Song of Bees

by Andrea Hicks

  I shake my head and shrug because, as ridiculous as it sounds, it has just dawned on me how important it is I find him. I don’t know what’s going to happen if I don’t find him, what will happen to me. My life has gone 360 then back again. I don’t know which way is up...and I have my dad to thank for it, but in my heart I know if he had had the slightest clue that this was going to happen to me he wouldn’t have given me the vaccine. He wouldn’t have used me as a guinea pig, and I want to think that when he did, in his mind was only the good things it could bring the world, diminishing pain and suffering. I know it’s what he would have wanted, and I know when I’m frightened or in a place in my head where I just don’t know what the hell is going on, I must remember it.

  ‘Is there somewhere I can go, Leo, a corner, a comfy chair where I can think for a bit? Everything that’s happened over the past weeks has been like an orchestra tuning up, the noise has been deafening. Some quiet would be so great right now. And a cuppa maybe.’

  He smiles gently and nods and beckons me out to the hall. He stops suddenly as if something’s occurred to him. ‘You don’t mind coming up to my rooms do you? I mean, I don’t want you to think...’

  I laugh and put my hand on his upper arm, shaking my head. ‘It’s fine, really. I’m not Elizabeth Bennet, someone who needs a chaperone.’

  Now he chuckles. ‘No, you’re more like Joan of Arc.’

  My eyes widen. ‘Christ, I hope not. We all know what happened to her.’

  He leads me up a winding staircase. The bannisters are black wrought iron, the stone steps and walls bright white. It’s very classy. I guess I wouldn’t have expected anything less from a house in Downing Street. Leo’s rooms are on the third floor. He opens the white painted door with a black number and name plate, Room 8, Leo Baxter, Security. Inside is a surprise. It’s surprisingly soft and comfortable with some feminine touches. There’s a leather sofa in tan with a fur throw and squashy cushions, a bookcase of novels, a low coffee table with candles and some flowers, cream roses and blush pink peonies, and in the huge square bay window looking out over the garden a large chair that looks like it would wrap you up when you sat in it. A taupe-coloured throw is folded over the back of the chair. It looks like heaven to me.

  ‘Will this do?’ he says with a flourish of his arm. ‘I like to sit here and read. It’s very peaceful. You won’t be disturbed.’

  ‘It’s lovely, Leo. You have it really nice.’

  He looks pleased and glows under the praise. ‘Cup of tea for madam?’

  ‘That would be really lovely.’

  He goes into the kitchen and I hear him fill a kettle and the sound of the cup and saucer as they’re placed on the worktop. The kettle boils and clicks off and he pours the water into the cup, and the sound of the spoon stirring the tea round lulls me into sleepy relaxation. I pull the throw from the chair and snuggle it across my lap. Leaning my head against the soft wing, just for a moment, to take the weight off, I close my eyes to think. To rest.

  I open my eyes in semi-darkness. There’s a clock ticking on the coffee-table and I lean forward to find the time. Four-thirty. My mouth feels dry and I stretch my arms above my head to release the bones in my back from the curled-up position I’ve been in for the last three hours. I glance to my left. On a small wooden side-table there’s a cup of tea, stone-cold now, the one Leo made for me. I don’t even remember him leaving it there. God, I must have been so tired.

  My phone buzzes in my pocket and I reach for it, praying it’s not Cain. It’s not.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Tom thinks he’s found something.’

  ‘What? What has he found?’

  ‘A trail...we think it’s your father. He checked out the address of a house that came up with the name Spencer, any correspondence received at the address, different names used there, timeframes, utilities, you name it, he’s checked it and cross-matched it. He’s been working hard, really hard to see if he can get a handle on something?’

  ‘And he has?’

  ‘Yeah. The thing is, it looks like he’s not living at your old flat, but using it as a kind of bolthole, an administration address. It’s still in the name of Gourriel, as if your mum and you are still living there, but he’s living in a house near Westminster.’

