one-hit wonder (6 page)

You’re alive and Belinda’s dead! Ha! Something’s gone wrong—something’s gone wrong—up there”—she pointed at the ceiling—“with Him. Up there. He’s made a mistake.

That’s what it is. Why else would He take away everyone—

Gregor, Bill, Belinda—and leave you? Why would He leave you, Anabella?

“God,” she said, addressing the ceiling, her voice quavering like the Shakespearean actress she’d always dreamed of being, “God—you have fucked up. You have fucked up. . . .” She held out her hands in exasperation as she boomed at the Creator, and then pulled herself from the sofa and stalked from the room, stifling a sob as she went.

Ana had overlooked this tirade—it was nothing new—and instead she’d concocted filmic, romantic vignettes of Bee, draped all over a well-lit bed, her pale, bloodless arms trailing onto the floor, her green eyes staring glassily at the ceiling, a puddle of pills next to the bed. She’d prodded at her subconscious for some emotion, a sense of grief, but it wasn’t there. She’d felt shocked, but not sad.

It was ludicrous, Bee being dead. People like Bee didn’t die. Glamorous, beautiful, successful, rich, popular people didn’t take a load of drugs and die alone and not get found until four days later. That was what happened to sad losers, to people with nothing and no one, to people like Ana, in fact. How could Bee be dead? Why would a woman who had everything throw it all away? It made no sense at all.

Ana spent the rest of the evening going through all the possible explanations in her head, trying to give her sister’s death some sort of structure, but it wasn’t until a couple of hours later, lying in bed listening to the unnerving sounds of her mother downstairs being her mother and coping with her grief in ways at which Ana could only guess, that a sense of loss finally hit her.

She was never going to see Bee again.

She may not have seen Bee for the last twelve years, but she’d always sat on the emotional nest egg of the knowledge that she could if she wanted to. That she could go to the train station, buy a ticket to London, and
see Bee.
Whenever she wanted. But she never had wanted to. And although Bee was practically a stranger to Ana, she was still her sibling, the only person in the whole world who could ever have possibly understood the things that Ana went through living with her mother, and now she was gone and Ana was totally alone.

It took a long time for Ana to get to sleep that night, and when she finally did, her dreams were sad and hollow.

four

When Ana came down for breakfast that morning, her mother had been standing at the foot of the stairs with a letter in one hand and a bowl of cereal in the other.

“Now,” she began as if the conversation had already been going for some time, “sit down. Eat this. And hurry up. I’ve got plans for you—things for you to do.” Ana had felt a nervous nausea rising in her gut. She hadn’t seen her mother this animated in months.

Gay turned and went upstairs. As Ana munched, she heard her mother banging and clanking about in what sounded like the attic. Ana could hear her mother talking to herself as well, and then moments later she came clattering down the stairs. Her hair was all dusty and extra touseled. She was smiling.
And
it was a Thursday and she was wearing her Wednesday cardigan. Something very, very strange was going on.

“The last time I used this was 1963. For my honeymoon.” She got a faraway, wistful look in her eye and then plonked a suitcase on the breakfast table, right in front of Ana. It was small. And musty smelling. And it was fashioned from a woolly tartan fabric in bright red and bottle green. It was disgusting. “Anyway, Anabella,” Gay said whisking the cereal bowl away from under Ana’s nose and dropping it noisily in the sink, “there’s no time for sitting around today. You’ve got things to do.” She said this as a parent might tell a child that they had candies in their handbag.

“Mum. D’you mind telling me what the hell you’re going on about?”

“I received a letter this morning”—Gay tossed it on the table in front of her—“a letter from Bee’s landlord. Her lease has just expired, and if her possessions are not removed by tomorrow morning, he intends to dispose of them. So.

