one-hit wonder (11 page)

“Freak!” or “Scarecrow!” or “Skinny bitch!” Nothing very creative, but effective nonetheless. Ana decided she liked the anonymity of London’s streets, where you could be tall or short, black or white, have pink hair or pierced cheeks and still nobody gave you so much as a second glance.

She followed Portobello to its northernmost point, past a few sad-looking stands selling what looked to her like stuff that even the least choosy of bag ladies would be embarrassed to possess, past a vegetarian restaurant with a queue outside, past record shops with Rasta colors in the windows, past a falafel restaurant, under a bridge, and past a bustling market square filled with yet more painfully trendy people. The sky overhead was darkening, and it looked like rain, but it was still humid and sweaty. She zigzagged through a couple of scruffy streets until she found herself on Bevington Road, a dinky little curve of brightly colored stucco houses facing a school yard.

Number fifteen was a lurid grass-green with mauve woodwork. She took the steps to the front door, rang the bell, and was buzzed in. The tiny stairwell took her to the top floor, where she was greeted by an open door and the sound of stampeding wildebeest.

“Hello,” she ventured.

The herd of wildebeest stopped stampeding for a second and then began again.

Ana glanced around nervously. “Hello.”

“Fuckcuntbollocks.”

Ana followed the rasping and stampeding through the tiniest, messiest living room in the world to an even smaller and messier bedroom, where objects were being thrown, seemingly at the hands of a poltergeist, here, there, and everywhere.

“I’ve lost my cunting choker.” The rasping was definitely coming from somewhere in the room. “It’s not even mine.

It’s a Jade fucking Jagger. It’s worth about two million fucking quid and I’ve got to give it back tomorrow. Fuck.” A head suddenly appeared from underneath the bed, and a black hand was extended toward her across the top of the unmade bed. Its fingers were tipped with the longest, whitest nails Ana had ever seen, like five magic wands.

“Ana! Hi! Lol.”

“Lol?” repeated Ana, remembering the inscription in the Nigella Lawson cookbook.

“That’s my name,” she croaked. She sounded like she was losing her voice. “Sorry about this. I’ve just done this live appearance on some kid’s TV show and the stylist lent me this fucking stupid choker, and I forgot to give it back to her, and now I’ve fucking lost it. And I’m gonna be dead, soooo dead. . . .” She grimaced.

Ana was too shell-shocked by the experience of meeting this dynamo of a woman and by the accompanying torrent of profanities to question what exactly it was she’d been doing on children’s TV.

As Lol talked she got to her feet. She had waist-length platinum extensions tied high in a ponytail, skin the color of butterscotch, a sapphire in her nostril, and matching bright-blue eyes, patently purchased from an optician and not formed in the womb. She was wearing a soft leather bustier exactly the same color as her skin, and matching leather jeans covered in rhinestones. And, most impressively to Ana, she was about six feet tall and thin as a stick of linguine.

“Oh. My. God!” Lol said, staring in amused shock at Ana.

“You look like my fucking negative!” And then she started laughing. Louder than Ana had ever heard anyone laugh before.

She strode around the clothes-strewn bed and grabbed Ana’s hand. “I have
got
to have a look at this,” she said, and pulled Ana toward a full-length mirror. They stood side by side, and there they were—perfect positive and negative versions of the same person—exactly the same height, exactly the same shape, black hair, white hair, white skin, black skin. For a second they both stared at the reflection with their mouths ajar—and then Lol started laughing again.

She slapped her thighs. She wiped away tears with the sides of her long-nailed fingers. She bent herself double. She grabbed on to Ana’s arm and laughed a laugh so long and so silent and accompanied by so much painful arm-squeezing that Ana was beginning to worry that she was having some kind of a seizure.

Then she stood up straight again, pulled her face back into shape, shuffled around a bit, and eyed their reflections once more. Within two seconds she was bent double again, and this time Ana succumbed, too. It was one of the funniest things she’d ever seen, funny in the same way that seeing yourself distorted into a bulbous dwarf in a hall of mirrors was funny; funny in the way that wrapping elastic bands around your head was funny; funny in the way that blowing your cheeks up against a pane of glass was funny—just stupidly, childishly, unbelievably funny.