  ‘Jesus.’ I knot my eyebrows wondering how on earth Dad could afford a house in Westminster. How could that even be true? ‘But...I don’t understand.’ I pause to think, still groggy from sleep. ‘How can he be living in Westminster and not have been found? I’m not getting it.’ I pause again. ‘Do you get it?’

  ‘Not really...but...there must be a reason.’

  ‘I’m not sure what to do.’

  ‘Come down. Tom and I are in the common room. Just slam the door after you. It locks automatically.’

  I join Tom and Leo in the common room of No. 12. They’re both flushed, hopefully with success. Tom looks more animated than I’ve seen him before and I get the urge to chuckle.

  ‘We’ve got him, I think,’ he says.

  I inhale a long breath, not wanting to pour cold water on their findings, but I’m having a problem with believing my father is in Westminster. ‘You think he’s living in Westminster? So close? I’m not understanding it all. If he’s in Westminster, why haven’t Cecily Cunningham and MI5 found him before now? You did.’

  Leo stands. ‘I’ll get us some drinks. We have a theory, but that’s all it is. You might not like it.’

  My stomach rolls. What on earth could he mean. Haven’t I been through enough? I’m not sure how much more bad news I can take. And I’m embarrassed to admit it to myself, because after everything that’s happened I really thought I was made of grit because I’m still breathing, still capable of standing upright, but I’m dreading what Leo is about to tell me.

  He comes back into the room with a bottle of ice-cold white wine and three glasses.

  ‘We need this...deserve it I reckon.’ He sets the glasses on the table and uncorks the wine, then pours three generous glasses and passes one each to me and Tom.

  ‘Is this a softener?’ I ask him before raising the glass to my lips.

  He looks hard at me, then presses his lips together and sighs. ‘If you like.’

  I frown and swallow down my nervousness. ‘What is it, Leo? What has Tom found?’ He reaches into his back pocket and pulls out a piece of A4 folded into four and passes it to me. I place my glass on the coffee table and open it out. It’s a photograph of a man and a woman, a man of mixed heritage and a white woman with blonde hair.

  My parents.

  I stare at the photo for what seems like an age because I just don’t know what to say. My head is telling me there’s no way it can be them, but my heart is telling me the opposite to that theory, that even though the two people in the photo are older, age-stockier, my father greyer, it is indeed a photograph of them, standing outside a palatial property, presumably in Westminster. They’re standing by a car, a silver Mercedes, which is clearly theirs as my father is leaning against it, his arm on the roof as though claiming ownership. Behind them a beautiful house rises into a blue sky; white rendered walls glow in the sunshine, black wrought-iron railings border the facade. The front door is black, shiny, smart, with a brass number plate.

  I can’t take my eyes from the photograph, particularly the image of my mother. My mother is dead. There was a funeral, not a grand one, just me and a handful of people from the block of flats where we were living at the time, our social worker, and the man and woman from the corner shop. That was it. I saw her coffin adorned with wildflowers, the cheap version of a floral tribute, heard the vicar as he spoke about Mum as though he knew her which obviously he didn’t. She never believed in organised religion, always saying it was the root of all the ills the world faced, the wars, the terrorists, the killing of innocent human life. In fact, she abhorred it, which was why I was so upset with the vicar sitting at my mum’s deathbed and saying prayers over her which I was sure she couldn’t hear, a
nd which would have meant absolutely nothing to her.

  I look up at Leo, and if I’m not mistaken his eyes glisten with moisture, tears perhaps, that will certainly embarrass him if they reach his cheeks. He looks away and swallows. I turn my head to look at Tom. He’s pretending to read something on his phone.

  ‘How?’ I address Leo, trying to get him to engage with me. ‘How did you get this, Leo? Who took the photograph?’ He inclines his head towards Tom. ‘Tom?’ Tom glances up as though it’s the most natural thing in the world for him to take photographs of my parents who I haven’t seen for years, and one who had died. Who I thought had died. Who didn’t die. ‘When, Tom? When did you take this?’

