‘Any idea where Gill keeps her modem?’
‘Her what?’ she said, looking at Flint.
He shrugged, behind Hugh’s back.
‘A modem,’ said Hugh in a pompously patient tone of voice, ‘it’s the hardware that connects your PC to the Internet. It’s like a box. It’s … aaaah …’ He found something under the desk and reached underneath to fiddle with it, ‘excellent. OK. We’re all ready to go.’
Flint and Ana stood hovering above him clutching their mugs of tea as Hugh bashed away at the keyboard. Flint stared at the top of Hugh’s huge head and tried to imagine Ana and Hugh writhing around in bed together, Ana’s beautiful tendrilly fingers running through the thatch of brittle brown straw that passed for Hugh’s hair. He imagined Hugh’s little falsetto voice cooing ‘Bellsie, Bellsie’ as he exploded inside of her and he suddenly and violently wanted to be sick. Jesus, he thought, surely Ana could do better than this.
‘Okie dokie,’ said Hugh, ‘Ed Tewkesbury Productions – here we are.’ Hugh hit a button on a side panel and a list of productions came up. ‘Hmm,’ sneered Hugh, ‘classy.’
Ed’s company, it seemed, made a speciality of producing programmes about drunken English people embarrassing the nation in various corners of the globe, and programmes about people with really boring jobs being followed around all day by cameras, and programmes about stag nights and hen nights and people with bizarre sexual preferences living in Berkhamsted.
‘That must be it,’ said Ana, pointing excitedly at a section entitled ‘High Cedars’. ‘High Cedars,’it went on to say, ‘was first broadcast on BBC 1 in the summer of 1997. This seminal documentary, filmed over twelve weeks at High Cedars Residential Home for Children in Ashford,Kent, kept the nation emotionally gripped for the entire season with daily viewing figures averaging 3.3 million and set the standard for every human-interest docusoap to follow.’
‘Well,’ said Hugh, with a ring of self-satisfaction in his voice, ‘that’s that then. You’ve got your children’s home. Let’s run a search for it, shall we?’
He tapped the name of the home into a box and then clicked on a site on a list. A crested logo came up and a heading saying ‘High Cedars’.
‘There it is,’ he said smugly, ‘it’s all yours.’
The site gave a phone number.
‘So,’ said Ana, turning to look at Flint.
He shrugged and looked over at the phone.
‘What am I going to say?’
Flint puffed. ‘Ask to speak to Zander, I guess.’
Ana made a cute little face at him, turning her mouth downwards and widening her eyes nervously.
‘I don’t mind doing it,’ he said.
‘No,’ she said, and he saw her take a deep breath, ‘no. I’ll do it. OK. And what if he’s not there? I mean, what if I can’t talk to him? What shall I say?’
Flint saw Hugh open his mouth to say something and quickly cut in. ‘Make an appointment,’ he said, ‘or something.’ He set his jaw defiantly and out of the corner of his eye, saw Hugh raising an eyebrow.
‘OK,’ said Ana, ‘OK.’ She walked over to the phone, and the room became completely silent as the two men watched her dialling the number. Flint held his breath. This could be it. Ana might be about to talk to Zander.
‘Oh,’ she began, ‘hi. I wondered if I could talk to ZanderRoper. Please.’ She turned and hit Flint with a big grin that instantly warmed his heart.
‘Erm – yes, that’s the one. Yes. Who’s calling?’ She turned and made a panicked face at Flint. ‘Oh it’s er’ – she gestured madly at Flint for him to come up with an identity for her – ‘it’s er …’
‘Aunt,’ he mouthed at her.
‘Aunt,’ she said, ‘I’m Zander’s aunt. Yes. Mrs Wills. That’s right. I’m Mrs Wills.’ She threw an oh-my-God-I’m-free-wheeling-like-a-motherfucker-somebody-please-help-me face at Flint and he smiled at her and gave her the thumbs-up. ‘Oh,’ he heard her say, ‘right. I see. OK. And why is that, exactly? I see. I understand. No. No. That’s fine. OK. And thank you so much for your help. Yeah. Bye.’
‘What?’ said Flint, unable to control his curiosity, ‘what did she say?’
Ana flopped down on the sofa and fanned her blazing cheeks. ‘He’s not taking phonecalls from Mrs Wills.’
‘What?’
Ana shrugged. ‘I dunno. That’s all she said. Zander has requested that phone calls from Mrs Wills not be put through to him.’
‘So he doesn’t know that she’s … dead. Jeez.’ Flint ran his fingers through his hair and exhaled heavily.