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

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