one-hit wonder (27 page)

“What!”

“I’m serious. I want you to take me away from here. Not permanently or anything. Just now and then. You know.”

“Where?”

Zander looked into Bee’s eyes for a moment before turning around and wheeling himself toward the window.

“To a house,” he began, “somewhere small, cozy. Warm.

Somewhere quiet. Near the sea. Somewhere with a garden.

And a birdbath. Somewhere private. Somewhere where everybody doesn’t know my business. I’ve been here for ten years,” he said, turning to face her again, “do you realize that?

Pretty much all my life. And the only place I’ve ever been is to the hospital or on stupid day trips with all the other cretins in this place. And everyone stares at you when you’re out with that lot. They think you’re just a stupid spastic, just a brain-dead vegetable. And this place is very pleasant, I can see that. My grandma chose this herself just before she died, and she went to see
loads
of places. And this was definitely the best. It’s a nice building and they try to make things as nice as possible. But it’s not a proper home, is it? I mean—is it? I don’t want to sound like I feel sorry for myself or anything, but I haven’t anyone. No family at all. No one to take me out of here occasionally and make me feel . . .

special. I want my own life. A special little private life.

Away from here. D’you see? Do you?”

They stared at each other for a while. There was a vein throbbing on Zander’s temple, and his hands were clenched into fists. He’d dropped the façade, and for the first time since Bee had walked into his room, she felt that the real Zander was talking to her.

A smile played at the corners of her mouth.

“What?”

“Oh, nothing.”

“It’s not funny. What are you smiling at?” She opened her lips and beamed at him. “Has anyone ever told you that you look really cute when you’re begging?” she said.

“Oh, piss off, you old Pop-Tart,” he said, but he was smiling as he said it.

twenty-five

Ed took Flint and Ana to a shockingly expensive Japanese restaurant just around the corner from his office. It was packed full of businessmen and they were served by a tiny woman in a blue kimono. Ed ordered the most expensive sushi sets for the three of them and insisted that Ana eat even the pieces that scared the living daylights out of her—pieces filled with huge, violently orange fish eggs; or draped with skinny, naked pairs of prawns with the heads still attached, two sets of beady eyes gazing at her in confusion; things wrapped in glossy emerald seaweed and things swathed in rubbery slices of suckery octopus. Ana had only ever had sushi once before, but that had been from Sainsbury’s and she’d been less than impressed. Now she finally understood what all the fuss was about.

“Enjoying it, Ana?” said Ed, waving his chopsticks at her beautifully presented plate.

“Yeah,” she said, “it’s incredible. Much better than the supermarket stuff.”

“Oh God,” he said dismissively. “Supermarket sushi is an
aberration.
Sushi should
never
be put in a fridge. The key to sushi, the magic of sushi, is in the warmth of the hands of the sushi chef. The fish is important, the rice is paramount, but put even the finest sushi in a fridge and it dies, Ana. It just dies.”

Ana glanced at Flint. He was making disparaging, sneering faces at an oblivious Ed. He hated him. Really hated him. She stifled a smile under her hand. “Enjoying your sushi, Flint?” she said, clearing her throat and covering her mouth with her hand again.

Flint grunted and nodded.

Ana smiled again and then put something into her mouth that looked like a damp puppy’s tongue sitting on an oblong of rice. “Ouurghhh . . .” she suddenly murmured through her mouthful, “thish ish fuffing gorshuss, wharrishitt?”

“Er . . .” Ed picked up the photo-illustrated sushi menu and started looking at it, “it’s er . . .”

“It’s toro,” said Flint quietly.

Ana looked at him quizzically.

“Toro is the meat from the tuna’s belly. There’s not much of it, so it’s a real delicacy. It should taste . . . buttery?”

“Ouurghhh,” said Ana, nodding and swallowing and taking a slurp of Kirin. “That’s exactly what it tastes like—freshly churned butter.”

Ed looked at Flint in surprise. “Know a bit about Japanese food, then, Flint?” he asked.

“Yeah. Well”—Flint slipped a pearly-pink piece of pickled ginger into his mouth—“I was out there for a while, you know. You pick things up.”

“You went to Japan?” asked Ana, unable to mask the surprise in her voice.

“Yeah. I was there in 1984. For a year.”

“Really?”