There’s a train in just over an hour. Mr. Arif will meet you outside her flat at one-thirty. He says you can stay in the flat overnight. I’ve organized for a moving company to bring her things back. They’ll be there at nine-thirty tomorrow morning. I’ve spoken to that Mr. Arnott Brown person, Bee’s lawyer thingy—well, I thought since you were going to be there, you may as well kill all these birds with one stone—

and he’ll be expecting you at midday tomorrow. Here’s his address. Your return train is at four-thirty and you’ll be back here by about seven tomorrow evening. Here’s some money”—she dropped a comically large bundle of notes onto the table—“and here’s the address.” Ana scanned the letter briefly, looked at the pile of strange, inexplicable things in front of her and then at her mother. This was utterly ridiculous. How could her mother expect her just to wake up one morning, pack a suitcase, and go to London, of all places? On her own. She’d get lost. She’d never find Bee’s flat in the whole of London. She’d end up in Brixton or Toxteth or something and get mugged. Someone would steal all her money and her suitcase, and she’d be wandering the streets of London with only the clothes on her back. And people would laugh at her. All those cool, hard-nosed London types. Ana’s heart started to race under her pajamas. This was madness.

She strode into the living room and addressed her mother’s back. “But why can’t we get the moving men to pack away Bee’s things?” she asked desperately, knowing already that it was futile.

“I am not allowing a bunch of grubby, overweight buffoons to go rifling through my darling dead daughter’s personal things with their big, dirty fingers. How could you even consider such a thing. I mean—her
lingerie,
for God’s sake, and all her female bits and pieces. Absolutely not. Go and pack. Immediately.”

So Ana had. And here she was. In London. On her own.

And she hadn’t gotten lost and she hadn’t been mugged and, in fact, she was feeling almost excited to be there.

Ana called downstairs to the porter, who locked up for her and gave her directions to the nearest supermarket. She bought herself a chicken salad sandwich and a can of Coke and asked the Indian guy stacking shelves for some cardboard boxes. He gave her a huge flattened stack of them and she bought herself a roll of parcel tape and lugged everything back to Bickenhall Mansions.

It was dazzlingly bright out in the street, but back in the overcast gloom of Bee’s flat, it may as well have been a late November afternoon. Ana picked up Mr. Arif’s inventory and leafed through it while she nibbled on her sandwich.

Black plastic ladle w/green

slight melting on

1x

1x handle

handle

White plastic toilet brush in

1x

good condition

stand

Three-seater sofa

slight fraying around

1x upholstered in “Normandy

legs, small burn on

Rose” design fabric

left arm

It went on in this tedious, painstaking manner for twelve pages. Ana sighed and put it down.

She looked around the flat for a moment, threw away the crusts of her chicken salad sandwich, gulped down her Coke, and then began the peculiar task of sifting through the debris of her enigmatic older sister’s life. She started in the bathroom, figuring that the least of the work would need to be done in there. She made up a small cardboard box and began placing Bee’s things in it, very slowly, item by item, making a mental inventory of her own as she went, hoping that by piecing together all these disparate, insignificant bits and pieces, somehow, miraculously, a fully rounded picture would emerge and she would come to know her sister and why she died.

1x box of Tampax Super

4 left

transparent plastic Oral B

1x

very good condition

toothbrush

1x interspace toothbrush

green

1x tube smoker’s toothpaste

squeezed in middle

1x bottle Listerine mouthwash

nearly full

1x Boots own-brand dental floss

open

OK!
magazine—Pasty Palmer

1x

dated 7 January ‘00

on cover

Hello!
magazine—Ronan

1x

dated 8 June ‘00

Keating on cover

1x large chrome ashtray

full

3x houseplants

dead

1x box matches

Pizza Express

Vasco and Piero’s

1x box matches

Pavilion

Titanic Bar and

1x box matches

Grill

1x box pessaries (for thrush)

