‘She was unable to keep him in her new flat, due to the tenancy agreement. In fact, that was the last time I spoke to her – her landlord was threatening to evict her if she didn’t rehouse her cat, and she wanted my advice. And I’m afraid that the only advice I could reasonably give her was that the cat would have to go. So she took him to her friend. A Miss Tate. I have her address if you’d like to contact her. She acted as Bee’s witness on a number of occasions, you see …’ He flipped through a pile of papers and transcribed an address from the file on to a piece of paper and handed it to Ana. ‘You may want to contact Miss Tate to find out how she’d like the matter to be dealt with. As far as she was aware it was only going to be a temporary measure – just until Bee found herself a new flat.’ He wiped away some sweat from his brow. The small room was unairconditioned and disgustingly hot.
‘So the flat in Bickenhall Street was just short term?’
Mr Arnott Brown nodded. ‘Yes, very much so. I know she had been looking at alternative properties to rent in the weeks before the, aah, incident.’
‘When was the last time you saw Bee, Mr Arnott Brown?’
He pulled off his glasses and absent-mindedly wiped the lenses with a soft cloth. ‘Well, aaah, I saw her very rarely, very rarely. Let’s see. Hmmm – the last time I saw her was …’ he consulted his desk diary, leafing clumsily through the pages with sweaty fingers ‘ … there. Yes. It was in January. Just after she moved into the new flat. She lodged some paperwork with me. Tenancy agreements and such.’
‘And how did she seem?’
‘Seem? Well, aaah, like she always seemed, I suppose. You know …’
‘No. I don’t know. I haven’t seen her since I was thirteen.’
‘Oh. Oh, I see. That’s, aaah, that’s, hmmmm. Well – Bee was always very exotically dressed. Very theatrical, you might say. And somewhat – mercurial.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘One could never quite predict what sort of mood she might be in. Some days she was exuberant and other days she would be rather withdrawn – easily distracted. And she would always insist on smoking in here, although it’s absolutely forbidden, you know, and awfully dangerous. My wife always knew when I’d had a meeting with Bee because I’d return home reeking like an old ashtray.’ He did a strange, snorty thing, into his fist. ‘She was veryopen, which could prove somewhat disconcerting. She would think nothing, for example, of using very, aaah, strong language and asking somewhat – personal – questions.’
‘But that day. In January. The last time you saw her. How was she then? How was her mood?’
‘I’m afraid, Miss Wills, that I really do not recollect. But if you’re asking me if she appeared to be on the brink of, aaah, taking her own life, then I would have to say, no. Most definitely not.’
A nasal voice on Mr Arnott Brown’s intercom informed him that his next client had arrived. He smiled apologetically at Ana. ‘I’m afraid we’ll have to call it a day now, Miss Wills. I’ll get all this paperwork to your mother’s solicitor. If you could just sign these release papers, to authorize everything. Here. And – here. Super. Thank you.’ He unfurled himself from his desk and saw Ana to the door. He grasped her hand in his and shook it warmly. ‘And may I just take this opportunity to say, Miss Wills, how terribly, terribly sorry I was to learn of Bee’s death. She was a very unusual character, but I have to confess to having been awfully fond of her. She had a way of making one feel very, aaah, special. Do you know what I mean?’
Ana nodded, shook his hand again and left his office, thinking sadly to herself that, no, actually, she had no idea what he meant as she’d barely known her and how much she was starting to wish that she had.
8
At the other end of a cobbled alleyway around the corner from Mr Arnott Brown’s office was a pretty Georgian square. Ana took a right and found herself in a quiet residential street lined with diminutive Victorian council flats, with tiny balconies entwined with ivy and passion-flowers. Children played in a small playground fronted by a sign declaring ‘Adults Permitted Only if Accompanied by a Child.’ The sun had come out again, and Ana pulled off her cardigan.
As she walked a delicious smell suddenly wafted towards her: fresh bread. She hadn’t eaten anything at all that day, and her hangover was giving her a most impressive appetite. She followed the smell into an art gallery housed in an old Methodist chapel and found herself in a peaceful, almost monastic courtyard, lined with wooden sculptures and large potted trees. There was a small kitchen at the back of the courtyard, serving a limited menu of healthy-sounding things, and there was hardly anybody here.
