by Lisa Jewell
The conversation between Bee and Gay was becoming predictably fractious, and Ana pulled herself from her daydreams.
They were talking about this “hospice” that Gregor was apparently going to be staying in. Ana presumed it was a kind of hospital. Bee had finished her cocktail and banged the empty glass down on the bar in response to something Gay had just said. “It’s all about you, you, you, isn’t it, Mum? My father is dying, for fuck’s sake.”
“Yes,” sniffed Gay, “and whose fault is that? Hmm?”
Bee pulled another cigarette from the packet and began pointing it at Gay like a fencing foil before sticking it in her mouth and allowing Bill to light it for her. “You make me sick. D’you know that?”
Ana gulped. It didn’t matter how many times this happened, it always got to her. And it didn’t matter how many times this happened, she always expected the next time to be different. She’d daydream for weeks in advance about these meetings. This time, she’d think to herself, Mum will be in a really good mood and she won’t start in on Bee, and we’ll all get along really well, and me and Bee will talk. And this time I’ll make Bee laugh and tell her funny stories about school and show her how well I can play guitar, and she’ll tell me stories, too, about famous pop stars and Top of the Pops and first-class flights to New York. And this time we’ll all go out for lunch somewhere, and I’ll have a glass of wine and we’ll have fun, and when we get into the car to go home we’ll all hug Bee and she’ll look really sad to see us go. And this time Bee will say, “Why don’t I come home next time? Why don’t I come and stay at Main Street? And then we can have a proper time together and take Tommy for a walk and wear sloppy socks and cook together.” And then, thought Ana, maybe I won’t feel so lonely anymore. . . .
“Look—can we just change the subject, Mum. I really can’t take your shit at the moment.”
“Oh yes, of course. It must be terribly hard for you having to cope with all your father’s money and his enormous house—”
“It’s not a house—it’s a flat.”
“—and having nothing to do all day long. You wait—one day you’ll be my age, then you’ll understand what it’s like to have a hard life. Imagine—surviving on a teacher’s pension.” She spat out the words and flicked a spiteful look at Bill. “Imagine not being able to go shopping for designer clothes whenever you feel like it. Imagine being me, Belinda. . . .”
“Oh God.” Bee slapped her forehead in frustration. “Bill,” she beseeched, “how do you put up with this? Why do you put up with this? Run away,” she teased, “run away now. . . .”
Bill smiled at her impotently and scratched the back of his neck. Ana stared at Bee desperately, drinking her Coke, trying to send her telepathic messages that she was on her side and wishing more than anything that Bee and her mother could be friends so that she could actually enjoy these rare, precious afternoons with the glamorous big sister she barely knew.
“You look terrible. Your skin. Have you been taking your makeup off at night?”
“Yes, Mum, I’ve been taking my makeup off at night. I’m just stressed, that’s all.”
“That dress. I can almost see your breakfast. Don’t you ever think about the impression you give people, Belinda? I mean—I’m your mother. I know you’re a good girl. But other people. Well—they might just get the—wrong idea.”
“Oh. Great. Now my mother is telling me that I look like a hooker. Jesus.” She stubbed out her cigarette and turned to face the spiky-eyebrowed man behind the bar. “Can I have another one, Tarquin?” She slid her empty glass toward him. “Thanks, sweetie.”
“And you drink far too much, Belinda. Far too much. Do you know what all that alcohol will do to your skin by the time you’re my age? It’ll suck you dry—desiccate you—you’ll look haggard by the time you’re thirty. You’ll look like Katie Dewar’s mother—believe me.”
And so it went on, on and on and on. Bee’s hair gel was going to kill the shine, her shoes would damage her spine, if she lost any more weight she’d get osteoporosis. Her posture was terrible, and as for the “horrible London accent” she was developing . . .
They left the Catacomb two hours later, having managed a few bursts of civilized conversation, particularly when Bee’s friend who owned the club had dropped by to say hello. Gay had been charm personified when Jon, a tall man with dyed black hair, pointy little sideburns, tight black jeans, and a leather jacket with fringed sleeves, had introduced himself. For a while the conversation had been lively and friendly, and Ana had sat on her barstool, sipping her Coke and basking in the new ambiance. But then Jon left and the atmosphere had turned sour within moments.
