one-hit wonder (8 page)

“I was just, er, locking up, about to go to bed, and I heard all sorts of noise coming from in here. Is everything all right?”

“Oh yes. Fine. I’m sorry if I disturbed you, I was just—er—

listening to some music, you know.”

“I’m Amy Tilly-Loubelle. I live next door. And you are?”

“I’m Ana.” She extended a hand and offered it to the neighbor, who flinched slightly.

“Moving in, are we?” she asked, her pale blue eyes fluttering nervously around the hallway behind her.

“No. Moving out. My sister used to live here and I’ve come up to—”

Suddenly Mrs. Tilly-Loubelle’s face lit up, and her demeanor changed entirely. “Oh, so
you’re
the famous Ana,” she said, clapping her hands together with delight and making her little dog start. “Bee used to talk about you all the time.” Her face dropped again and she rested a hand on Ana’s arm.

“I’m so terribly, terribly, un-
speak
ably sorry about the dreadful thing that happened to your sister. I feel so completely responsible—you see, I live next door and I didn’t notice and . . .”

But Ana wasn’t listening. She was still reeling from the

“Bee used to talk about you all the time” comment.

“Um, I was just about to open another bottle of champagne,” Ana found herself saying, much to her own surprise. “Would you like to have a glass with me?” Mrs. Tilly-Loubelle’s face lit up, and she grinned naughtily.

“How delightful. I’d love to, dear.”

Ana was incredibly grateful to the old lady for not mentioning her bizarre appearance, but then, she wasn’t really in a position to say anything, Ana supposed, given the matching pink dressing gown, slippers, and dog-vest ensemble.

She let Amy in and locked the door behind her.

“Oh, she was a lovely girl,” said Amy, sipping enthusiastically at her second glass of champagne. “From the minute I set eyes on her I thought—there’s a girl after my own heart. She reminded me so much of myself at the same age, so stylish and well turned out. Always had her nails done, her hair was always just so. And so unconventional.”

“Did you see her often?”

“No”—she shook her head—“not as often as I’d have liked.

We shared a pot of tea from time to time. She always took a very kind interest in my well-being. But young people, they have their own lives to live, don’t they? We’ve had our turn.” She chuckled and then became sad again. “It’s just so, so tragic that her turn was cut short. It never occurs to you, when you get to my age. I’d left her all sorts of things in my will, you know, bits and pieces she’d admired in my apartment—and I was going to ask her to look after dear Freddie, here.” She pointed at the long dog slumbering beside her on the sofa. “Just presumed I’d pop off first. You don’t think of young people going first.”

“Have you—do you have any idea what happened here on that last night?” Ana asked. “Did she have anyone . . . here?

With her?”

Amy shook her head. “I heard her going out at about nine o’clock, just as I was getting ready for bed. I recognize the click of her door, you see. And then I went to bed, put in my earplugs, and that was the last I knew until the next morning.

I’m a very heavy sleeper, you see. Once I’ve conked out, nothing can wake me.”

“And what happened the next day? Did anything seem strange?”

“Goodness,” Mrs. Tilly-Loubelle chuckled, “have you ever thought of joining the police force?”

“Sorry. It’s just that we—me and my mother—we don’t really know very much. Only what they told us on the phone, and—”

“Where is your mother, by the way? Is she not here with you?”

Ana shook her head. “No,” she said, “my mother’s agoraphobic. She can’t leave the house, so she sent me.” Amy clutched her heart with her hand. “Oh, how simply awful,” she gasped. “Imagine—not being able to leave your own home. It would be like being a prisoner. I’m so sorry, Ana—that’s simply dreadful. But to answer your question, no.

Nothing seemed strange the next day. Bee wasn’t around, but then, she was away most weekends. There didn’t seem to be anything unusual about that.”

“Where did she go? On the weekends?”

Amy looked surprised and smiled quizzically at her.

“Why—to see you, of course!”

“
Me
?”

“Yes. To stay with you. In Devon.”

“In Devon?”

“That’s right, dear.”

“And Bee told you that? Bee told you she spent weekends with me in Devon?”

“Absolutely. She told me about your lovely little flat overlooking the sea and the two of you playing your guitars and going for walks together. She needed to escape, that’s what she used to say, get away from all the hustle and bustle.

