one-hit wonder (25 page)

she wasn’t there to be admired, she was there to be accepted and this was the only way. The only way.

Bee took a very deep breath and looked in the mirror at Belinda Wills one more time before tucking her hair behind her ears and going back to the reception desk.

Dr. Chan was a tiny woman, smaller even than Bee. She had short black hair and was wearing glasses. She also had a large mole on her cheek with one wiry hair growing out of it.

“Good morning, Mrs. Wills.”

“Dr. Chan. Thank you for seeing me. And do call me Belinda.” She oozed a smile and squeezed the doctor’s hand.

Dr. Chan’s office looked out over a gorgeous rolling, landscaped garden, dotted with nurses and children playing, some in wheelchairs, some with sticks, and some running around freely.

“This is a lovely place,” said Bee.

Dr. Chan looked behind her and nodded. “It’s certainly the nicest place I’ve ever worked. So. How are you feeling?”

“Nervous,” admitted Bee with a grimace.

“I’m sure you are. Now—I know you’ve already spoken at great length about Zander’s problems to Dr. Whitaker.”

“Zander?”

“Yes. That’s what he likes to be known as.”

“Oh,” said Bee, “right.”

“He’s a very depressed, very angry child. He has his reasons, obviously, but don’t let his woe-is-me victim persona make you think that he hasn’t had his fair share of attention. He’s a nice-looking boy and he’s highly intelligent.

Many, many couples have expressed an interest in adopting him since his grandmother passed away, but he’s refused every opportunity to make a life for himself outside this hospital. Potential adopters have either, according to Zander, been too fat, too stupid, too ugly, too quiet, too old, too young. He doesn’t want to live in Oxfordshire, in Cheshire, in London, in York. He doesn’t like their other children, he doesn’t like their furniture, he doesn’t like their dog. Any excuse, any reason. So don’t feel too sorry for him. There are an awful lot of people in this hospital and outside this hospital who’ve done more for Zander over the years than could ever be reasonably expected.

“And you mustn’t think for a minute that he sees your visit as exciting or even vaguely interesting, come to that. So don’t expect an emotional meeting. He’ll probably do his best to ignore you. He’ll attempt to undermine you intellectually.

He’ll want to test you, to see how far he can push you, possibly even humiliate you, OK?”

Bee nodded.

“Are you sure, Belinda? Are you sure you want to do this?” Bee nodded again. And then shook her head. And then laughed. “Sorry,” she puffed, “it’s just very frightening.”

“Yes,” said Dr. Chan, “it is. But if I didn’t truly believe that there was some potential for a positive outcome, I would never have allowed this to happen. You’re going to have to persevere. If you’re going to do this, you need to be committed to going all the way. Yes?”

“Yes.” Bee nodded more forcefully. “Yes. All the way.

That’s what I want. Definitely.”

Dr. Chan smiled. “Good. That’s good. So”—she started getting to her feet—“shall we go?”

“Yes.” Bee grabbed her bag and crash helmet. “Can I leave these here?”

“Sure.”

They walked down a long wood-paneled corridor. Bee tried not to catch the eye of any of the children they passed.

Bee found disability absolutely terrifying. And then, as they turned a corner, she saw something even more worrying to her. A pile of aluminum boxes. Some cables. A stand-mounted light. A young girl wearing headphones and carrying a clipboard. A camera.

She stopped in her tracks. “Er—Dr. Chan. What exactly is going on here?”

“Oh,” smiled the doctor, “nothing to be alarmed about. Just a TV crew. They’re making a documentary.”

“A documentary? About what?”

“About High Cedars. About us. It’s for daytime TV—

heartwarming stories and such. It’s not something I would have wanted, but it’s great publicity. The directors insisted.

Shareholders and all that.”

“Yes, but I don’t want to be filmed. I mean, I really, really don’t want to be filmed.”

“Don’t worry.” Dr. Chan smiled warmly. “Everything’s already been approved in advance. They can’t film anyone who hasn’t given their written permission. And Zander has his own room—you’ll be perfectly private—I promise you.”

“Are you sure?”

“Absolutely.” She smiled again and continued. Bee followed her down the corridor toward a lift. The second floor was more modernized than the ground floor, looked more like a hospital and less like a boarding school.

“OK. This is it.” They stopped outside a door. “This is Zander’s room. Ready?”

Bee tugged at her turtleneck and smoothed her hair and wiped her sweaty palms against her gabardine trousers. Her heart was racing so fast, she thought she might be having one of her panic attacks.