“Oh fuck—I’m going to wet meself,” wheezed Lol, now collapsed into a tangle of legs and arms on the floor. Ana was perched on the edge of the bed and had reached that convulsive, uncontrollable point when laughing stops being fun and starts to hurt. She looked down at Lol on the floor, at her abnormally long limbs and the bagginess about her tiny leather trousers, at the familiar impression made by her rib cage into her bustier and the lack of distinction between her calves and her thighs, and she suddenly thought, in the most overwhelming and entirely unexpected welling up of intense emotion that flickered around the sensitive lining of her belly like a feather duster, that she loved her, that she loved this girl who she’d known for less than five minutes, and with that shocking thought she felt the bruising in the back of her throat sort of catch and the tears in her eyes sort of tickle and suddenly she was crying. And the more she tried to stop crying, the more she cried. She had no idea where the tears were coming from, but they were thick and hard and they hurt.

Lol joined Ana on the edge of the bed and draped one extravagantly long arm around her shoulder. “Oh pet,” she soothed, looking anxiously into her eyes, “what’s the matter, eh?”

Ana sniffed and wiped her nose against the sleeve of her cardigan. What
wasn’t
the matter would have been a more useful question. She opened her mouth to speak but there was too much to say, so she closed it again. The reasons lined up in her mind, though, like a shopping list, to remind her.

I’m a gangling six-foot freak who gets stared at in the street and laughed at by little boys with piercing voices.

My father, whose height I inherited, whose legs I have, died ten months ago and I still miss him every day of my life.

The only boyfriend I’ve ever had dumped me just eight weeks after my father died.

My mother is an agoraphobic lunatic who walks in her sleep and thinks the world revolves around her.

I have no friends and no social life.

My sister, the only person who made it look as if being alive was any fun, killed herself.

I’m alone in a strange city and I know no one.

I’m scared, I’m confused, I’m dirty, and I’m tired. And then you—you with the same arms and legs as me, the same bony torso and flat chest, you made me feel like a normal human being for a couple of minutes, like there wasn’t just Ana, but that there was Ana and Lol, and for the first time in ten months I laughed and for the first time in ten months I felt the same as somebody else. That’s why I’m crying, that’s what the matter is. And the saddest thing of all is that I already know that that was just a moment—it isn’t the way things are going to be from here on in, it’s just the way things were for a brief moment, and it’s those little tasters of normality that really, really kill me. . . .

But she didn’t vocalize her thoughts, and Lol was left to look for the most obvious reason for her tears.

“Oh pet,” she soothed, tears brimming in her own eyes now, “I know. I know. She was my best friend, Ana. My best friend. I loved her more than anyone in the world. We were soul mates, the only people who really understood each other. Me and Bee—we were like sisters . . . we were . . . oh.

I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say that. I mean, obviously you were her sister. But . . .”

“It’s OK,” said Ana. “I know what you mean, it’s fine.”

“She loved you, you know,” she said, sniffing loudly into an old tissue. “She really loved you. She kept this funny old rabbit thing, for years. . . .”

“William.”

“Yeah. That’s right. She took him everywhere. She had a party once and someone kidnapped him as a joke, and put him up for ransom, but she didn’t think it was even slightly amusing. Oh no. She just lost it entirely. You should’ve seen her—screaming and crying. It was like that rabbit . . . I don’t know, like he represented something to her that nobody else could ever have understood.”

It fell silent for a moment and Ana took in deep breaths, trying to control the overwhelming emotion charging through her system, trying to rein in the pain and force it back into the Pandora’s box that Lol had inadvertently opened. It was the first time she’d cried since her father’s funeral.

She glanced around the flat, at the fuchsia walls and leopard-skin curtains, the piles of clothes and shoes, perfume and jewelry. She looked at the photos pinned to the walls, smiling groups of people, small children, family. And then her eye was caught by a photo of Lol and Bee, arms around each other, champagne on a table in front of them, beaming at the camera, and Ana suddenly remembered why she was there.

“John?” she said, sitting up straight. “Where’s the cat?”

“Oh. Right. He’s—out.”

“Out?”

“Yeah. You know. Out. Doing . . . cat stuff.” She shrugged and got to her feet. “Listen—don’t go anywhere, right? I’m just going to check the stairwell and the street for that fucking stupid choker. I don’t really give a shit about it myself, but if someone found it and made off wi’ it, I’d be fucked. What are you doing tonight, by the way?” Ana shrugged and sniffed. “Going home. I’m catching a train in an hour.”

