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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 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 one 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.

Hugh stayed all afternoon. Flint wanted to like Hugh, would have been happy to have let Hugh grow on him, but it didn’t happen. Instead, every moment spent in his company increased his dislike of him by leaps and bounds. He didn’t dislike him the same way he’d disliked Ed—that had been to do with Ed’s creepiness and the general lack of trust he felt toward him. The dislike he had for Hugh was based purely on the fact that he wasn’t good enough for Ana, but that he obviously thought he was much better than her. He patronized her. He acted like Ana was just the luckiest gal in the world to know him, should be so grateful that he’d packed his horrible little rucksack and come all the way down here to check up on her. And in fact, seeing Ana with Hugh just served to crystallize the feelings he’d been having ever since he’d first set eyes on her. Seeing her with someone so wrong gave her a context, made him see clearly what was right for her. And suddenly Flint knew—he was right for her. And how weird was that? Bee’s sister. A girl who didn’t wear makeup. A girl with half a centimeter’s stubble growing under her arms. A girl who wore the same clothes three days in a row. A very tall girl. A very shy girl. A girl who was so different to his usual type in every way it was almost comical.

Flint had a mate called Terry who always went against the grain, girl-wise. He fancied Phoebe in Friends instead of Rachel. He fancied Willow in Buffy the Vampire Slayer instead of Buffy. He fancied Carmela in The Sopranos instead of Dr. Melfi. And now, with Ana, he could almost understand where Terry was coming from. There was something fascinating about the “other girl,” the supporting actress, the less obvious choice. For years Flint’s mates had given him a hard time about Bee, couldn’t understand how he could just be “friends” with such a 100 percent babe. And he hadn’t even bothered trying to explain, because he didn’t really know himself. And if he’d told the same friends that he was now fantasizing about Bee’s odd younger sister, they’d have had him sectioned.

He asked himself if these feelings were related in any way to Bee’s death—some kind of strange knee-jerk reaction to loss and grief. But the answer was no. He just liked her. A lot. On many levels. Plain and simple. Full stop.

At about four o’clock Gill had come back from the gym with her friend Di, and Hugh had suddenly and repellently turned his attention away from an oblivious Ana and toward the two women. Neither Gill nor Di were exactly oil paintings, but he was still way out of his depth. But Hugh wasn’t even vaguely aware of his limitations, or the fact that Di and Gill both made gagging gestures at each other the moment he walked out the door to use the toilet.

Hugh finally left at 5:30 p.m. In a sudden and entirely unaltruistic moment, Flint offered him a lift to Paddington. He deliberately didn’t invite Ana, sensing that she wouldn’t appreciate it, but also because he was hoping to get a bit of insight into her from Hugh while they drove the three-quarters of a mile to the station.

Hugh liked his car. Even Mr. Cool personified wasn’t able to feign indifference to a stretch Mercedes with tinted windows.

“This must lap up the old juice,” he said, touching it gently with one hand.

“About ten miles to the gallon—in town.”

Hugh sucked in his breath. “Still,” he said, “I guess the punters in the back pay for that?”

“And the rest,” said Flint, laughing and holding the passenger door open for Hugh.

“So,” said Hugh, in a pitiful attempt at blokey bonding, “have you ever had a female passenger who didn’t have enough cash on her?” He winked obscenely.

Flint knew exactly what he was getting at but refused to humor him. “No,” he stated simply, “everything’s paid on account, through management companies and record companies. I don’t deal in cash.”

“Oh,” said Hugh, rubbing his hands over his jeans, “right.” He turned to look out the window.

“So,” said Flint after a couple moments of silence, “how long have you known Ana?”

Hugh shrugged, still smarting from Flint’s rejection of his all-blokes-together comment. “Seven years,” he said, “eight. Something like that.”

“Really?” said Flint in surprise. “So—since she was eighteen? Or younger?”

“Yeah. First loves,” he smiled.

“You mean—you were Ana’s first boyfriend?”

“Yup. I taught her everything she knows.”

Oh grim, thought Flint. And if that’s really true, then get the girl to therapy—now. She must be traumatized.

“She tells me she used to live in Exeter?”

“That’s right. Just up the road from me. She left Exeter when her father died.”

“Yes. She said. It sounds like she had a pretty tough time.”

Hugh shrugged. “I dunno,” he said, “Bill was very old. Eighty-four or something. It’s not as if Ana wasn’t expecting it.” He sighed and craned his neck to view two skinny girls in pedal pushers and crop tops tottering down Clarendon Road with a rottweiler puppy.