one-hit wonder (44 page)

Because she was the only person who made me feel like anything when I was an awkward adolescent. And for that, for me, she will forever be unforgettable. May her soul rest in peace.” He bowed his head and refolded his paper and shuffled back to his wife, who squeezed his hand reassuringly.

Father Anthony looked around for another volunteer, and smiled when he saw Zander wheeling himself toward him.

He eyed the group confidently and began reading. “Hi. My name is Zander. And I’m Bee’s secret . . .” Ana put her hand to her face in horror and went to step toward Zander, but Flint held her back. “It’s fine,” he whispered, “it’s fine.”

“I’m Bee’s secret friend. My family was killed in a car crash in 1986. The same car crash that injured me and put me in this chair. Bee read about my plight in the papers, and for years she followed my progress. Secretly. When I was ten she started sending me money orders for large sums of money at Christmas. And I never knew who they were from.

And then, one day, in 1997, this woman turned up at the home where I’ve lived for the last sixteen years. She was very small and very pretty and she told me she was my aunt. I knew she wasn’t my aunt, but they’re quite strict at my home about people from the outside having access to us. So she made up this stupid story. Apparently, she even managed to come up with some kind of paperwork to prove it. I don’t know to this day how she managed it. But I did know that I liked her instantly. That she was different. That she was refreshing. That she was on my wavelength. And that was a novelty for me because I’d never met anyone on my wavelength before. So eventually I got the truth out of her . . .”

Ana tensed.

“. . . and it emerged that her life had been very empty since she lost her precious father to AIDS in 1988. She’d never quite found the enthusiasm to resume her career. She’d taken a lot of knocks and her confidence had been eroded. She had all this money so she never really needed to test herself, to see what else life could offer her. So I became Bee’s project.

She came to visit every weekend and we’d go out for walks if it was nice or just sit in my room watching telly together if it was raining. I loved watching telly with Bee. She was such a bitch. We’d just sit there and pick everyone to pieces, talk about their hair or their accents or how stupid they were. I know that’s not very Christian”—he looked at Father Anthony—“but it was fun. And I’d never really had fun before.

Not that sort of fun, anyway. And then, after a few months of these visits, Bee did something incredible for me. She bought us a house. A little house by the sea. And every weekend she would leave London behind her, her friends and her social life, and she’d drive down to the coast and hang out with me.

Me. An annoying little kid in a wheelchair. And it was great.

We’d cook together. And listen to music. I wasn’t really that into music before I met Bee, but she really turned me around on that one. She’d bring three videos with her every week—

always a comedy, a thriller, and an action film. And we’d chat and laugh. Make up names for all the numbskulls in the village. Spy on the neighbors with our binoculars and make fun of them. I got her into bird-watching and board games.

She got me into trainers and Teenage Fanclub. And she treated me like the most normal person in the universe. That was what was so special about my times with Bee. I felt normal. And special. Abnormally special. But especially normal. She gave me the self-confidence I’d been pretending I already had for the thirteen years before I met her. She broke down all my façades and replaced them with something substantial. And I know that I’ll never meet anyone like Bee again as long as I live, and that makes me feel very, very sad. I’m just really glad I knew her at all. There was a song on the radio this morning, a Janet Jackson song called ‘Together Again.’ It was all about someone being dead and how that person lived on through other people’s smiles and in the stars and such. I just have to say at this point and in order to maintain any semblance of cool, that I really don’t like Janet Jackson. But to Ms. Jackson’s credit, it was a truly joyous song and it was really comforting to me, to think of Bee being everywhere, to think of Bee being a star shining down on me. Bee was always more of a force than a person anyway. Thank you.” He smirked and tucked his paper in his pocket and bowed his head before wheeling himself back to Dr. Chan, who smiled at him affectionately.

“Er—thank you, too, Zander,” said Father Anthony with a hint of confusion in his voice. “So. Anyone else?” But no one came forward. He caught Ana’s eye and beckoned her. Ana took a deep breath and pulled a tightly folded piece of paper from her bag. She smoothed it out with sweaty fingers.

