one-hit wonder (9 page)

Ana’s mind had left the building.

This often happened to her when she started composing a song in her head. She just forgot where she was entirely. A high-pitched police siren outside brought her back to reality and she jumped slightly, feeling almost surprised to find herself sitting cross-legged on Bee’s bedroom floor in a full-length evening dress with a cardigan and socks. She looked at Bee’s song again. Who was Zander? A boyfriend? A secret lover? Maybe a married man?

In a flash of inspiration she picked up Bee’s address book and flicked to the back page. Zoe B . . . Zoe L . . . Zach . . . No Zander. And then she pulled the suitcase toward her. It was a huge bag in black leather. It looked battered but expensive.

Ana slowly unzipped it and peeled it open.

The first thing that got her was the smell—a rank, moldy, stale smell. She pulled a duty-free shopping bag from the top and immediately found the culprit—a white bikini that had been packed away wet and left to fester and was now green and brown with mold. She scrunched the bag up tightly and threw it to the other side of the room. And then she began pulling items from the bag one by one: pink sarongs, orange sarongs, chiffon sarongs, silk sarongs, swimsuits, bikinis, beaded thong sandals, flowery flip-flops. Sun cream, malaria pills, mosquito repellent. There were things packaged in brittle brown paper, too—ethnic-looking bowls and textiles and boxes that smelled of cinnamon and asafetida. There were brass horses with tiny bells attached and elaborate pieces of jewelry, saris and tunics and baggy trousers in all sorts of vivid colors and luxurious fabrics. And there, underneath, as if any more evidence was needed, was a
Rough Guide to Goa.

My God, thought Ana, staring in amazement at the exotic, aromatic bazaar that was now spread out around her, Bee went to India. Ana herself had been planning to go to India a couple of years ago, before her father died. She and Hugh couple of years ago, before her father died. She and Hugh were going to pack in their jobs and go together. They’d saved for it and everything. But the thought of Bee in India was every bit as unthinkable to Ana as the thought of Bee on the toilet. And, in fact, the two were inextricably linked. She just couldn’t imagine it—Princess Bee among all that poverty and dirt and human suffering, Princess Bee with a dodgy gut having to poop in dirty toilets, Princess Bee eating rice with her fingers and wiping her bum with her hand. But then again, thought Ana, Princess Bee probably stayed at all the top hotels and went everywhere by cab. Princess Bee probably hardly even noticed she was in India. But as she flicked through the Rough Guide, examining Bee’s little pencil marks and notes, it became apparent that she hadn’t done it in high style at all. Two- and three-star hotels were marked, local restaurants and off-the-beaten track attractions.

Ana put the book down and dropped her head into her hands. Who was this Bee person she was coming to know?

This person who lived in a scruffy, ill-furnished flat, who had no friends, who rode a motorbike, who had a cat, who had great taste in music, and who could play guitar? This person who dressed like a glamourpuss but lived like a student, who disappeared away somewhere every weekend, who befriended lonely old ladies and who went to India and stayed in hotels with dodgy plumbing? This Bee was beginning to sound scarily like someone Ana could have been friends with. She rubbed her face, sighed a big sigh, and carried on unpacking.

More ethnic artifacts, a John Updike novel, a mosquito net, an evening dress, embroidered slippers, and there, at the bottom—jackpot!—a tiny silver camera with a half-used roll of film in it. Photographs. There were no photographs anywhere in this flat, except for some framed ones of Gregor on the walls. She would have to get this developed as soon as possible.

Ana yawned. The champagne was catching up with her now and she was starting to feel almost hung over. She stretched and got to her feet, pulled open her horrible tartan suitcase, and began placing objects in it. The camera, the notebook, the catnip mouse. The address book and the keys.

She pulled off the jewelry she was wearing and put that in there, too. And some of the lovely Indian clothing from the suitcase. And the black sequined jacket. And the rest of the chocolates. And the Blondie CD. And William, the knitted rabbit.

And then she threw everything else back into Bee’s suitcase, zipped it up, and took it to the front door along with the rest of the boxes she’d spent all day packing up. It was getting late now and time for bed. Ana was exhausted.

She took one last look around the bedroom, checking that she hadn’t left anything. Something underneath the bed was casting a shadow. She got down on her hands and knees and stretched out flat, trying to reach the shadowy shape. She got a purchase on it, pulled it out, and looked at it: a cigar box.