She said that the air in Devon was like medicine for her soul.”

Ana tried to smile through her confusion. “And how often did she, er, come and see me?”

“Well, nearly every weekend, wouldn’t you say? That’s why nothing seemed out of the ordinary when I didn’t see her or hear her on that terrible, terrible weekend.” Her pale blue eyes filled with tears then, and she quickly fished a handkerchief out of her sleeve, burying her pretty, rouged old face into the cotton, her tiny shoulders trembling. “Oh, Ana—I feel so terrible. To think. All weekend I was there, next door. All weekend, just pottering around, getting on with things. In and out to the shops. Making phone calls.

Watching the television. And all that time your beautiful sister, that angelic, unique woman who had everything ahead of her, was lying there”—she indicated the bedroom with her now-pink eyes—“dead. All alone.
All alone.
I think it’s the most tragic thing that’s ever happened to me, and I’ve lost a lot of people in my time. But I will never, ever get over losing your sister. Do you understand? Some people die—but others are taken. And that girl was taken.”

“You don’t think it was suicide?”

Amy shook her head vehemently. “No. Absolutely not.

There is no way that girl would take her own life.”

“So what d’you think happened?”

“An accident. A terrible, tragic accident. That’s what I think. She would never have killed herself. She had too much to live for.”

“Like what?” Ana was still reeling from Bee’s inexplicable lies about how she spent her weekends. She was half expecting the old lady to tell her that Bee had had six children or something.

“Well,” Mrs. Tilly-Loubelle began, looking affronted by the question, “you, for a start. She adored you. I hope you realize that.”

Ana opened her mouth to say something and then shut it again. The words to express her confusion didn’t seem to exist.

“And John,” Amy continued.

“John. Who was John?”

“Her cat. A beautiful cat.”

A cat. Called John? “And where is he now, this—er—

John?”

Amy shrugged. “Someone must have taken him away, I suppose. The RSPCA. A friend. I have no idea. I was hoping he’d gone to you. Gone to Devon.”

he’d gone to you. Gone to Devon.”

Ana shook her head. “No. He’s not in Devon.” It fell silent for a while as Ana and Amy sipped champagne and stared at the carpet. “Did Bee have any special friends, any boyfriends, or anything that you knew about?”

Amy screwed up her face and then nodded. “She had a couple of friends who used to visit occasionally. I haven’t seen them in a while, though. In fact, I’d say she had no visitors at all in the last couple of months.”

“What did they look like?”

“A black girl—very pretty. And a large man. A handsome man.”

“Bee’s boyfriend?”

“No. More’s the pity. No, he was just a friend, that’s what Bee told me. A very old friend. And she never mentioned any other men. I often wondered if she was perhaps a lesbian.” Ana choked as her champagne went down the wrong pipe.

“I beg your pardon?” she spluttered.

“Your sister. I often wondered if she was gay. She had that Radclyffe Hall look about her, like one of those old-fashioned lesbians. Very glamorous but with quite a hard edge, if you see what I mean.”

“And did you—did you think she was?”

She shrugged. “Never saw men coming up here, never saw women either. Maybe she was asexual. Anyway—what other people get up to is their business. I try not to pay too much attention. What about you?”

Ana started, thinking surely she couldn’t be asking her if she was a lesbian.

“Do you have a boyfriend?”

Ana thought of Hugh—was a boyfriend still a boyfriend when you hadn’t seen him for six months?—and shook her head.

“And you’re back to Devon tomorrow, are you?” She nodded.

“Well—you should get yourself out tonight, see what you can find. There are some very beautiful young men in this city, you know.”

“Really?”

“Oh yes. I see them all the time. Every day. Everywhere I look. Beautiful young men and so well dressed these days.

Men seem to be paying much more attention to their grooming and their appearance, more like they used to in my day. Still—I must stop talking like this. I’ll get myself all excited, and there’s nothing much an old woman like me can do about it when they get themselves into that state.” She winked at Ana, and Ana nearly fainted.

