one-hit wonder by Lisa Jewell Read Free Book Online Page A

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 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