After twelve years of guilt and thinking and imagining and planning and hoping, this was it. Finally. She was going to meet Zander. Jesus. She was
going to meet Zander.
In a few seconds she’d be in a room with Zander, looking into his eyes.

eyes.

What was she going to see in them?

She was terrified.

She took a deep breath.

“Yes,” she said, “yes. I’m ready.”

twenty-three

The room was small and sunny and modern. There was a TV

in one corner, a PlayStation, and a computer, and posters on the wall. It was the bedroom of a normal young boy. Except for the hydraulic bed and the smell of disinfectant in the air.

“Zander. Good morning,” Dr. Chan said breezily.

A very small boy turned to face them from the computer he’d been working at. He had dead-straight brown hair cut in an unflattering style that covered half of his face. He was wearing glasses and a too-large checked shirt. But he had a delicate face, a finely sculpted nose sprinkled with freckles, and wide-set, piercing blue eyes.

“Good morning, Dr. Chan,” he said, glancing at Bee momentarily before turning back to his computer.

“You’ve got a visitor, Zander.”

Bee arranged her face into what she hoped might look like a nonthreatening expression, but all her facial muscles felt tight and unyielding.

“This is Belinda, your auntie,” continued Dr. Chan,

“remember? We’ve talked about Belinda?”

“Yes, Dr. Chan. I remember talking about Belinda.”

“Belinda’s come all the way from London just to see you.

Don’t you think it would be polite to at least say hello?” He turned slowly in his chair and eyed Bee up and down.

Bee’s heart missed a beat and then started racing again.

She’d been expecting him to be fragile, vulnerable, sad. But this boy looked so . . . strong. So assured. So cold. He didn’t look like a child. He looked like an adult.

“Hello, Belinda,” he said sarcastically, and then turned away again.

“Zander . . .” Dr. Chan began.

Bee put her hand out and touched her arm. “Don’t worry,” she mouthed. And then she walked toward Zander and sat on the edge of his bed, within his range of vision. There was a slick of sweat on her upper lip and she could feel a dampness under her arms. “Hi, Zander,” she began, “what are you doing?” She indicated the screen with her eyes.

“I’m researching Robert K. Meyer’s inconsistent arithmetical theory.”

“Aaah,” said Bee, “right.”

“Yes, you see, Meyer was more interested in the fate of a consistent theory, but there proved to be a whole class of inconsistent arithmetical theories; Meyer and Mortensen in 1984, for example. Meyer argued that these theories provide the basis for a revived Hilbert Program.”

“Ah.”

“Yes. Hilbert’s program was widely held to have been seriously damaged by Gödel’s Second Incompleteness Theorem, according to which the consistency of arithmetic was unprovable within arithmetic itself. But a consequence of Meyer’s construction was that within his arithmetic—”

“That’s enough, Zander. You’re just showing off. And turn that computer off.” Dr. Chan strode toward him and put a finger out toward the power switch.

“No!” he exclaimed. “Don’t. I haven’t backed up my spreadsheets. I’ll do it.” He hit a few buttons sulkily. “There.

It’s off. Are you happy now?”

“Yes, thank you, Zander. Now I’m going to leave you and your aunt alone together to chat. OK? I’ll be back in an hour or so and we can all go and get some lunch. All right?”

“Do I have a choice?”

“No. You don’t have a choice.”

“Well, then why bother asking me?”

“Fine,” said Dr. Chan tersely, throwing Bee a look. “I’ll see you in an hour, then. And if you need anything, just hit that bell.” She pointed at a buzzer on the wall.

“Who are you talking to—her or me?”

Dr. Chan raised her eyebrows and left the room.

Bee wanted the earth to open up and swallow her. Dr.

Chan’s presence had given the situation a layer of insulation.

Now it was raw and unprotected.

Zander wheeled toward her and then came to an abrupt halt a few inches from her feet. The room was entirely silent. He stared at her, his head on one side, rubbing the top of one of his ears between his fingertips.

“So,” said Bee in an attempt to soften the malevolent atmosphere, “this is a nice room you’ve got here.”

“I don’t believe you’re my aunt,” he said.

Bee blanched and gulped. “I’m sorry?”

“It’s bullshit that you’re my aunt.”

“And what exactly makes you say that?”

“Well—everyone in my family was pig ugly. You’re far too good-looking to be related to me.”

