one-hit wonder

by Lisa Jewell

  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?”

  “Yes, Ed. I know what that means.”

  “And the flat. I don’t want to pay for the flat anymore. It’s not that I resent paying for it. It’s just that I don’t want to have to hide anything anymore. D’you see? From Tina? I want . . .”

  “You want to erase me from your life entirely.”

  Ed stopped for a second and stared at Bee. “Yup,” he said eventually, letting his head fall onto his chest.

  These moments, thought Bee, these moments in life, soap-opera moments‌—they look so exciting when you see them on the television, at the cinema. But when you’re actually living them, they’re just so horribly hollow and bleak. And kind of, well, bland.

  “I never wanted this to happen, Bee. I never wanted to abandon you. I wanted to look after you forever. I wanted to be with you forever. I love you so much, Bee. . . .”

  Bee looked up into Ed’s eyes, his funny little mouse eyes. And he did. He did love her. He was telling the truth. And she wanted to be angry with him for loving her but still leaving her, but she couldn’t. Because, she suddenly realized, as if she were awaking from a dream, that this was never going to have worked out. Of course it wasn’t. She’d been fooling herself. And in a way, the only reason she’d allowed herself to fall in love with Ed in the first place was precisely because he was married, precisely because she’d never be able to have him properly. If only they’d met under different circumstances, if only what happened in 1986 hadn’t happened and Zander hadn’t existed, and her whole life hadn’t turned into one great conglomeration of lies and deceit, one dizzying maze of separate compartments, she could have married Ed. She could have had a normal life where she spent weekends at home with her friends, a life where she knew her family, a life where everyone she knew knew everyone else. But 1986 had happened and Zander did exist and she was never going to have a normal life. And she had no one to blame but herself.

  Tears started plopping down her cheeks, and she tried desperately to stop them. She hated people to see her cry. And she’d never cried in front of Ed before.

  He looked at her with alarm. “Shit, Bee, I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”

  “Don’t be, please,” she sniffed, dabbing at her eyes with her napkin. “It’s not your fault. It’s my fault. And I understand. I wouldn’t want you to leave Tina now, abandon your chances of having a family and a life. Really. I would hate that.”

  “Oh, Bee.” He stretched out a hand again and this time Bee let him hold hers.

  “I’ve made such a mess of everything, Ed. I had it all. And I’ve messed everything up. In the space of thirty seconds I messed up my entire life. . . .”

  “What do you mean, in the space of thirty seconds?”

  “Oh nothing. Nothing. Just. God. Shit. This is horrible, isn’t it? I mean isn’t this‌—just horrible?” She sniffed again and laughed, and Ed gave her hand a squeeze. “Look,” she said, regaining her composure, “it’s better this way, you know. I think I’d fooled myself into believing that things would work out for you and me, but they wouldn’t have. Not really. It would never have been right. It would always have been a bit of a . . . you know, a mess. It’s better this way. It’s better.”

  “I’m going to miss you so much, Bee Bearhorn. So much you wouldn’t believe it.”

  “Yeah right,” she said, picking up her champagne glass, “you wait till you’ve got three little buggers running around the place morning, noon, and night‌—you won’t have a chance to miss me.”

  “Bee,” he said, squeezing her hand even harder, “I am going to miss you until the day I die. You’re the most amazing person I’ve ever known.”

  Bee shook her head and smiled. “No,” she said, “I’m not. And if you really knew me, if you really knew what sort of person I’ve been, you’d walk out of here now and breathe a great big sigh of relief. Because I’m bad, Ed. I’m B.A.D.”

  “No you’re not,” he said, “you’re more than the sum of your life history, Bee. Somewhere underneath all that armor, you’re still the same person you were when you were a child, before you’d had
a chance to make any mistakes. And you should remember that. Stop letting yourself be weighed down by the things you think you did wrong. Stop being a victim of your own fallibilities. You should. Your whole life will just . . . just . . . you know‌—stagnate if you don’t move on. If you don’t start again. Bee. Please. Please try to make yourself happy. For me.”

  Bee looked at Ed and forced a smile. “Don’t you worry about me, my lovely Teddy Tewkesbury. I’m going to be just fine. Honestly. Just fine.”

  They squeezed each other’s hands and smiled grimly, each one of them wholly aware that she was lying through her teeth.

  twenty-seven

  “Jesus,” said Flint, pulling on a pair of sunglasses as they walked away from the Japanese restaurant and toward his car, which he’d parked in the lot in Brewer Street.