  He shrugs apologetically, reluctant to tell me, glancing at his phone every few seconds because I know he doesn’t want to discuss this with me. Then he sighs as if he knows it’s inevitable that he tells me what I’m desperate to know. ‘When you were sleeping. The house is not far from here. I just walked down the road pretending to take photographs of the buildings. Lots of tourists do it because the houses are so reminiscent of central London and so beautiful, and there they were. I couldn’t have planned it better if I’d tried. It was like they were waiting for me.’

  I look back at Leo. ‘How much would a house like that cost?’

  He purses his lips. ‘About twenty-odd million I should think.’

  My mouth falls open. ‘But...’ I stare at the image again. ‘They...they don’t own it, do they? They can’t own it. We never had money like that. It’s too ridiculous to even contemplate. My mum never earnt very much and I don’t remember us being well-off, in fact if anything money was always tight.’ I raise my eyes and they meet Leo’s dark brown ones looking troubled. ‘Maybe...maybe they were just visiting, or they know someone who lives there and they’re just staying for a while. And...maybe this isn’t my mum, just someone who looks like her, my father’s new partner. He’s entitled to have one, isn’t he, no matter what he’s doing now. We’re all entitled to have one. Perhaps he likes blondes. Perhaps he needed to be with someone who looked like my mum.’ I know my voice is trembling, and I know I’m clutching at straws, wanting it to be Mum, while at the same time wanting it not to be my mum, even though I loved her dearly, with all my heart, because if it is truly her, they...she has lied to me, pulled the wool over my eyes and left me, a fourteen year old child to fend for herself. And now the rug has been pulled out from underneath my feet and I can feel myself tumbling into a black hole.

  I vomit, again and again, over the photo, over the carpet, over my hands, my legs and feet and down my front. I can hear someone screaming, a guttural desperate sound, and a voice, begging, imploring, wishing, hoping, ‘Please, please, no. It’s not true. They wouldn’t...they wouldn’t do that to me. They loved me. I’m their little girl, their daughter. They’re good people, they wouldn’t do anything like that. They wouldn’t have lied to me.’

  It’s my voice, my scream, me begging for someone to tell me it’s a joke. I vomit again and I feel two strong arms lift me off the floor where I’m floundering in my own puke like a crazy woman who has lost all sense of reason. Leo pulls me to his chest, ignoring the state of me and that he’s now coated in my vomit. He drags me out of the room as he turns his head to speak to Tom.

  ‘Sorry, mate. Can you get rid of that.’

  I hear a rustle as Tom gets off the sofa. ‘Sure. Don’t worry. Just take care of her.’

  Leo drags me up the stairs to his rooms where he sits me on the floor of the bathroom and runs the shower. He peels off my dress and helps me into the shower where I sit in the tray under the hot water, allowing it to run over my head, washing away the vomit on my legs and arms, loosening the contact lenses that I flick out of my eyes with a finger and watch absent-mindedly as they float on the water in the tray. I’m crying now, not crying, weeping, howling with no control or sense of embarrassment, like never before, not even when I thought Mum had died. Then, when she’d gone and I knew there was no one to fill the void, I was numb with shock, pole-axed by grief, completely and utterly out of it because I had felt so alone. The one person who had been by my side when Dad disappeared, whom I trusted above all others because I knew she was a good person whose only thought was to protect me, to raise me as a strong and independent person, who clothed me, fed me, and provided for me on the meagre wage she earnt from the kind of job no one else wanted to do. She was Mum, the person who was there when I got home from school, who told me off for stealing biscuits from the cupboard then smiled because she didn’t really mind, who danced around the room with me to Lady Gaga not caring how silly she looked. I loved her. So much. With every corner of my heart.

  Her illness wasn’t real.

  Her death wasn’t real.

  Her funeral wasn’t real.

  My beloved dad lied to me.

  The mother I adored. Lied to me.

  They allowed me to believe that they were both gone, Dad out into the ether, and Mum to her resting place. I was sent to live with Aunt Rochelle until I couldn’t any longer through no fault of my own, and had to take on what life threw at me on my own, without help, support or guidance. And my parents must have known, but they allowed it to happen.

  Why?