“Bee,” she began, “was my sister. But Bee was a stranger. I have come to know Bee only in the past fortnight—through the people here today. Through your stories and your emotions. To me, Bee was a mirage, but to you she was real, and I now know that to all of us she was a mystery. I have experienced every possible emotion getting to know Bee over the past weeks. Joy on finding the same records in her collection as I have in mine. Confusion on finding her life devoid of emotional depth. Deep and instantaneous love on meeting her closest friends. Sadness on learning of the tragedy and pain in her life, which she shared with no one.

Pride on encountering the love and loyalty she inspired in others. And shame on finding that she was so much more than I’d allowed myself to imagine her to be.

“Bee was not a straightforward woman. Bee was not an

“Bee was not a straightforward woman. Bee was not an
easy
woman. Bee was a dichotomy. She was sweet and sour.

Happy and sad. Good and bad. High and low. Nasty and nice.

She could bring the best out of people and inspire them. But she could also intimidate and crush. She was loyal to her friends but indifferent to her family. She could take a huge interest in a person and then forget their birthday. She was private. She was self-sufficient. She was independent. But she was closed. And guarded. And dismissive. She made mistakes.

And went far out of her way to pay for them. She was beautiful. But she depended on more than beauty to make her way through life. She was unattainable and she was distant, but she was emotional and giving. She was an inspiration and a disappointment. She was everything and nothing.

“But Bee,” she continued, “was Bee. And just being Bee was enough, because Bee was special and Bee was unforgettable.

Bee was my sister . . . God bless her soul.” She cleared her throat, refolded the damp piece of paper, and edged her way back to Flint, keeping her eyes to the ground. Flint immediately put an arm around her shoulder.

She felt another hand squeeze her arm, and when she looked up, she saw Lol, smiling crookedly at her with big tears plopping off the end of her nose. “That was beautiful,” she mouthed before launching herself at Ana and hugging the life out of her. Ana hugged her back and then felt tears dampening her own cheeks.

And then she felt Flint stiffen and grab her by the arm.

“Ana,” he whispered urgently, “look.”

Ana unpeeled herself from Lol and wiped some tears from her cheeks. And as she turned, she jumped. Because, from her cheeks. And as she turned, she jumped. Because, walking toward her, one arm supporting a large bouquet of white lilies and the other threaded through the arm of a joyful-looking Mr. Redwood, was her mother.

forty-three

She was wearing a gray tweed jacket with enormous silver buttons, a long black pleated skirt, and a very smart gray felt hat with a lily in it. She looked frail and very beautiful—like an old Hollywood movie star.

“Hello, darling,” she said smoothly as she approached Ana.

“Hello, Clint.”

Ana stared at her in wonder.

“What?” said her mother with pursed lips.

“Nothing,” said Ana, “nothing. I’m just . . . really glad you came.”

“Yes, well,” she said, fanning herself with a piece of paper,

“I won’t be staying long. I really don’t think I’ll manage more than a few minutes. I’m feeling very weak. But I think I will just say what I came to say and then we’ll be on our way.” Ana nodded numbly and made way for her mother to pass by. There was a long pause as Gay looked around her and then down at her paper and then around her again. Her eyes were filled with emotion, but her mouth was immobile.

Until eventually she began to talk.

“I’ve been listening,” she said, “from just over there.” She indicated the gravel path. “Listening to you all talking and it’s . . . well. It’s been humbling. When you give birth to a child, you have so many hopes and ambitions for that child.

But generally you’re just happy if they follow convention and don’t harm themselves or anyone else. For most parents, that’s the best they can hope for. But when Belinda came into this world, I took one look at her and I knew she was going to be different. I knew she was going to exceed my expectations. And she did. Not in any of the usual ways. She didn’t excel at school. She didn’t have any particular skills.

But she exceeded my expectations just by being her. This vibrant, joyful, rude, noisy, colorful, unmanageable, irritating bundle of raw energy and ambition. And do you know why that pleased me so much? It pleased me because she was turning into the sort of person I’d always wanted to be myself. She was born without inhibitions. I was born with far too many. And I resented her, I’m ashamed to say. I resented the way she just took hold of the world with both hands and shook it and shook it and shook it”—Gay used her hands to demonstrate—“until something fell out. I resented her independence. Her strength. And I tried to stifle those things.

