‘No – she died in London. In her flat.’
‘God. I’m really sorry. She was so young and so pretty and everything. You must be gutted.’
‘Yeah. We are.’ Flint turned to look at Ana and Lol, and Louise looked at all three sadly.
‘Look,’ she began, ‘I get off in half an hour. If you want I can take you round to see some people. People who might know more than me. You know – busybodies and that.’ She giggled and Flint smiled, and she giggled even more.
‘Really?’ he gushed. ‘Would you? That would be fantastic, wouldn’t it, girls?’ He spun round and they nodded eagerly. ‘OK. Great. We’ll be here, in the corner, when you’re ready.’
‘OK,’ she beamed, ‘brilliant.’
He was about to turn away and then he stopped, turned back, looked straight at the slogan on Louise’s t-shirt and grinned. ‘Have you ever thought about changing your name?’
Louise flushed and giggled and hid her face, and Lol stuck her fingers down her throat and gagged and headed towards the back of the bar. ‘Christ, Lennard, you really are vile, d’you know that?’ she said, as they sat down.
‘Just doing what was necessary. That’s all.’
‘Oh. Bollocks. Couldn’t you have just said, “Hi – d’you know anything about the woman who used to live in the pink cottage on Broad Lane?” Did you have to get yer knob out and start waving it around in front of the poor girl. And you’re thirty-six years old in case you’d forgotten. You could have fathered her and another half a dozen like her by now, you sick fuck.’
Ana looked at them both in amazement. ‘Don’t you two ever stop arguing?’ she asked.
Flint and Lol looked at each other and laughed. ‘No,’ they both said in unison. ‘Not while we still get this much pleasure out of it, at any rate,’ said Lol, and they both laughed again.
And then Ana looked at them, at big, flash Flint with his scarred cheek and mad Lol with her platinum glued-in hair and her big raspy laugh and she thought, these are Bee’s people – I’m sitting here in a pub in Kent with Bee’s people. And Bee’s dead. How weird is that? And just think, she thought, if I’d stayed in touch with Bee, if I hadn’t let my mother’s neuroses influence me, if I hadn’t believed her lies, if I hadn’t been so lazy, if I’d had more strength of character, maybe I could have been sitting in a pub with Bee’s people andBee.I could have known Flint since I was a teenager. I could have known Lol when she was my age. I could have been someone for Bee to talk to, someone for her to tell her secrets to. I could have ridden pillion on her bike down to Kent and we could have done whatever it was she was doing here together. I could have been at her flat in Baker Street on that night, on 28 July, and I could have saved her. I could have saved her …
16
January 1998
Bee ran round the cottage one last time, making some final adjustments. Puffing up cushions, straightening curtains, switching on a table-lamp, switching off a table-lamp. It was a glistening winter’s morning, and a fine layer of snow lay all over everything. It was 8 January but Bee had bought a Christmas tree anyway, just a small one, and put it in the corner decorated with gold sequinned stars, tiny white fairy-lights and these really cute little fluffy baubles she’d found in Paperchase. A huge fire was crackling away in the fireplace and there was a chicken roasting in the oven.
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 tyres 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 shakeyourhand and welcomeyouinto my home and makeyouchicken. 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-wracked voice with enthusiasm and lightness. ‘At long last. Welcome.’
17
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 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 popstar? Yes. She was a popstar 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 and wellies – she was definitely a star. Oh yes. Definitely …
Lol, Ana and Flint all flopped on to 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.’