little too much. His eyes were the murky blue of a newborn baby’s and he had a small scar near the corner of his mouth which pulled his cheek into an unintentional puckered dimple.
He was incredibly good-looking.
If you liked that sort of thing.
‘Have you got the keys, Ana?’ he said, turning to her and making her blush. Again. Damn. She dipped her head quickly into her rucksack to conceal her embarrassment and rifled around clumsily for the clink of keys. ‘Here.’ She waved them at him and started grinning inanely. This man really was obscenely sexual. He oozed it. He stank of it. He may as well have been walking around with a twenty-inch erection growing out of his forehead.
‘OK, let’s go.’
‘Look,’ Lol was saying from where she stood near the front door, ‘what the bloody hell’s this – isn’t it a wheelchair ramp?’
They all looked down at it. ‘Hmm. Dunno.’
‘Looks like one.’
‘Could be.’
Ana slid the Yale into the lock and they all breathed a sigh of relief when the door slipped open without an alarm going off.
The three of them started wandering around the cottage. ‘Wow,’ said Lol, ‘this is so lovely.’ And it was. About a million times nicer than the grim old flat in Baker Street. The walls were painted in warm shades of cranberry and plum, the floors were cream-carpeted, the furniture was cartoonish – fat lipstick-pink sofas and a distressed mahogany dining-table laden with three-foot gothiccandlesticks. The ceiling had been painted with atrompe l’œilsky and clouds, and a Tuscan sunset glimpsed through straggling vines was painted on to a rough-hewn wall on the far side, decorated with bunches of bloomy plastic grapes. Enormous paintings depicting just a single, lushly painted piece of fruit hung from the walls – a three-foot pomegranate, a huge misshapen apple with mottled red and green skin, the lime-green, pip-speckled insides of a hairy kiwi. One wall was draped with a real tiger skin, decapitated and spreadeagled across the wall. Candelabras sprouted from plaster. Junk-shop chandeliers hung from the ceiling.
‘This is Gregor’s furniture,’ muttered Flint.
‘What?’
‘All this stuff – these sofas, the paintings, chandeliers – all Gregor’s old stuff, from his place in Kensington. Old stage props and bits of scenery, most of it – look’ – he picked up an enormous gothic candlestick and waved it around airily – ‘tin.’
‘Shit. You’re right,’ said Lol, glancing around, ‘I thought she’d left all this behind on her travels or put it in storage or something. Good grief,’ she said, pointing at a metal contraption by the stairs, ‘will you look at this – a bloody lift. Bee had a bloody lift in her house. What d’you reckon she used that for, then? When she’d had a few too many? God – that’s so Bee to have a lift. I can just imagine her, looking at the stairs and thinking, “I don’t wish to walk, I shallglide…” ’
Ana was in the kitchen now, looking at all the strange fixtures, the adjustable work surfaces and the two sinks at differing levels. A pile of glossy cookbooks sat on a bigwooden table. The cupboards were full of condiments. Soy. Pepper. Olive oil. Lime juice. Pine nuts. Ground cumin. Sundried tomatoes. And breakfast cereals – tons of it. Variety packs and Frosties and Golden Nuggets. The fridge was empty save for a packet of eggs and a squeezed tube of tomato puree. And there wasn’t a cocktail shaker or a bottle of tequila anywhere in sight. Everything about this house was diametrically different in every possible way to the flat in Baker Street.
She tried another one of the keys on her bunch in the back door and pushed her way out into the garden. It was beautiful. Very compact and mature and well-tended. In a shed at the farthest end Ana found a lawnmower and rows of tiny pots and trowels and quilty gardening gloves, secateurs, twine and compost. The garden shed of an active and enthusiastic gardener – it looked just like Gay’s garden shed at home.