half full

1x pessary applicator

1x tube Vagisil

used

1x Jolene Creme Bleach

1x box mixed fabric Band-Aids

half empty

Ana failed to find any clues to her sister’s state of mind among these objects—all they told her was that Bee was a woman who liked to read trashy magazines on the toilet, signifying prolonged, possibly masculine-style bowel movements (which Ana found quite disturbing, as she’d never really thought of Bee—in much the same way as the Queen and Claudia Schiffer—as the going-to-the-toilet type), and that she was very conscious of oral hygiene, although not so concerned, it would appear, with other aspects of her physical health—as indicated by the presence of a full ashtray on the side of the bath. She didn’t have a green thumb, and suffered from thrush, unwanted facial hair, and somewhat heavy periods. She was also, it seemed, not a big believer in rinsing out the bath after use, as demonstrated by a small cluster of curly black hairs clinging to the grimy tidemark that ringed the bath.

Ana stared at them for a while. Bee’s pubes. Bits of Bee. A sudden and painful reminder of why Ana was there. Bee was dead. Her sister was dead. And nobody could tell her why.

All the evidence pointed to suicide but, for whatever reasons, a tragic accident seemed somehow the more palatable option. When Bee went to bed that Friday night, had it occurred to her that she wouldn’t wake up the next morning? When she brushed her teeth that night, had she known that she’d never see her reflection again? Had she moved around the flat before she went to her bedroom, saying good-bye to things because she knew she was going, or was it just another Friday night, a late night, too much to drink, staggering around trying to get ready for bed, reaching for the sleeping pills when she couldn’t get off, grabbing the painkillers when her hangover kicked in, not thinking what she was doing?

Maybe she was here now, a soul in limbo, watching Ana packing away her things and wondering what the fuck she was doing. Ana often had this really strange thought when was doing. Ana often had this really strange thought when famous people died untimely deaths—the thought that they didn’t
know
that they were dead, that no one had told them.

She imagined Diana on that Sunday morning in 1997, coming down for breakfast and reading the headlines, switching on the TV and seeing pictures of the mangled Mercedes in the underpass, the photos of Henri Paul, the shots of her and Dodi leaving the Paris Ritz and thinking no, no, no, and . . .

Ana sighed and got to her feet. She really was a very morbid, very weird person sometimes. And she really did think all sorts of peculiar thoughts.

She moved to the kitchen, and into a second box, or in some cases, into the bin, went the following: copy of
How pristine, untouched, signed with a
to Eat
by

handwritten inscription saying
“
To my
1x Nigela

best friend, who sometimes needs

Lawson

reminding, with love from Lol
”

glass bowl

1x

green fur in places

of lemons

chrome

cocktail

2x shakers—

sticky residue at bottom of both

one smal ,

one large

bottle of

1x

nearly empty

Jose Cuervo

1x bottle of triple sec

nearly empty

1x bottle of Absolut vodka

nearly full

1x bottle of Bombay Sapphire gin

unopened

1x bottle of Tabasco sauce

half full

1x bottle of Worcestershire sauce

two-thirds full

1x bottle of tonic water

unopened

1x bottle of soda water

nearly empty

1x packet Coco Pops

half full

1x jar silverskin onions

two left

1x jar gherkins

five left

book cal ed
101 Classic

dog-

1x
Cocktails

eared
—
stained

1x box Twinings Earl Grey teabags
twelve left
1x jar brown sugar

very hard

1x espresso machine

a bit dirty

1x blue ceramic jar of real coffee

type unknown

1x loaf of unsliced brown bread

very hard

1x pink lip-shaped ceramic ashtray
full
In Fridge

4x bottles champagne

various brands

1x jar gherkins

unopened

1x jar mixed nuts

unopened

packet Sainsbury’s Normandy

1x

half used

butter

various brands and

12x bottles nail polish

colors

large box of Charbonnel et

1x

only two missing

Walker chocolates

tub Tesco’s brand cottage

with garlic and

1x cheese

chives

liter cartons Libby’s tomato

green fur around

3x juice