  Chapter 23

  Leo sits by the shower tray, squatting on his haunches until I stop crying, then he reaches for my hands and pulls me up so I’m standing under the showerhead propped up against the tiles, shivering. He reaches for the shampoo, pours a dollop into his palm and lathers up my hair, then does the same with shower gel, respectfully missing my personal areas, soaping my arms, legs and feet until every trace of puke is gone. He hands me the bottle and gestures towards my body as if to say, ‘You do those bits.’ I smile a watery smile to show how much I appreciate the care he’s giving me but I know it doesn’t reach my eyes. The familiar numbness has begun to settle over me again and perhaps it’s the only way I’ll get through this.

  Later, I return to the common room. All evidence of my “accident” has disappeared, and there’s a scented candle on the coffee table to burn away the horrible odour. Leo and Tom come into the room munching on BLT’s and Kettle chips.

  ‘I’m guessing you’re not hungry,’ says Tom. ‘If you are I’ll make you something.’

  I shake my head and hold up my palm. ‘No, it’s fine. Probably best not.’

  The three of us sit in silence until they finish eating, then Leo leans forward in his seat, nervously rubbing his hands together.

  ‘What do you want to do, Nina?’

  There’s the question, the one I’ve been asking myself for the last hour. ‘I don’t know.’ I look up at him. ‘What would you do.’

  ‘You must have lots of questions. I would want to know why a previously loving and caring father disappeared, and why my mother was clearly party to a fake death. How difficult must it have been for your mother, to pretend to be ill, knowing her young daughter would attend a funeral thinking it was her in the coffin, knowing full well it would be empty?’

  ‘Unless it wasn’t.’

  Leo and I look at each other, then at Tom. ‘What?’ says Leo.

  Tom shrugs as his fingers swiftly go across the keys on his laptop as if they have a mind of their own and are unconnected to his brain as he speaks while looking at us. ‘Unless the coffin wasn’t empty. There must have been someone or something in it. It wouldn’t have weighed correctly otherwise. Someone would have pointed it out, the undertaker, pall bearers, that kind of thing.’

  ‘You think there was someone in it?’

  He nods. ‘Yep. I suppose we could find out who it was...someone who was in the hospital at the same time as your mum...a vagrant or an itinerant, someone who wouldn’t have had an arranged funeral in the usual way of things and who would have had a pauper’s burial, meaning no mourners, no coffin and no headstone. In the old days, when people couldn’t afford funerals, they used to bury people together in the same grave, sometimes in the same coffin. It saved money a
nd space. Only the rich could afford to die.’

  I stare hard at him as realisation sweeps over me. ‘You mean, I went to the funeral of someone I thought was my mum, but didn’t know from a hole in the ground?’ Even I cringe at the unintentional reference.

  ‘Er, well, yeah. I suppose that’s what must have happened.’ Then something occurs to him and he looks happier and his eyes brighten. ‘The service would have been for your mum, though, wouldn’t it? Probably with flowers and hymns and stuff. Could have been quite a nice thing. Kind of respectful.’

  ‘Except it wouldn’t have been for her, would it? Because she’s not dead.’

  His eyes widen and he shakes his head. ‘Oh. No, she isn’t dead. I saw her with my own eyes.’

  I glance at Leo who makes an apologetic chuckle then reverts to his serious face. ‘So what do you want to do, Nina?’

  I sit back on the sofa and pull my knees up to my chin. I feel warm and comfortable in a pair of huge stripy pyjamas and Leo’s dressing gown; navy blue with silver piping. It smells nice; a masculine cologne and something else. Leo I suppose.

  ‘I need some answers and I think our first port of call is your boss, Leo. Edward Spencer. Is it just a coincidence that he has the same surname as Dad, or is there something more to it? Are they related, and if they are, does it have any bearing on what’s happening? He had us released from Plan Bee. Why would he do that if there isn’t a connection of some kind? Also I’m curious about Cain and his adopted brother, Hikaru. They were raised as brothers yet they seem to be working against each other. Both have their eyes on the prize. They think if they find Dad first they’ll be the ones to make the most money with the pharma company. I think they’ve been hired by competing companies and it has set them against each other.’