Bee walked with them to the parking lot where they’d left the car. As they walked, every man they passed looked at Bee. Every single one. Young, old, black, white, thin and fat. Proper, head-turning, walking-into-lampposts-looking. Ana watched in awe as her sister kept walking, completely unfazed by the amount of attention she was getting, her bum still swaying from side to side, a cigarette burning nonchalantly between the fingers of her right hand. Ana just couldn’t imagine ever, ever, ever being on the receiving end of so much undisguised male desire. What power Bee had. What must it be like?
The atmosphere was one of distinct relief as Bill unlocked the doors of his car and everyone said good-bye and pretended that the last three hours hadn’t actually been a social form of water torture.
“Maybe next time,” said Bee, grinding her cigarette out on the concrete of the parking lot, “we can try to be a little bit more pleasant to each other. I’m exhausted right now, Mum. I’m looking after Dad round the clock. I’d really like it if we could just all try to, you know, get along.”
“Yes, well,” began Gay, lowering herself, with Bill’s help, into the passenger seat, “maybe if you didn’t insist on dragging us out to these godforsaken towns and making us sit around in these awful places with all these strange people, it would be a little easier for me to relax.”
Bee’s face softened for a second, and she leaned into the passenger window. “Maybe,” she said, “maybe you’re right. Maybe next time I’ll come to Exeter. How about that? And you can choose where to go. We could have tea at Dingle’s. What d’you say?” She smiled wryly.
“Hmm,” said Gay, “we’ll see. And for God’s sake, stand up straight, will you? Standing there with your bum sticking out in the air like a baboon. With all your bits showing, no doubt, in that dress.”
Bee smiled defeatedly but with a certain amount of amusement and straightened herself out. “Bye, Mum, bye, Bill,” she said, patting the side of the car. “Have a safe journey. I’ll be in touch soon. I promise.” She peered into the back window and screwed up her face at Ana. “Ta-ta, Twiglet,” she said, “say hi to your boyfriend.”
And then, as Bill carefully maneuvered the car out of the parking space and headed toward the exit, Bee turned around and sauntered away from them. Ana twisted in her seat to wave at her through the back window. Bee waved back enthusiastically, grinning her big, toothy grin. But as the car disappeared into the exit tunnel and Bee thought she was out of view, Ana saw her drop her hand, break off her smile, and let her shoulders slump forward before turning and heading slowly toward the lifts.
And Ana’s last ever glimpse of her sister was of a beautiful woman in an Azzedine Alaïa dress, standing against a stark concrete backdrop in a dank Bristol multistory parking lot, who looked like life had knocked all the stuffing out of her.
Three weeks later Gay traveled down to London for Gregor’s funeral, leaving Ana and Bill at home with a very firm “Don’t be ridiculous—the place will be overflowing with homosexuals—why on earth would you want to come?” She booked herself into Claridges, bought herself a new dress from Jaeger, and had a hat specially made. She booked a cab, packed an overnight case, filled the fridge with enough meals for about a week, made a complete fuss about leaving, and then came back ten hours later, in tears so hysterical
that mascara almost dripped from the end of her nose.
Bee, apparently, had kicked her out of the crematorium during the service. Physically. Using her hands—she’d shown them the muted bruising on her upper arms. And in front of everyone. Called her a bitch. Said she never wanted to see her ever again. Or Bill and Ana for that matter. Said she was disowning her family. Said she hated all of them, that she was ashamed of them.
There was no Bee, Gay had said, when a tearful Ana asked if she could call her. Bee, she said, no longer existed. There never had been a Bee. And Ana had numbly, obediently, put Bee in a box marked “vague memories from my past”—and left her there.