Ana ordered a pasta and wild-mushroom bake, and as she waited for her food to arrive, she looked around her and began to feel overcome by a sense of her surroundings. She was in London. She was in the city where Bee had gone when Ana was four years old. The city that had broken her mother’s heart – twice. And Ana was on herown – and it wasn’t that scary. Ana had always thought of London as this mysterious place that swallowed people up like a big, black hole, that took away their values and their emotional depth, dressed them up in stupid clothes, hooked them on alcohol and drugs, infected them with viruses that didn’t evenexistin Devon and then, when there was nothing left of the person they’d once been, spat them out the other end. That’s what London had done to Gregor, according to Gay. And that’s what London had now done to Bee, too. But try as she might, Ana couldn’t hate the city for it, not like her mother did. In fact, there was something fascinating about this huge, unruly place of which she’d seen only a fraction.
A man wearing just a waistcoat and jeans sat above her on one of the fire escapes twanging on a guitar, and some windchimes tinkled from a fig tree: all very West Country, in fact – Ana felt almost at home. She settled herself at a wide wooden table in the shade and laid out Bee’s things again. Her address book, notebook, camera, theRough Guide to Goa.She thought of the anomalies, the inconsistencies, the cottage, the weekends away, the missing cat, and then she picked up the piece of paper Mr Arnott Brown had given her with the address of John the Cat’s foster mother on it: Miss L. Tate.
She looked at her watch. 1.20 p.m. She had three hours before her train went, and it suddenly occurred to her that it wouldn’t actually matter if she missed the four-thirty – she could get the five-thirty, the six-thirty, whatever. She should go and see this Miss L. Tate, this friend of Bee’s. She’d like to meet a friend of Bee’s. She might be able to shed some light on things. And she really wanted to seeBee’s cat, this creature who she’d apparently loved so much.
She pulled her map out of her handbag and looked up Bevington Road, W10, the current residence of John the Cat. She found a payphone inside the chapel and dialled the number on the piece of paper. And then she remembered that it was the middle of the day, that Miss L. Tate was most probably at work, so she jumped a little when the phone was answered and a loud, raspy voice answered with an abrupt ‘yup’.
‘Um, hello. Is this Miss. L. Tate?’
‘Who’s this?’ said a suspicious-sounding voice.
‘My name’s Ana. Ana Wills. I’m er, I’m Bee’s sister.’
‘Oh my God,’ the voice screamed, ‘Bee’s sister! You really exist. I always thought Bee were making you up.’ She had a very broad Leeds accent.
‘Oh. Right. Yes. Well – I’m in London at the moment because I’ve been sorting out her stuff and I’m feeling a bit, er, confused … and I needed to talk to somebody – to somebody who knew her. And Bee’s solicitor gave me your number because you’re looking after her cat. And I wondered if I could meet up with you. Maybe. Or I could pop over? I won’t stay long. Unless you’re busy, of course …’
‘No. No, I’m not busy. I’m bored off my tits, actually. Why don’t you come round?’
Miss Tate lived just off Portobello Road. Ana didn’t know much about London, but she knew that Portobello was cool, and this was confirmed resoundingly as she turned a corner and found herself slap-bang in the middle ofsome of the most frighteningly trendy-looking people she’d ever seen in her life. Ana tried to bolster herself up, but couldn’t fight the ridiculous paranoid fear that one of these horribly self-assured people, one of these I-know-exactly-who-I-am-where-I-am-and-what-I’m-doing-here-type people was going to come up to her and take the piss. But nobody even glanced at her – which was a strange sensation for Ana, because everywhere she went in Devon, she was stared at remorselessly. There were three boys in particular, from the estate just outside Torrington, who tormented her every time she set foot out of the house. The ones with the ears and the red hair and the jewellery. Every time they saw her they would skid to a halt on their skateboards, scoop them up from under them and then just stop and stare at her as she walked past. And as she passed them, the tallest one, the one with the reddest hair, would hiss something, like ‘Freak!’ or ‘Scarecrow!’ or ‘Skinny bitch!’ Nothing very creative, but effective, nonetheless. Ana decided she liked the anonymity of London’s streets, where you could be tall or short, black or white, have pink hair or pierced cheeks and still nobody gave you so much as a second glance.
She followed Portobello to its northernmost point, past a few sad-looking stands selling what looked to her like stuff that even the least choosy of bag ladies would be embarrassed to possess, past a vegetarian restaurant with a queue outside, past record shops with Rasta colours in the windows, past a falafel restaurant, under a bridge and past a bustling market square filled with yet more painfully trendy people. The sky overhead was darkening, and it looked like rain, but it was still humid and sweaty. Shezigzagged through a couple of scruffy streets until she found herself in Bevington Road, a dinky little curve of brightly coloured stucco houses facing a schoolyard.