‘Where had she been living before that?’
Lol shot her a strange look. ‘What exactly did you two use to talk about? It’s almost like you didn’t know her.’
Ana shrugged. ‘Well – I didn’t really.’
‘Well – she had this beautiful flat in Belsize Park. It was so gorgeous, all bright and posh and lovely.’
‘Did she own it?’
‘Nah – she never bought anywhere. She were too much of a free spirit to get lumbered with a mortgage. I never understood why she moved from there to Baker Street,though. And it were all so sudden. You know. One minute she was settled and sorted. She had her cat and all her lovely things. And then she just up and left, overnight. Left half her stuff behind, by all accounts. And moved into that pigging awful place. God – I hated that flat …’
‘But did she seem unhappy enough to – you know?’
Lol shook her head and shrugged. ‘As I say, she was never really a content soul. But I thought she’d learned to live with that. And she certainly didn’t seem to be anyworse,you know, like she was spiralling downwards or anything. But, you know, when something like this happens, you start thinking about every little thing, don’t you?’ She turned suddenly to Ana and looked at her desperately. ‘Ana,’ she said, ‘there is one thing. Something I’ve not told anyone else. One little thing. I mean, I don’t know if it was what caused it or anything like that, but …’
Ana nodded, encouragingly.
‘ … I think it might have been my fault.’
Ana frowned at her. ‘Don’t be silly,’ she said, ‘how could it be your fault?’
‘Because … because, oh God. Listen. D’you promise you won’t tell anyone else what I’m about to tell you? Not your mother, not anyone?’
Ana nodded forcefully.
Lol took a slurp of her margarita. ‘Well,’ she began, ‘it were the Wednesday before she died. I’d not seen her for a few weeks because I’d been out of the country, on tour, and she turned up on my doorstep first thing and she were in a right state, crying and shaking and everything. And she had her cat with her. She said that her landlordhad been tipped off that she were keeping a cat in that flat and had let himself in and threatened to kick her out if she didn’t get rid of him. So she begged me to look after him, just for a couple of weeks, just until she found a new flat. And I said yes. And she looked so relieved and everything and I just felt, you know, really pleased to have been able to help her out.
‘So, after she left I put all of John’s things out – his bowl and his basket and all that. And he made himself at home. And then I went out that afternoon, to my voice coach and … and – oh God’ – she sniffed again and rubbed her face into her crumpled tissues – ‘I’d left the window in my hallway open a crack. Just a crack, because it gets so blinking hot in that place. And the hall window looks over the back of the house. And when I got back – and I don’t know how he got through it ’cos he’s a fucking big cat, I mean –huge –but he weren’t in the flat and he weren’t anywhere, so he must have. And I searched everywhere. I were out in the street until ten o’clock that night, until it got dark, and he was nowhere. And then all the next day. And Bee sent flowers. On the Thursday. While I were looking for her cat. Beautiful flowers with a note saying how grateful she was to me and how she knew that I wasn’t that keen on cats and how much it meant to her that I’d taken him in and how she wouldn’t have wanted to have left him with anyone else – and there was this, too.’ She pulled open an embroidered silk purse and pulled out a piece of paper, torn from a magazine. She handed it to Ana. ‘She said she’d torn it out ages ago, had been meaning to give it to me for months.’
The clipping was entitled ‘True Friendship’ and wastaken from a letter from Kingsley Amis to his friend, Philip Larkin:
I enjoy talking to you more than to anybody else because I never feel I am giving myself away and so can admit to shady, dishonest, crawling, cowardly, unjust, arrogant, snobbish, lecherous, perverted and generally shameful feelings that I don’t want anybody else to know about; but most of all because I am always on the verge of violent laughter when talking to you.
If you were here, I keep thinking, we would spend the time in talk and drink and smoke, and I should be laughingA LOT OF THE TIME, and I should be enjoying myselfA LOT OF THE TIME.
