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 that 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, then he hadn’t had to accept any responsibility. As long as he’d thought that Bee hadn’t meant to die, then the pain he’d felt had been 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 a fortnight 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 spiralling downwards 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 touchthe 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 was a surrendered gun.
Flint looked at 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 towards 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 rucksack 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 –hewas right for her. And how weird was that? Bee’s sister. A girl who didn’t wear make-up. A girl with half a centimetre’s stubblegrowing under her arms. A girl who wore the same clothes three days on the trot. A very tall girl. A very shy girl. A girl who was so different to his usual type in every way it was almost comical.
Flint had a mate called Terry who always went against the grain, girl-wise. He fancied Phoebe inFriendsinstead of Rachel. He fancied Willow inBuffy the Vampire-Slayerinstead of Buffy. He fancied Carmella inThe Sopranosinstead 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 100-per-cent 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 about four o’clock Gill had come back from the gym with her friend Di, and Hugh had suddenly and repellently turned his attention away from an oblivious Ana and towards 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 eachother the moment he walked out the door to use the toilet.
Hugh finally left at 5.30 p.m. In a sudden and entirely unaltruistic 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 humour 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 road from me. She left Exeter when her father died.’