She blew some dust off the top, and opened it up—and gulped. Money, lots and lots of money. She picked it out of the box, note by note, with trembling hands. She’d never seen so much money before in her life. She emptied the notes on so much money before in her life. She emptied the notes on to the floor and started counting them up: 7,350 pounds. Her breath caught:
7,350 pounds
—in cash—just sitting there.

Belonging to no one, unwanted, unaccounted for. She should keep ahold of this, she thought, she really should. It wouldn’t be safe to put it in the moving van tomorrow. No, she thought, popping the cigar box into her tartan suitcase, she should
definitely
keep ahold of this. She fastened the clasps on her case and felt her heart racing under her top, almost as if she were doing something wrong.

As she passed through the hall, she caught sight of a packet of Bee’s Camels sitting on top of one of the boxes. Ana had never smoked in her life. It was strange in a way because everyone she went to college with had smoked, Hugh had smoked, her father had smoked, but Ana had never been even slightly tempted. She wasn’t anti-smoking in any way, and the smell of it didn’t bother her like it did some people. But now (and maybe it was the effect of wearing a Vivienne Westwood evening dress and drinking champagne for the best part of four hours) it seemed like the right thing to do.

Nothing was normal today. It had been one of the oddest days of her life, in fact, and for some reason that she couldn’t quite put her finger on, she found herself taking a book of matches out of one of the boxes, picking up the cigarettes, and heading toward the window. She heaved it open and stood where she imagined Bee would have stood, with an ashtray where she’d found it on the windowsill to her right.

After a day of city noises, drills, horns, and traffic, it was now silent, and the night air was still warm. Ana breathed it in greedily, tasting the alien flavors of car fumes and hot tarmac. The street below was empty, the lights in the apartment house opposite all switched off. There was nothing to look at but the very urbanity of it, the very fact of her location—London W1, Bee’s flat—and her aloneness lent the view a certain spine-tingling magic. She dragged the match through the phosphorous strip and watched with pleasure as a flame came to life. Then she arranged a cigarette in her mouth, self-consciously, before lighting the tip of it.

She inhaled.

It was disgusting.

She inhaled again.

It was still disgusting.

She smoked the whole thing.

Ana’s thoughts started to meander, and as she smoked she tried to imagine Bee’s last few months in this flat. She turned to face the door and, as if it were a movie playing in her head, she saw Bee walk into the room. She was wearing tailored men’s trousers, low slung, with a powder-blue satin bustier that pushed her bosom up toward her throat, which glittered with a diamond collar. As she walked through the room, she kicked off a pair of towering baby-blue suede platforms and lit a cigarette. She headed toward the window and came to stand right next to Ana. Close up, Ana could see that her skin was the matte white of foundation—she looked immaculate, like a doll. There were wide diamond cuffs around her narrow wrists, and her nails were oxblood red.

She tipped ash into the street below and blew smoke from She tipped ash into the street below and blew smoke from her lungs like a twenties movie star, with an exaggerated puff of her full, lipsticked mouth. She sighed and rubbed the soles of her bare feet against the backs of her legs. Her toenails were red, too.

Ana couldn’t take her eyes off her. She was captivatingly beautiful, but it was a different kind of beauty from the boisterous, loudmouthed, high-octane beauty of a young girl bursting at the seams with joy and youth and energy that she used to have. It was a more composed beauty, cold, unattainable—completely asexual.

She watched Bee grind down the last half-inch of her cigarette, head toward the kitchen, and fix herself a Bloody Mary—five drops of Tabasco, three shakes of Worcestershire, a big squeeze of fresh lemon—and then run herself a bath. She watched her take her drink into the bedroom and then sit at her dressing table for a few minutes, staring blankly at her reflection, before sighing again and reaching for the cotton to remove her face. She tied back her glossy black hair with an elastic band, slipped out of her clothes, hung them up, and then took her drink and her Camels to the bathroom, where she let the door shut behind her. . . .