And eventually she had enough and she left home and went to live with her father. I’m afraid I didn’t make the transition very easy for her, but then, she didn’t make it very easy for me either. That was always one of the greatest problems with Bee and I. So different in certain ways and so infuriatingly alike in others. On the rare occasions when we did see each other, we made very hard work out of it. It can’t have been very pleasant for my late husband or for our daughter. But it seemed it was the only way we knew how to communicate. It was a terrible time for me. My eldest daughter was living out all my dreams and ambitions. She was famous. I used to watch her on the television and feel like my heart would burst with pride. But I was incapable of communicating that pride to Belinda. I’m not sure she ever communicating that pride to Belinda. I’m not sure she ever really knew how terribly, terribly impressed I was by her.

How in awe of her I often felt. I didn’t really know how to cope with feelings like that for my daughter. For someone I’d created. So, instead of making her feel good about her success, I tried my hardest to make her feel bad about it.

“And then there was an incident, a long time ago. I’m afraid I behaved rather badly. Bee didn’t forgive me. In retrospect, I can see why. And I never saw her again. And it’s—” Gay stopped suddenly and clenched her face tight, holding in tears. “And it’s the worst feeling in the world knowing that now there’s no way of saying sorry. So—here I am. Hoping that somehow my words will make it through that piece of marble and to my darling daughter. Who was always so much better than me. In every way. God bless you, Belinda. And I’m so sorry. . . .”

She scrunched up her piece of paper and walked away abruptly toward Mr. Redwood. Father Anthony wrapped up the proceedings. People laid their flowers at Bee’s grave. Lol gave everyone directions to the pub. People started walking away. But Ana stayed glued to the spot, watching her mother, who was sobbing into Mr. Redwood’s handkerchief. Ana had never seen her mother cry before. She’d seen her threaten to cry and pretend to cry and sniff dramatically into tissues, but never actually, really cry.

“D’you mind waiting in the car for me?” she said to Flint.

He looked at Gay and then at Ana. “ ’Course not,” he said.

He dropped a kiss onto the end of her nose and walked away. When Ana got to her mother, Amy was already there, chatting away to her.

“You’re a very brave woman,” she was saying, clutching Gay’s arm and smiling up into her face, “agoraphobia is a terrible affliction. But I’m so, so glad you managed to overcome it for this occasion. So glad. Your daughter was a wonderful girl, Mrs. Wills. So kind to me. So charming. One of the few people in this city I would have counted among my friends. And Ana is just a delight. Very different from her sister, but every bit as special. You’ve every right to be proud. Of both of them. Really . . .” She gave Gay’s arm one last squeeze and Ana watched in wonderment as a small smile started to form on Gay’s face. Not a smug smile, not a wicked smile, not a sly smile, not a fake smile—not any of the smiles in Gay’s usual smile repertoire, in fact. But an embarrassed and slightly pleased smile.

“Thank you,” she heard Gay say, “that’s very kind of you.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m feeling rather faint. I think I’m going to have to sit down.”

“Of course. Of course.” Amy smiled at Ana and made her way daintily toward the car park, Freddie trotting along behind her.

“Mum,” called Ana as she started to turn away, “wait. Just one minute. Hi, Mr. Redwood.” She smiled at the slim, dapper man in his blue blazer and tan cords and he grinned at her.

“Hello there, Anabella. You’re looking very well.” Ana thanked him. “I wondered if I could have a moment alone with my mother, please. If that’s all right?” Mr. Redwood nodded effusively and grinned at them both again before heading back toward his shiny Rover in the car park.

Gay turned to Ana. She looked pale and was breathing very heavily. “You’ve put on weight,” she said, eyeing her up and down.

Ana rolled her eyes.

“It suits you,” she said, “you look—nice.” Ana nearly fainted. “Er—thanks,” she managed.

“I really am going to have to sit down, Anabella. This has been a very traumatic day for me.”

“Well—let’s walk, then, toward the car. But I wanted to say a prayer first, with you. For Bee.” She indicated the grave with her eyes.

Gay looked at her suspiciously, then nodded imperceptibly. Ana held her arm while she lowered herself to her knees, and for a moment the two women knelt in silence with their heads bowed. A dog barked somewhere in the distance and a breeze ruffled the thick foliage of an elm tree. Ana thought about holding her mother’s hand, or putting an arm around her bony shoulders. But every time she went to do it, she remembered her mother’s face the day they’d found out about Bee, and the way she’d slapped away her hand. So she didn’t, and after a minute or two, they both got to their feet and started heading back toward the car with three feet of space between them.