Lol stopped still, her mouth opened wide and her eyes staring at her with exaggerated shock. She put her hands on her skinny hips and addressed Ana sternly. “No, you are not, young lady.”

“I’m sorry?”

“I’ve been hearing about you for years. I’ve wanted to meet you for, like,
ever.
You can’t go home yet. You’re Bee’s fucking sister. D’you have any idea how exciting that is?”

“Yes, but . . .”

“Yes but nothing. You’re staying here and I’m taking you out.”

“Yes, but—what about my mother?”

“What about your mother?”

“She’s ill. She needs me. I can’t just leave her.” Lol smiled a warm smile and put her hand on Ana’s shoulder. “Look,” she said kindly, “I know all about your mother. Bee told me everything. And I think your mother might benefit from a night alone. Oh—come on. Please stay.

Ple-ease,” she wheedled. “We’ll go and check out old Lundarn Tan, togevver, like.” She smiled as she tried on a daft cockney accent.

Ana’s thoughts veered dizzyingly between her sense of responsibility toward her mother and the realization that she wanted to stay. That she really wanted to stay. She wanted to be with Lol. She wanted to talk to Lol. All night. About Bee.

About cottages and motorbikes and guitars. She wanted to go About cottages and motorbikes and guitars. She wanted to go out with Lol. And get drunk. And not go home. Not tonight.

She wasn’t ready yet. A wall of resolve built in her chest. She was already nodding without being aware of it, her mouth set hard, her hands wringing together. “OK,” she said firmly, “OK.

I’ll stay.”

“Good girl,” grinned Lol, squeezing her shoulders, “top girl.

I’ll be back in a tick.”

“I need to phone my mum, though. Can I use your phone?”

“ ’Course you can. It’s over there.” Lol pointed at the windowsill and smiled at Ana excitedly. “I can’t believe it,” she gushed, “Bee’s sister. In my flat. I’m so excited!” Lol squeezed her shoulder again and then went clattering down the stairs like a . . . like a skinny six-foot woman in wedge heels.

Ana walked to the window and found herself peering down through the sun roof and into the leather interior of a big black Lexus. She fiddled with her hair as she dialed her mother’s number. The answering machine clicked on after two rings.

“Hi, Mum, it’s me,” she began. “I’m just phoning to say that I won’t be home tonight. I’m staying another night. With a friend of Bee’s. Everything’s fine and I’ll, er, see you tomorrow.” And then she hung up and felt her insides go all fizzy with the excitement of rebellion and change. Below her, the front door opened and then there was Lol, out in the street, peering at the pavement. The bright sunshine glittered off the rhinestones on her leather trousers and gleamed off her flawless skin. She was the most extraordinary-looking woman Ana had ever seen. And she wore her stature so woman Ana had ever seen. And she wore her stature so differently from Ana—her shoulders back, her head erect, her heels high—almost like she was
proud
of her height.

She gripped the window frame and then noticed something nestled within the folds of curtain at her feet. An intricate band of turquoise feathers and translucent green beads threaded onto a delicate wire. A choker. She picked it up, feeling her spirits lift with the pleasure of being useful.

“Lol!” she called into the stiflingly hot street. “Your cunting choker!” Lol looked up at her and cackled. She cupped her hands together and Ana let the choker fall into them.

“Ana,” she grinned, “I think I love you!” She kissed the choker and fastened it around her long, thin neck. A group of boys who’d been skateboarding all came to a grinding halt as they saw her walk elegantly back up the steps and into the house. They scooped up their skateboards and stared at her.

Ana waited for one of them to say something. But they didn’t.

They just watched. And it wasn’t until the door had closed behind her and she was halfway up the stairs that one of the boys spoke. He opened his mouth big and wide and emitted a single, breathless, overawed word: “WO-OW!”
nine

Lol, Ana soon realized, was a complete lunatic. She was thirty-three but looked about twenty-three and had more energy than a hyperactive, attention-deficit-disordered six-year-old on Red Bull. She was also disarmingly honest.

“You’re not going out like that, are you?” she said, pointing at Ana’s lank hair and grimy clothes in disbelief. “Get in’t shower, lass—I’ll meek us some drinks.”