one-hit wonder (40 page)

“What do you mean, leaving here?”

“I’ve got a place at St. Andrews. To study mathematical science. She insisted that I go.”

“Congratulations!”

He blushed again. “Yes. Thanks. I just got my A-level results—I got four A’s, top of my school.” He beamed at them proudly. “I’ll be the youngest student there, which is something of an achievement.”

“Who’s going to, you know, look after you?”

“Well—there are three other disabled students at St.

Andrew’s—we’ll all be sharing a specially adapted house.

There’ll be a live-in nurse, but generally I’ll be very independent. Oh—and I’ve got a new wheelchair on order.

Seven grands’ worth. It should be here next week. It’s going to be
wicked
!” He grinned at them and suddenly looked like a sixteen-year-old kid instead of an old man. And then his face fell. He paused and fiddled with the bottom of his T-shirt. A tear slipped down the side of his nose. He sniffed and used the bottom of his T-shirt to wipe his cheeks. “Sorry,” he said,

“I’m sorry. God—how embarrassing.” Ana put a hand on his pale forearm. “I can’t believe she doesn’t exist anymore.

How can Bee not exist? It doesn’t seem possible. Do you believe in heaven, Ana?”

Ana shrugged. “I’m not sure about heaven as such, but I do sometimes get this strange feeling that people are watching me. You know. Dead people. Not in a spooky, ghostly sort of way, just in a sort of calm way, like I’m in a play and they’re in the audience. It’s a feeling of not being alone rather than a belief that we’ll all meet up again one day. If that makes any sense?”

Zander nodded.

“What about you—do you believe in heaven?” Zander laughed. “ ’Course not,” he said, “I’m a scientist.

How can I believe in heaven? But I like your ‘play’ analogy. I feel like, if I allow myself to believe that Bee
is
watching me, then she’ll continue to exert her positive influence on me. And my family. I can make them proud of me, make something of myself—for them. Yes,” he said, his face brightening slightly, “Bee could be my ‘guardian angel’ if you like. I like that idea. Thank you, Ana.” She squeezed his arm again and then slipped her hand into her jeans pocket.

Flint looked at his watch. “Sorry, mate,” he said, “we’re going to have to push off now—I’ve got a job at seven.”

“Sure, sure. Of course. I’ll come with you to your car if that’s all right?”

As they said their good-byes in the parking lot, Zander looked at both of them warmly and with a hint of embarrassment. “Could I—could I ask you a favor?” They nodded.

“Well—if it’s agreeable with you, I’d really like to keep in touch with you both. I don’t mean like I want to be a big part of your lives or anything,” he gulped, “just, you know, the odd phone call, or, maybe, if you’re ever in Scotland . . . do you play golf, Flint?” He addressed Flint properly for the first time since they’d arrived.

Flint nodded. “Yeah. I do actually.”

“Well—there you go, then. The two of you could come up for a golfing weekend. Stay at the Old Course hotel. It’s supposed to be very romantic. I could come out with you.

We could hire a buggy or something and then you could come and have a quick drink with me in the union bar. . . .” He face had lit up. “But only if you want to, obviously.”

“Absolutely,” said Ana, “I definitely want to stay in touch.

Really.”

“Well, then maybe we should all swap phone numbers?

Then I can let you know what my number’s going to be in St.

Andrews.”

Ana pulled paper and a pen from her knapsack and they all exchanged numbers and then got into the car. Zander wheeled himself over to the passenger door and gestured at Ana to wind down her window. “The will,” he said, “we haven’t talked about the will.”

“Oh, well, maybe . . .”

“I can sort it out,” he said eagerly, “I’ve got a lawyer. He administers my trust. He’ll be able to find out if it’s binding or not. And if it is—if I
am
getting everything, then I’d really like to, you know, make sure you get something.” Ana shook her head. “Don’t be silly,” she said, “Bee wanted you to have everything. For your future. You know.”

“Ana,” he said, “I don’t need Bee’s money. I’m
loaded
.”

“Are you?”

“Uh-huh—I’m worth half a million or something.”

“What!”