“Uh-huh. In Tokyo.”

“Doing what?”

“Teaching, mainly.”

“Teaching what?”

“English.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah.” He shrugged and dunked a salmon roll in his soy.

“Long time ago, though, that.”

Ana looked at him in wonder. Flint had lived in Japan. For a year. He’d been a teacher. She wondered what else he’d done. She’d just assumed, rather narrowmindedly, that he’d sort of been
born
behind the wheel of his limo, that he hadn’t existed before he met Bee. She tried to imagine Flint as a fresh-faced twenty-one-year-old, teaching English to a rapt group of wide-eyed Japanese children, walking the streets of Tokyo, towering over everybody else. She really didn’t know a thing about him. Or his relationship with her sister, come to that. She was about to ask him another question about Japan but he forestalled her by addressing a question to Ed.

“So—you never actually heard Bee admit that Zander was her son?”

“Well—no, not in so many words. But I always referred to him as her son and she certainly never corrected me.”

“And what about the father? Did she ever say anything about Zander’s father?”

“No. I asked. But she refused to tell me anything about Zander. Refused to talk about him, full stop.”

“Isn’t that a bit weird? If you were the only person in her life who was aware of Zander’s existence, what would she have had to lose by telling you about him? I don’t understand.”

understand.”

“Look,” he said firmly, “I’m as confused as you are. I never understood why she refused to talk about him. But in the end I respected her need for privacy, for
secrecy,
whatever her reasons. And why would the boy have lied, anyway? Why would Bee have spent all that time with him, bought a house for him? He was a horrible little bastard, so it can’t have been because she liked him—there’s no other explanation.” Flint and Ana exchanged a look. He had a point.

“So, what happened to you and Bee?” asked Ana. “Why did you split up?”

Ed grimaced momentarily and he dabbed at his mouth with his napkin. “Ah,” he said, “now, there’s a story. Another beer, anyone?”

twenty-six

January 2000

Bee let the ring on her wedding finger glint and glitter in the muted light. She smiled. It was very traditional, classic, not what she’d have chosen, but still stunningly beautiful. And at least it was platinum, not gold. She hated gold.

“Hi.” Ed came back from the men’s room and slid into his seat. Bee smiled at him. It was incredible, she thought to herself, how when she’d first gone out with Ed—to this exact same restaurant, actually—she’d thought he was vile, a puny little coke-sniffing media-weasel. The idea of having sex with him had made her feel quite queasy, in fact. Having dinner with him was just something that had to be done to ensure that he never spilled the beans to anyone about Zander. But he’d grown on her imperceptibly during the course of that first evening. She’d gone from finding him smug, arrogant, and bland to seeing him as a sweet, confused, kindhearted man who wasn’t really very happy. Someone who just wanted to be loved. Unconditionally. Someone who didn’t know how to show his vulnerability. Someone just like her, in fact.

By the time they’d checked into a hotel, drunk another bottle of champagne, and fallen noisily and clumsily into bed with each other, she’d been more than happy with the situation. And when, after their next meeting, he’d told her he loved her and wanted to leave his wife for her, rather than running a mile in the other direction like she usually did when men told her they loved her, she’d actually found it quite sweet.

As the months went by, she’d found herself anticipating his phone calls and his visits with more and more enthusiasm.

And then, at some vague point, she’d fallen in love with him.

She’d fallen in love with a short, bald, married man. Funny old world.

And now, here they were, nearly three years later, engaged and about to go public. They’d just had their first proper holiday together. To Goa. It had been the most amazing two weeks of her life, two weeks of normality, of feeling like a real person, and two weeks in which it became obvious to Bee that she needed this man in her life. Properly. Not part-time.

So when Ed handed her the ring, nervously and uncertainly, at the airport on their way out, she’d grabbed it with both hands and grinned from ear to ear. Marrying Ed had suddenly gone from being an utterly ludicrous concept to seeming like the best idea in the world. He was going to leave his wife the moment they got home, leave her. He’d had enough.

Tina was a wonderful person, as he kept telling Bee, but her desire for a baby had destroyed their relationship. He’d had three courses of fertility treatment in the last year, despite the fact that the gynecologist had told her she had only a one-in-a-thousand chance of ever conceiving and carrying a child.

Now she was talking about finding a surrogate mother.