Ana had occasionally wondered about her sister, looked for her blunt black bob and red-lipsticked mouth in the celebrity pictures in her mother’s trashy magazines. Gay had invited Bee to Bill’s funeral and Ana had stood at his graveside, her grief tempered by a sense of trepidation that at any moment her mysterious sister might appear from behind a tree. But she hadn’t come and Ana had chalked it up as yet another disappointing moment in her life. Bee did send Ana a card, however, with a photograph of a lily on the front. It didn’t say much—just “My thoughts are with you, all love, Bee.” It was nice, but it was coolly polite, and Ana had meant to write back to say thank-you and how are you and what’ve you been up to, but the bond between the two sisters was so slight and so flimsy that she’d just never gotten around to it. Ana always thought that she’d meet up with Bee again one day, maybe go to London for a weekend, hang out together. The age gap between them would have been less of an issue as Ana hit her twenties, and she was sure that Bee would have calmed down a bit, maybe gotten a proper job, maybe married, maybe even had a child or two. She imagined Bee meeting her at the station awash with perfume and Gucci, taking her to be pampered at a health spa and then to dinner at a posh restaurant run by some celebrity chef, and maybe taking her out to Bond Street the following day and insisting on buying her something disgustingly expensive from a designer shop. It would have been a pleasant weekend, and Ana would have enjoyed the diversion, but when it came to an end, the two women would have hugged and smiled kindly but sadly at each other, because they’d both know there was no friendship to be had, no bond to be formed, and that they’d probably not bother seeing each other again. Because, really, they’d have nothing in common.
But now even that sad little scenario was impossible. Because Bee had made the ultimate dramatic exit. She’d gone and died. At the age of thirty-six.
The police had paid a visit nearly three weeks ago to Gay’s handsome Devon town house. Bee’s body had been found on Tuesday afternoon by a Mr. Whitman, the building’s porter, who’d let himself into the flat after a bad smell had been reported by the neighbors. He’d called Bee’s landlord, who’d called the police. Apparently she’d been wearing a silk dressing gown and a diamond necklace.
The police had been unable to find a contact number for Gay at first, but after two days they’d finally managed to get through to Bee’s lawyer, who’d given it to them. Bee’s body had been formally identified by a Mrs. Tilly-Loubelle, the next-door neighbor, who claimed to be on “quite friendly terms” with her. Her body had been taken to St. Mary’s Hospital, somewhere in central London, and was currently subject to an investigative autopsy, the results of which would not be made available for a few weeks.
“How come it took so long for anyone to find her body?” Ana had asked.
Gay had sniffed and shrugged. “It’s unthinkable, Anabella. That’s London for you, though. A heartless, uncaring city. It happens all the time. It doesn’t surprise me in the slightest.”
“But four days, Mum. And over a weekend, too. Bee always had so many friends, she always had so many people around her. I don’t understand.” There’d been a moment’s silence while Ana arranged the words of her next question in her head.
“Did she—did she kill herself? D’you think?”
“Of course not,” Gay had snapped.
“So then—what happened?”
“That,” her mother replied abruptly, “remains to be seen.” Gay had sniffed again and nodded sadly. And Ana had looked at her, at her tiny, pretty, doll-like little mother, with her tumbledown hair and her over-kohled eyes, a snotty tissue scrunched up between her bony old-lady fingers and, suddenly, for possibly the first time in her life, felt desperately sorry for her. She’d had such dreams for her life and it had come to this. Being trapped by her own insecurities and neuroses in this house, with two husbands dead and buried and the only thing in life she’d always been able to rely on, her good looks, rapidly letting her down. Her life was one big disappointment, and the only light that had shone upon her dashed dreams had been the memory of her exotic eldest daughter. And now she was gone, too. Gay suddenly looked very small and very old, and for one bizarre moment Ana was overcome by a desire to hold her. She put out a tentative hand and brushed it against the satin of Gay’s blouse.
But as her fingers made contact with the fabric, she felt her mother’s body tense up and Gay’s bony hand leapt from her lap to slap Ana’s hand away, so hard it stung. She turned and eyed Ana angrily.
“It should have been you!” she spat out. “You should be dead. Not her. Not my Belinda. She had everything to live for—looks, money, personality, talent. And you have nothing. You—you sit in your room all day with your big, dangly body and your lank hair and you play your horrible music and pick your spots and bite your nails. You’ve got no friends and no boyfriend, no job, nothing. There is no point to you. You are pointless, Anabella—pointless. And yet—you’re alive! 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.”