“Yeah. One of the advantages of being the only surviving member of a resolutely middle-class professional family with fully paid-up life insurance policies. It’s all in trust till I’m twenty-one, but I really don’t need Bee’s money.”

“Well,” said Ana, feeling uncomfortable with the nature of this conversation, “I mean. Whatever you want to do. But really, I don’t . . .”

Flint revved the car.

“Sorry,” she said, smiling at Zander.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” he said, “you need to get going. The traffic’ll be starting to build up now.” Ana nodded and smiled and wound up her window. She and Flint waved and smiled at a beaming Zander, who waved them off from his wheelchair long after they’d disappeared from view.

thirty-eight

Flint and Ana drove together in a kind of numb silence. Of all the places that the roller-coaster of the past few days could have taken them, this was the last one either of them could have possibly expected. Ana’s brain boggled at the immensity of Bee’s confession, at the size of the secret that she’d been hauling around with her for fifteen years. It was unthinkable.

Flint put a hand on her knee and squeezed it. She looked across at him and smiled tightly. She felt like she was in another country, on another planet, in another
universe.
Poor Bee. Her life in stasis. Never being able to move on. Never being able to develop. Never being able to get close to anyone. What must it have been like? Waking up every morning and knowing that there was no way forward.

Sixteen years of hopelessness. And not even being able to indulge her hopelessness. Not being able to get pissed and moan about her life with her friends, not being able to go to counseling or buy a self-help book or watch people on talk shows going on about having the same problem as you. No sympathy, no empathy, no outlet for her guilt. Not being able to share it with anyone.

It was a wonder she’d lasted as long as she had.

“D’you want to come driving with me? Tonight?” Ana looked at Flint and felt herself melt inside with gratitude. She nodded. “Yes, please. I really don’t think I could handle being on my own tonight with all this stuff in my head.”

“I know exactly what you mean. You can stay at mine, too.

If you want. Nothing
untoward,
you know. Just for the company.”

She nodded again, thinking that it was what she wanted more than anything. The way she was feeling right now, she never wanted to leave Flint’s side again. And then another thought occurred to her. It was done. It was over. They’d found out why Bee killed herself. There was no reason for her to be in London anymore. And the ties that had bound her to Flint for the past few days had disappeared. What happens now? She felt her heart miss a beat with anxiety. She swallowed and put the thought in the back of her mind. She was with him now. She was with him tonight. That was enough for now.

Flint put on some music and Ana retreated into her own thoughts. She fantasized about a world in which her mother had never gone to Gregor’s funeral and Bee had never kicked her out and her own relationship with Bee had developed and they’d eventually become friends. And in her fantasy, she and Bee would get very drunk one night and start talking about life and regrets and the past, and Bee would suddenly start crying and Ana would ask her what was the matter. Bee would refuse to tell her, but after a lot of patient coaxing would finally open up and tell her all about what had happened on that road in France. And the two of them would hold each other and cry together—for Zander, for his family, for Gregor and for Bee. And maybe then Bee could have started to move on. Maybe just knowing that someone knew her secret would have made it easier to bear, even if she never told another soul. Maybe then she’d have gone on with her life, resumed her music career, kept her friends, had relationships, found someone to spend her life with, had children, been happy . . .

And then Ana felt herself deflate as she admitted to herself that her fantasy was a load of old nonsense and that nothing in the world could have helped Bee to deal with the guilt of having wiped out an entire family and crippled a baby.

Absolutely nothing.

thirty-nine

The following day Ana got back to Gill’s house early in the morning. Gill was out, as usual, and Ana made herself a cup of tea and installed herself in front of Gill’s PC. She clicked a switch and the machine whirred into life, and then she peered underneath the desk to find this “modem” thingy.

There was a sort of black-box thing attached. She felt around for a switch, and lots of little red lights started flashing when she pressed it. She presumed that meant that it was on. Ana had used PCs at college, but really only for typing and research and she hadn’t so much as touched one since she left. She had absolutely no idea how they functioned or what else they were capable of. It took her another quarter of an hour to work out how to dial up the modem and get on line.