  “I mean,” began Ana, her mind boggling so hard it hurt, “what . . . ? It’s all so . . . it’s just so . . . Jesus.” She did a double take as her eye was caught by a window display of chrome and leather bondage gear and pictures of half-naked men with shiny chests and body piercings. Good grief.

  “Christ, that bloke’s a tosser.”

  “What,” said Ana teasingly, “didn’t you like him?”

  “Him? God. No. I . . . Oh, very funny,” he said when he noticed Ana smiling at him. “Was it that obvious?”

  “Uh-huh. It was this obvious.” She extended her arms.

  “I don’t trust him, not even a tiny bit. And did you notice how close together his eyes were? And how he was all sort of . . . clammy?”

  Ana smiled again. “I thought he was all right,” she said.

  “What. Really?”

  “Yeah. I just think he was unbelievably nervous. I think Bee gave him a huge secret to look after and he was scared he was going to blow it. I think he really loved Bee‌—he was just protecting her.”

  “Hmm,” said Flint, unconvinced. “And did you believe what he said‌—about the boy?”

  “What d’you mean?”

  “I mean‌—why would she say that he was her son when I know for a fact that he couldn’t possibly have been?”

  Ana shrugged. “Maybe it was easier to lie than to admit the real truth? And are you sure she couldn’t have . . . you know?”

  “Absolutely. Totally. A lot of shit happened to Bee in 1986. Big shit. And having a baby was not part of that shit, I can assure you.”

  “What sort of big shit?”

  “Oh, you know. Having two flop singles. Being dropped by Electrogram. Being slagged off by the national press. Public humiliation. Her father being diagnosed with HIV. The usual sort of shit.”

  They’d reached the car park and were heading up a urine-soaked stairwell.

  “Fancy a drink?”

  Ana stopped in her tracks. “What?”

  “A drink. D’you fancy one?”

  “Oh. Right. Yes. But‌—what about your car? I mean, you’ve already had a couple of beers and‌—”

  “No‌—not here. In Turnpike Lane.”

  “What lane?”

  “Turnpike Lane. It’s where I live. We can drop the car off and I’ll take you to my local. What d’you think?”

  “Oh,” said Ana, “right.”

  “So? Yes or not?”

  “Er,” Ana looked at her watch for some inexplicable reason, “er . . .”

  Flint stopped and turned toward Ana. “Look. It’s not a big deal. I’m going home anyway, and I just thought it’d be nice to have a drink, that’s all. No pressure . . . no big deal . . .”

  Ana chewed her lip. She’d just assumed that after his meeting with Ed, Flint would be desperate to offload her, to drop her back at Gill’s and get on with his life. His invitation had thrown her entirely. But then, she thought, what else was she going to do this evening? Stay in on her own? Sit on her futon all night, staring at the walls?

  “No‌—no. I mean. Yeah. Sure. Why not? Where is this Turnpike Lane place, anyway?”

  “Oh,” said Flint, turning away and smiling slightly, “it’s a shimmering oasis in the enchanted woods of North London. A verdant, romantic corner of the city peopled by poets and artists and intellectuals . . .”

  “Really?” said Ana, her eyes widening at the prospect.

  “Nah,” said Flint, “it’s a total shit hole. But it’s my shit hole and I love it.”

  Ana was amazed by how long the journey to Turnpike Lane took. They’d been driving forever‌—how could they possibly still be in London? The scenery changed as they drove and became incrementally and undeniably uglier and uglier the farther they drove. Turnpike Lane itself neither turned nor piked and was the complete opposite of any lane that Ana had ever seen, a wide and unattractive road lined with kebab shops, Turkish supermarkets, burger bars, and launderettes.

  The heat wave was showing no signs of abating. Buffed black girls in silver trainers shouted into mobile phones, smoky-windowed cars drove past full of music, olive-skinned men in thin shirts stood on sidewalks outside cab offices, smoking and watching the world pass them by. They parked Flint’s limo in a garage behind a petrol station and walked toward his street. Flint lived in a small flat in a small house on a small, one-way, dead-end street. There was something very strange, very intimate about going to someone’s home when you’d known them only in one particular context, and particularly when that person had been expecting to come home alone. Flint unlocked the door and ushered Ana inside.