Ana stubbed out the end of the cigarette and took in one last lungful of the balmy night air before pulling down the window and switching off the lights. She considered having a shower, washing the day’s grime off her thin, hungry body, but she was too tired, so she slipped out of Bee’s dress, pulled on a T-shirt and pajama bottoms, brushed her teeth, and walked into the bedroom. And then she stopped in her tracks as a gust of cool air stroked her cheek and images of her sister’s dead body lying festering on her big empty bed, alone and unaccounted for, flashed frighteningly through her mind. Is this what it was like? Is this what it was like for Bee at the end? An empty flat, too much to drink, sleeping pills—a preoccupation with her fading youth? She must have had friends—she must have had someone she could have talked to? A boyfriend? A lover? It just wasn’t possible that someone like Bee could have died like an unloved pensioner, alone and with no one to notice she’d gone.

Ana shuddered, took one last look at the empty, ominous bed, switched off the light, and made her way back to the living room, where she eventually fell asleep on the sofa, under Bee’s pink cashmere blanket, which still smelled of her Vivienne Westwood perfume.

six

At nine-fifteen the following morning, Ana’s deep sleep was rudely disturbed by a team of four Romanian women, three half-naked men from Newcastle, and Mr. Arif, all arriving at the same time. She had barely detached herself from her dreams, and acknowledged the existence of a hideous hangover, when she found herself peering through the peephole into the enlarged eyeball of a grinning Mr. Arif.

And there they were, standing behind him. Dozens of them.

“Good morning, Miss Wills! And tell me. How are my fine ladies here to clean my flat when there are also here these three large gentlemen?” He pulled his monogrammed hankie from his pocket, wiped his brow, and gestured dismissively at the bare-chested men behind him.

As he walked into the flat, the four women dutifully piled in behind him, clutching buckets and mops and carrying cases full of cleaning products.

“Well, maybe,” began Ana, tugging self-consciously at her pajamas, “the ladies could start in the kitchen and bathroom and these gentlemen can begin removing these things—you are . . . you are here to remove things, aren’t you?” she asked, thinking suddenly how embarrassing it would be if they weren’t and they were actually journalists or something. The three nodded. “Good, excellent. And maybe while you’re all doing that, I could—er—get dressed?”

“Yes, yes, yes, of course, Miss Wills. Of course. Ladies”—

he turned to the somewhat sad-looking women behind him, all in their twenties but with the demeanor and hairstyles of women in their forties—“follow me, if you please.” Ana scuttled into the bedroom and closed the door behind her. This was horrible. After the intimacy she’d experienced last night while she was here alone, the presence of so many strangers was deeply upsetting—and so final. The moment that last box was heaved into the big white van out there, she would have to leave, and she would never be allowed to return. Because it wouldn’t be Bee’s flat anymore. It would be the flat of some prima ballerina. And, quite to her own surprise, Ana wanted to stay here. Not forever or anything, but she wanted another night, at least, just to breathe in the atmosphere and get to know her sister.

But instead, she would be sitting on a train, all alone, hurtling back to Great Torrington and her bedroom. And, more depressingly, to her mother. Ana sighed and moved to the window. Down on the street below, one of the burly, bare-chested moving men was already hoisting a box into the back of the van. Ana recognized it as the one into which she’d packed Bee’s shoes and felt suddenly and horribly sad.

It didn’t take long to load up Bee’s paltry possessions, and by ten-thirty Ana was waving off Bez, Al, and Geoff and watching Bee’s life trundle down Bickenhall Street toward Devon. She had an appointment with Bee’s lawyer at twelve, so she returned to the flat to bid farewell.

Mr. Arif was also preparing to leave, slotting paperwork into the inside sleeve of a maroon leather attaché case and whistling under his breath. “So, Madam,” he said, smiling widely at her now that he was convinced that everything was widely at her now that he was convinced that everything was under control, that the flat was being cleaned and that his prima ballerina could happily move in the next morning,

“now it is all over. Your sister is in boxes and your task is complete. To where are you going now?”

Ana shrugged. “Well—I’ve got to see Bee’s lawyer first, sort out her financial affairs, that sort of thing. Then I’m going home. I guess.”

“And home is?”

“Home is Devon.”

“Ah yes! The beautiful English countryside. You are very lucky. Very lucky girl. Maybe if your lovely sister here had stayed in the beautiful English countryside instead of living here in this cesspool city, then this bad thing here would never have happened?” He laughed uproariously and highly inappropriately, but it suddenly struck Ana that here was a man who may have been with Bee recently, may have had conversations with her while she was living and breathing—