She pressed a bar at the top of the screen, looking for a search box, and a big list of Web site addresses scrolled down in front of her. She clicked on something, randomly, and the screen changed before her eyes. Loud lurid graphics:

“FULL PENETRATION,” “GIRL ON GIRL,” “ASIAN GIRLS,” “SCHOOLGIRLS,” “WET,” “HARD,”

“XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX-RATED.” Ana went back to the bar with the addresses on it and dropped it down again.

“Trailertrash.com,” “Chazbaps.com,” “Asianbabe.com,”

“Hotsex.com.”

Ana smiled at the predictability of it. The woman was
obsessed.
Ana had never met a woman before with such a male attitude toward sex. And not even good male, but bad male. Sex without strings. Sex with strangers. Sex only with people who fitted some preordained idea of physical perfection. Sex only when you’re pissed. Sex you can’t remember the next morning. Sex onscreen.
Virtual
sex. It occurred to Ana that Gill really was a very disturbed individual indeed.

Ana found the search box and typed in the name “Bee Bearhorn.” A list appeared immediately and she whizzed through it. Good God, she thought, there’s
millions
of them.

She clicked on a few and found herself in obscure eighties-music sites that mentioned Bee only in passing. But then finally she found it. The site that Zander had told her about. It was still there. “The Unofficial Bee Bearhorn Web Site.” The site was divided into several pages: biography; discography; trivia; photo gallery; guest book. She clicked on the photo page and then looked in wonder at pages and pages and pages of pictures of Bee. Amazing, she thought.

Bee had been famous for only about five minutes but seemed to have spent the entire time being photographed. She clicked on one thumbnail picture and watched it enlarge on the screen. And as it downloaded she looked into Bee’s eyes and tried to imagine what might have happened to her if she hadn’t been driving on the wrong side of the road that day in 1986, tried to imagine who she’d be and what she’d have done. But there was a hardness behind those eyes, a glint of steel that reminded Ana of exactly the sort of person Bee’d been all those years ago. A bitch. A hard-nosed bitch who got her own way by manipulating people. A heartless woman who wanted only to be the center of everybody else’s universe. A woman just like her mother. And it occurred to Ana that Bee had been on the path to annihilation, in one way or another, ever since she’d first slipped out of the womb and set eyes on her mother. She was never going to be fulfilled, never going to be happy, never going to be successful. Because she’d been born with a self-destruct button implanted in her soul. And Bee had known it, too, she thought, thinking back to her letter to Zander. Even before she’d driven that family off the road, she’d known that she’d end up alone. And dead. From the minute she came into the world, that flat on Baker Street had already been expecting her. And looking into Bee’s eyes now, Ana knew that she’d known it, too.

Ana derived a strange sense of calm from the thought that when Bee went out for her last meal of sushi, when she swallowed those pills and alcohol on July 28, she’d probably been feeling an inexplicable sense of resignation, a sense of inevitability, and a sense of everything falling into its correct place.

She thought of others who’d died young, who’d self-destructed. She thought of River Phoenix, Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, Kurt Cobain, Ian Curtis, Michael Hutchence.

And she thought about how, as the shock of these people’s deaths receded, one was left with the sense that they’d always been destined to die young. It seemed almost
obvious,
in retrospect. And then she realized that there was one huge difference between Bee’s death and the deaths of all those other shiny people: They’d been mourned. Venerated in their deaths. Iconicized. Swollen by their tragic departures to beings twice their original sizes. Whereas Bee had had nothing. An inch or two in the
Times.
A funeral with three people. Her departure from this world had actually
shrunk
her, diminished her status. Looking at the screen now, at this Web site set up in Bee’s honor by someone she’d never even met, it occurred to Ana that this Stuart Crosby, who’d sweated over his computer for hours painstakingly building this site, scanning in photographs, writing the text, probably had no idea whatsoever that his idol was dead. And he
should
know. Bee deserved some grief. She clicked on a line that said “contact” and an e-mail form popped up. Her fingers hovered over the keyboard for a while as she tried to find the right words to express what she wanted to say. And then she started typing.

Dear Stuart,

My name is Ana Wills and I am Bee’s sister. I’ve just been
looking at your Web site and it’s really very impressive,
particularly your photo gallery. I don’t know if you’re aware of
this or
not, but my sister died recently. On July 28, to be precise.