Bee tried to control her facial muscles, to look unfazed.

Stick to the story, Bee, she told herself, just
stick to the
fucking story.
“Yes. Well. We had different mothers, your mother and me. I never even met your mother.”

“Bullshit.”

“I didn’t. I mean, I only just found out that she existed and—”

“Bull. Shit. Big steaming pile of it.” He wiggled his fingers to demonstrate the steam coming off the shit.

Bee forced her fingers into the roll of her turtleneck, trying to relieve her claustrophobia. “Look. I don’t know what else to say. I mean . . .”

“Huge, vast mountains of hot steaming rancid fly-infested bullshit . . . Tons of it. Piles as big as the Himalayas.

Everywhere. Urgh . . . urgh . . . urgh”—he put his hand to his throat and pretended to choke—“the ammonia, the poisonous, noxious, choking gases coming off those piles of shit . . . Help me, I’m choking, choking to death on it . . .

urgh . . .”

And as Bee looked at this puny, disabled little boy with his withered legs and his too-big shirt and his stupid glasses, this little boy whom she owed so much to, whom she’d taken so much from and whom she’d spent the past twelve years fantasizing about, she stopped feeling nervous and started feeling, irritated, and suddenly and overpoweringly wanted to punch him in the face. Really hard.

“OK, then, Mr. Know-It-All,” she snapped, getting to her feet, “if I’m not your aunt, then who the fuck am I?”

“Well, that’s a very good question. An excellent question.

Maybe you could answer it? My guess, though, is that you’re either a) an undercover reporter—something to do with all those TV airheads hanging around the place—but I have to concede that it’s unlikely you’d have undertaken such a sophisticated ruse just to talk to little old me. Or b) that you’re a sick sexual pervert who wants to put her hand in my knickers and feel my impotent little willy.”

“Jesus Christ!” said Bee. “That’s disgusting! How old are you?”

“I’m twelve years old, thirteen in July. But I have the intellect and vocabulary of a thirty-year-old. If that’s what you were asking . . . So? Was I right? Are you a sick pervert?” He threw her a lascivious look. “Because I really don’t have a problem with it if you are—sexy legs . . .”

“Oh. Jesus. You are disgusting.” Bee folded her arms and eyed him with contempt. “Do you talk to the doctors and nurses like this?”

“No. I’m just rude to them. But then, they’re not as good-looking as you—and they don’t lie to me.”

“I am not lying to you, how can I prove it to you? I mean, how—” She broke off halfway through a sentence when she heard a knocking at the door.

“Enter,” said Zander, wheeling himself toward the door.

“Oh. Hi. Sorry,” said a smallish man with close-cropped gray hair, “I’m looking for Tiffany Rabbett’s room.”

“Two doors down. You can’t miss it. It’s very
pink.
It’s Tiffany’s life ambition to one day be a Barbie doll. Not to actually
walk
or live a long and healthy life or anything. Just to be a doll.”

The man looked at Zander in amazement. “Er, right. Yup.

OK. Thanks.” He started to back out of the room.

“Hey, hey, hold on. Wait a minute,” Zander called after the man’s receding back.

“Yes.”

“Are you with the TV crew?”

“Uh-huh. I’m the producer.”

“D’you want a really good story for your show?” He smiled and edged into the room. “I’m always interested in hearing a good story.”

“Well then. Get this. This woman”—he pointed at Bee—“she’s my mother.”

“You what!” cried Bee, jumping to her feet.

“Yes,” said Zander, “but she’s too ashamed to admit it, because she hasn’t been a very good mother.”

“He’s lying,” said Bee, turning to face the producer, “I’m his aunt, actually.”

Zander tutted extravagantly. “Yes, well, that’s the story she’s concocted. Because it’s a hard thing to admit, isn’t it?

That you gave your baby away because he wasn’t perfect, because his little legs didn’t work properly.”

“He’s lying. He is. Honestly. Lying. You can ask the doctors.

They’ll tell you. He was paralyzed in an accident. . . .”

“And so this woman gives away her imperfect little baby boy and he goes into a home and nobody wants him. Nobody wants a baby that can’t walk, that can’t be potty trained, do they? And then one day, say, oooh, twelve years later, that woman finds herself all alone and getting old and decides to woman finds herself all alone and getting old and decides to find her baby. And here we are. Our first meeting. Our first reunion. Isn’t it joyful to behold? Aren’t you moved? Don’t you think your viewers would just love this little scene?”