  “Fancy a quick beer before we go out?” he said, leading her toward his kitchen and stripping off his T-shirt as he talked.

  Ana nodded and looked away, feeling suddenly hot and flustered with embarrassment. Flint’s bare chest was tanned to the color of strong tea, and he was wearing silver dogtags around his wide neck. He was in extraordinarily good shape for a man of thirty-six. He turned to lead her through the house toward the garden and presented her with a smooth, muscled back. A few stray hairs grew from his shoulder blades, and another scar, long, thin, and trimmed with pinprick suture marks, ran from his spine to his side. They squeezed through a hallway packed with large objects‌—a bicycle, a car jack, a few large cardboard boxes, a hoover, and a set of golf clubs.

  “Do you play golf, Flint?” Ana asked in surprise.

  “Uh-huh. One of the many advantages of not having a day job. Civilized midweek tee times. Piss-weak lager all right?” he said, crouching down to pull a can of Heineken Cold Filter from the fridge in his small, basic kitchen and offering it to her. She nodded, taking it from him, enjoying the icy cold of the metal in her hot hands. She glanced around her as Flint pulled some more lager from a shopping bag on the floor and popped them into the fridge, can by can.

  The kitchen was unfurnished and cheap-looking. A large water heater took up the only wall space in the room, leaving Flint’s groceries displayed endearingly in piles along the work surfaces: chopped tomatoes with herbs, chopped tomatoes with garlic, chopped tomatoes with basil, whole plum tomatoes, fusilli, penne, Spanish onions, tinfoil, potatoes, carrots, garlic bulbs in a net bag, a dead basil plant on the windowsill. And then she noticed a little pile of teas next to Flint’s kettle‌—peppermint, rosehip, chamomile, mango, and apple‌—and for some reason they made her feel the same way she’d felt when she’d seen him in the arcade in Broadstairs pushing two p pieces into the penny cascade. Like she just wanted to hug him to death. Ana had always found something stupidly, wonderfully vulnerable about men’s groceries. She’d been the same about Hugh’s things‌—she’d go to his flat and go all gooey over his choice of butter, his little cans of spaghetti rings, the shaving foam and soap he chose.

  She followed Flint through the flat toward a door at the back. She glanced quickly at a cluttered bookshelf in the hallway as she passed and just had time to spy Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, a biography of Hugh Hefner, the screenplay of Pulp Fiction, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, and the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations. Wrong again, thought Ana‌—she’d have put money on two Andy McNabs, a John Grisham, and The
Guinness Book of World Records circa 1989. She really must stop jumping to conclusions about him.

  On a table by the back door was an ancient PC, a pile of reference books, and a shelf loaded with files.

  “Are you studying something?” said Ana, pointing at the desk.

  Flint scratched his head. “Yeah. I’m . . . er . . . I’m taking a degree course, actually.” He looked slightly embarrassed.

  “Oh,” said Ana, trying not to let her surprise show too blatantly in her voice. “In what?”

  “Psychology. It’s, er, just a correspondence course, but it fits in with my lifestyle, you know‌—working nights, free days . . .”

  “Which year?”

  “Just starting my third year. Yeah . . .” He picked up a reference book absentmindedly and then put it down again. And then he turned away and walked toward the back door.

  Outside was a tiny, overgrown yard. A railway track ran behind the fence at the bottom, and the sound of children playing in an abandoned railroad car echoed around the whole area. In the garden next door, two smaller children screamed as they climbed up and slid down the same plastic slide over and over again.

  “Fucking school holidays,” muttered Flint, stretching backward into a threadbare brown upholstered armchair, kicking off his shoes and cracking open the lager.

  His feet, Ana couldn’t help but notice, were two of the most beautiful things she’d ever seen in her life: brown, smooth, hairless, like they’d never sweated in a pair of ill-fitting shoes, like they’d spent their entire lives walking unshod through soft talcum sands. And his skin had the most beautiful satiny sheen. And his thighs were . . . Enough! Ana tore her eyes away from his groin and focused on a particularly perfect pink rosebud on the bush behind him instead. Is this what it was like for men, she wondered, constantly assailed by the sight of bare flesh? The embarrassment, the desire, all those thoughts in your head that had no place being there. It was impossible to ignore, the satin silkiness of his tanned flesh. So hard to take your eyes off it and, like those men whom big-busted women complain about for talking directly to their breasts, Ana now found herself talking to Flint’s skin and muscle tone and bigness.