Chapter 30 #3
‘So he doesn’t know that she’s … dead. Jeez.’ Flint ran his fingers through his hair and exhaled heavily.
‘D’you think I should have told the receptionist? About Bee?’
‘No,’ Flint shook his head, ‘no. If we’re going to talk to Zander we need to take him as we find him. You know. And I think news like that would be best coming from you, rather than a nurse.’
‘So? Now what?’ said Ana.
‘Well,’ began Hugh, ‘we should probably –’
Flint cut in. ‘Did she say anything about visitors?’
Ana shook her head.
‘I think we should pay a little visit. What d’you think?’
‘When?’
‘Tomorrow – I’m not working during the day. Is that OK with you?’
Ana nodded. Hugh cleared his throat. ‘I have to leave tonight, unfortunately. Early meeting tomorrow morning. So I’m afraid that …’
‘Do you think they’ll let us talk to him? Without an appointment?’ said Ana.
‘Let’s talk about it tonight, eh? In the car?’
Hugh, now unhappily picking up the complicity between Ana and Flint and the fact that he was somewhat excess to requirements, took his mug of tea and sauntered over to the sofa, where he started fiddling around in the voluminous pockets of his cagoule.
He eventually pulled out a small packet of Rizlas and a pouch of tobacco and proceeded to make a neat and very professional little roll-up.
‘So,’ he said, lighting it, inhaling and then picking a piece of tobacco off the tip of his tongue, ‘Bellsie. Are you going to phone your mother?’
Ana tore her eyes away from the screen and looked at Hugh pointedly. She tutted. ‘Yeah,’ she said, ‘I suppose so.’
‘She really is very worried about you, you know.’
‘Yeah. Sure she is. She’s not worried about me. She’s just worried about herself. About her shopping …’
‘Well – don’t you think that’s fair enough? I mean to say, she is all alone.’
‘And whose fault is that?’
‘Ooh,’ said Hugh, inhaling and scowling, ‘that’s a little harsh, wouldn’t you say? The poor woman’s lost a husband and a daughter within a year. That’s tough for anyone.’
‘Well – she should have been a bit nicer to both of them while they were still alive, shouldn’t she? I really think that if you haven’t appreciated people while they’re living, you’ve got no right to mourn them when they’re dead.’
‘She loves you, you know.’
‘She does not. She doesn’t love anyone.’
‘She does. She cried, Bellsie. She did. Cried.’ He ran his fingertips down his cheeks to demonstrate the tears.
‘Jesus – what is this? Bee ignores me for ten years, cuts me out of her life and all of a sudden the world and his wife is telling me how much she loved me. Now my evil witch of a mother, who won’t even let me touch her, is bursting into tears and claiming undying love for me.
I should have come to London a long time ago … ’
Hugh rested his roll-up in an ashtray and walked towards Ana. ‘Bellsie,’ he said, massaging her bare shoulders with his funny, muscular little hands and making Flint’s flesh crawl, ‘come home. Eh? Come home with me now?’
‘No,’ said Ana, more firmly than Flint had heard her say anything up to that point, ‘I’m staying. And I’m not coming home until I find out why Bee died.’
‘Aah,’ said Hugh, reaching back into his cagoule pockets, ‘that’s another reason why your mother sent me.’ He pulled out a sheaf of paper and handed it to Ana. ‘It’s the coroner’s report. On Bee,’ he added, unnecessarily.
Flint jumped from his chair and stood next to Ana while she opened the letter with slightly trembling hands.
‘Oh God,’ she said, and Flint found himself, before he’d even had a chance to think about it, putting an arm around her shoulders and giving them a reassuring squeeze.
It was the first time he’d touched her bare flesh, and it was nice.
She didn’t seem to notice. She unfolded the letter and held it up for both of them to read.
Flint’s eyes scanned the typewritten report, looking for the bottom line, looking for the verdict.
‘Suicide,’ said Ana, suddenly, the tip of one finger hitting a spot further down the sheet. ‘Well – there it is. …’ She sat down heavily on the sofa, and her lanky body collapsed in on itself. Hugh plonked himself down next to her and started stroking her hair.
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 touch the 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.