Ed couldn’t stomach the thought—his baby in another woman’s womb. Not to mention all the potential emotional anguish and pain. And what if the mother changed her mind, kept the baby—it would destroy Tina completely. And without the incessant obsession with reproduction, the doctor’s appointments, the thermometers, the test tubes, the tears and the never-ending waiting as Tina’s periods became the focus of their lives, there was nothing left . . . absolutely nothing.

Ed had convinced himself—and Bee, who’d never been happy with the idea of Ed leaving Tina—that it was in Tina’s best interest for him to leave. She’d be happier without him.

She was only thirty, she had plenty of time to meet someone who might be prepared to do the surrogate thing or go through the treatments all over again. So he was going to leave her. The minute he got back from Goa. And tonight was going to be their first meeting as legitimate lovers, a celebration of their freedom.

The champagne that Bee had ordered while Ed was in the men’s room arrived. He looked at it strangely. “Did you order that?” he said.

Bee beamed at him and nodded.

He sighed and rubbed his face into his hands. “I wish you hadn’t, Bee,” he said.

Bee felt her stomach clench into a knot.

“There’s something I need to tell you.” Ed crossed his arms in front of him and stared at Bee. “Everything’s changed,” he said simply.

Bee stopped breathing momentarily, felt herself begin to panic. She forced a tight smile. “And what exactly does that mean, Mr. Tewkesbury?”

“Tina’s pregnant.”

Bee smirked. “Oh,” she said, “don’t be daft.”

“I’m not being daft, Bee. It’s true. She’s pregnant.”

“But—how? It’s been months since your last treatment.”

“I know.”

“So—how?”

Ed lowered his gaze to the tablecloth.

Bee raised hers to the ceiling.

Stupid question.

“She’s having triplets.”

“But, that’s the silliest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“Yes. It is, isn’t it? It’s mad. But it’s true. It’s . . . it’s a miracle, Bee. That’s what the doctor said. Somehow all the treatment she’d been having—well, she got sort of superfertile, I suppose. And now she’s pregnant. And we’re having triplets.” His voice was going up an octave with every sentence. His hands were flittering around. His face was animated. He was excited. He was trying his hardest to hide it, but he was absolutely overjoyed.

“But I thought, you know, you and Tina . . . ?” She was about to say But I thought you and Tina didn’t have spontaneous sex anymore, I thought you had sex only with test tubes and speculums, but she knew the moment she opened her mouth how that would make her sound. Stupid. Stupid with a big fat capital S. Stupid like all of those thousands of other stupid, stupid women who believed their married lovers when they said they didn’t have sex with their wives.

She felt sick. Violently sick. She could feel the tomato and basil soup she’d had for lunch lurching around in her stomach, creeping bilelike up the back of her throat. She took a large sip of champagne.

“So—what . . . what are you going to do? I mean—are you going to stay?”

“With Tina?”

“Yes, with Tina,” she snapped.

Ed sighed and slid his hands across the tablecloth toward hers. She snatched hers back into her lap.

“Well?”

“Shit, Bee, I don’t know. I mean—I’ve wanted to be with you from the first moment I saw you. I’ve been ready to walk away from Tina and be with you and you’ve kept me at arm’s length. And now—it’s like—I mean—
three babies,
Bee—three babies. I made three babies.
We
made three babies. Me and Tina. I can’t . . . it’s . . . it’s just so incredible. It’s a miracle.”

“But you don’t love Tina.”

“I don’t. No. Well, I didn’t. I didn’t love the Tina who put her desire to have a baby ahead of everything. The Tina who remembered I existed only when it was time for me to wank into a jar. But this Tina—this Tina with three babies inside of her. You should see her, Bee—she’s happy—she’s glowing—

it’s like she’s been reborn and—”

“Oh God, stop it, Ed—please, just stop. . . .” Bee put her head into her hands.

They were both silent. A waiter poured some more champagne into their glasses. “Are you ready to . . . ?” he began.

“No,” snapped Ed, “no. Sorry. Not just yet. Thanks.”

“Certainly, sir.”

Ed sighed and held Bee’s gaze for a while. He was quite obviously about to say something horrible.

“I want a clean break, Bee.” Yup, thought Bee, there it is. “I want to start again, with Tina. And that means . . . you know?”