“Anyway,” Amy said, picking up her snoring dog and rearranging her fluffy gown, “it’s been very nice to meet you, Ana, but it’s way past my bedtime, and if I don’t get myself off now, I shall fall asleep here on the sofa and you’ll be stuck with me! But thank you so much for inviting me in. People don’t tend to do that in London these days, you know. They don’t invite you in. I think they’re all too sacred you’ll never leave.” She laughed sadly. “And I’m sorry we had to meet under such dreadful circumstances. Your sister was a true original, Ana. A one-of-a-kind. I miss her very much.” Ana led Amy toward the door, wishing she wouldn’t leave but knowing that she had to. “Can I ask you one more question?” she began with one hand on the door. “About Bee?”

“Certainly.”

“You know—you know on the Tuesday? You know when you had to go to the hospital and—you know—identify her.

Well, what, er . . . what did she look like? I mean—did she look peaceful, or . . . ?”

Amy put a hand on Ana’s arm and smiled at her. “Ana,” she said, her blue eyes twinkling, “she was smiling. I swear on Freddie’s life. Bee was smiling. She looked tired, but she looked beautiful and she was smiling. She didn’t look like a woman ravaged by life and disappointment, a woman so unimpressed by all the world had to offer that she decided to take her own life. She looked like a small girl who’d just been told a wondrous bedtime story and drifted into a sweet, untainted slumber.”

“Thank you”—Ana smiled with a strange sense of relief—“thank you very much.”

And then Amy Tilly-Loubelle gave Ana’s arm one more squeeze before letting herself into her flat next door, and fastening about twelve different locks and chains against the world.

Ana flopped onto the sofa, poured herself yet another glass of champagne, and forced her pissed mind to try to make sense of everything she’d discovered:

A. Bee was away most weekends and lied about where she was going.

B. She generally had no visitors to her flat.

C. She had a cat called John whose whereabouts were unknown.

D. She’d gone out at nine o’clock on the night she died.

E. There was a vague possibility that she might have been a lesbian.

Ana got to her feet and marched back into Bee’s bedroom.

It was now nine-thirty. She wasn’t going to bed until she’d discovered something significant. She threw things desperately into cardboard boxes, reading them for clues, but they told Ana very little other than that her sister was a woman who looked after her clothes, her skin, and her hair much better than she looked after her health or her home, that she dressed in a bold and theatrical style, and appeared to have shunned entirely the casual/sporty look so fashionable for the past few years. She didn’t even own a pair of trainers.

It appeared that Bee smoked, ate, drank, read, and watched TV in bed. It was likely that she spent most of her time in this room, evidenced by her tentative attempts to “decorate” it with colorful chiffon throws, lights, etc. And it was possible, by the sound of it and by the look of it, that toward the end of her life Bee spent rather too much time in this room. . . .

However, Ana did manage to uncover a couple of slightly more interesting things:

1x crash helmet

suitcase with Virgin Atlantic tag, unopened but stil 1x ful

1x smal silk-covered notepad

It seemed that Bee either owned a motorbike or knew someone who did and knew them well enough to have her own helmet. One of the five keys from the bunch she’d found in Bee’s handbag might well belong to a bike, but Ana wouldn’t recognize an ignition key for a motorbike if it poked her in the eye.

She fiddled with a catnip mouse she’d found under the sofa and wondered about this cat called John. Where was he?

Who had him?

And then she opened the little notepad and angled it toward the light. There was writing on only the front page, and this is what it said:

A Song for Zander

When I think of you now

I can think of anything

Any place and any life and any happy ending
I can think of sunshine

Think of joy

I can think of summer

Think of you, my boy

One day when our time is up

We’ll meet

On a beach

And I’ll hold your hand, my boy

We’ll run on the sand, my boy

And you’ll understand, my boy

That I loved you more

Than my words can

And there it stopped. Whether the last line was complete or not, Ana couldn’t tell, although she was buggered if she could find a word rhyming with “more” to close it.

“Implore”? “Stand for”? No, thought Ana, those last two lines needed rewriting completely. But the rest of the song—well, it was quite good. Well, it certainly wasn’t bad as such. It suggested a rhythm. Probably quite a soulful sound, building to a crescendo that had yet to be written. Ana started working out chords in her head, absentmindedly strumming on strings made out of thin air. She found a pen and started jotting down music.