Lol pointed at it. ‘Look,’ she said, fresh tears springing to her eyes, ‘look. If you were here,’ it says.If you were here.God, that gets me. Because I wasn’t there, I really wasn’t. See, me and Bee, we’d always been the ‘single girls’, you know, the eternal bachelor-girls. We always made time for each other. And then, last year – I fell in love. For the first time. I mean, I’d had obsessions before, and passion and all that. But with Keith I just knew I’d found my soulmate. He’s a Romany,’ she grinned, through her tears, ‘a real, proper Romany. And he’s an astrologist. Really successful. He’s got syndicated columns all over the world. And I’m out of the country a lot, on business. And before, I’d always make sure that when I was around I spent time with Bee. But since I met Keith – well, he’s the one I want to make time for. I didn’t have enough spare time to share it between both of them. And something had to give. And it was Bee. So what with her not wanting to come out, and me being with Keith and that fucking awful flat, well –I’d hardly seen her at all. And that clipping’ – she pointed at it again – ‘it was a cry, don’t you think? A cry for help? And there’s me lying to her, telling her John’s doing really well. When he’s probably flat on his back in a gutter somewhere.’ She sniffed and dragged a finger across her nostrils.
Ana handed the clipping back to Lol and she folded it sadly and put it back in her purse.
‘So, the next day, I put up posters on trees and that. I started knocking on people’s doors. I went to the local vet. To the RSPCA. The PDSA. I know I should have told Bee, but I just couldn’t. She loved that cat like a kid, d’you know what I mean? But when he hadn’t turned up by the Friday, I just thought … you know. So I told her, and she lost it, Ana – I mean, big-time lost it. It was terrible. She didn’t get angry with me, though. She didn’t blame me or anything. She kept blaming herself. It were almost like she was saying that she were a bad mother or summat. She came round that afternoon when I was out and she scoured the area, too. I didn’t get back till late on the Friday night, and the next thing I heard was a phonecall from the fucking police on the Tuesday evening – saying she were dead. Saying she’d been dead since Friday. Saying she’d died all on her own.’ Lol blew her nose again and rubbed her eyes. ‘So even if she didn’t kill herself, even if itwasan accident, it was still my fault. Because I lost her cat, I lost John. And I made her miserable. And she died like that – miserable, and all alone, Ana. Isn’t that the worst thing to imagine? Someone you love, dying all on their own?’
Ana nodded, tears catching in her throat as an imageof Bee’s bed floated into her consciousness once again.
‘I tried phoning her all weekend and there was no answer. I just presumed that she’d gone to see you, so it didn’t worry me too much and …’
Ana turned to Lol. ‘Sorry,’ she said, ‘can you say that last bit again?’
Lol looked at her. ‘I said that it didn’t worry me too much when she didn’t answer the phone because I presumed she’d be in Devon. With you.’
Ana’s jaw fell open. ‘Oh, now – this is too weird, too, too weird.’ She told Lol about what Mrs Tilly-Loubelle had said. And then she told her everything, about the cottage and the song about Zander and the trip to India. Lol knew nothing about any of it and was completely silenced by the information.
‘I’m gobsmacked,’ she said, her eyes wide with confusion, ‘totally, completely and utterlygobsmacked.And I thought it were weird,’ she continued, ‘the way you’ve been asking me all these questions about Bee, as if you didn’t know her. And you mean to say,’ she squeaked incredulously, ‘that Bee was disappearing off somewhere every weekend and lying to me about it? Me – her best friend? And that that mare had a lovely little cottage in the country and she never told anyone. God, you know, I always wondered what she’d done with all that money from her dad. I couldn’t work out why she was always talking about being broke. And she was always,alwaysgoing on about going to India. It was like her big dream. And she fucking went and didn’t even tell us. I am outraged, Ana – outraged. You know what we’ve got to do, don’t you?’ she said.
Ana shook her head.
‘We’ve got to go. We’ve got to go to this Broadstairs place and find this cottage. I’ll bet you anything it’s where she was going every weekend. She probably had a secret lover or something. This Zander bloke. I bet it was him. You said you found some keys in the flat?’
Ana nodded, numbly.