Chapter 25
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.
‘Yes,’ 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, whar-rishitt?’
‘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 narrow-mindedly, 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 towards 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.’
‘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?’