And then Amy Tilly-Loubelle gave Ana’s arm one more squeeze, before letting herself into her flat next door, and fastening about twelve different locks and chains against the world.
Ana flopped on to the sofa, poured herself yet another glass of champagne and forced her drunk mind to try to make sense of everything she’d just discovered:
A Bee was away most weekends and lied about where she was going
B She generally had no visitors to her flat
C She had a cat called John whose whereabouts were unknown
D She’d gone out at nine o’clock on the night she died
E There was a vague possibility that she might have been a lesbian
Ana got to her feet and marched back into Bee’s bedroom. It was now nine-thirty. She wasn’t going to bed until she’d discovered something significant. She threw things desperately into cardboard boxes, reading them forclues, but they told Ana very little other than that her sister was a woman who looked after her clothes, her skin and her hair much better than she looked after her health or her home, that she dressed in a bold and theatrical style and appeared to have shunned entirely the casual/sporty look so fashionable for the past few years. She didn’t even own a pair of trainers.
It appeared that Bee smoked, ate, drank, read and watched TV in bed. It was likely that she spent most of her time in this room, evidenced by her tentative attempts to ‘decorate’ it with colourful chiffon throws/fairy lights, etc. And it was possible, by the sound of it and by the look of it, that towards the end of her life, Bee spent rather too much time in this room …
However, Ana did manage to uncover a couple of slightly more interesting things:
1x crash helmet
1x suitcase with Virgin Atlantic tag, unopened but still full
1x small silk-covered notepad
It seemed that Bee either owned a motorbike or knew someone who did and knew them well enough to have her own helmet. One of the five keys from the bunch she’d found in Bee’s handbag might well belong to a bike, but Ana wouldn’t recognize an ignition key for a motorbike if it poked her in the eye.
She fiddled with a catnip mouse she’d found under the sofa and wondered about this cat called John. Where was he? Who had him?
And then she opened the little notepad and angled ittowards the light. There was writing on only the front page and this is what it said:
A Song for Zander
When I think of you now
I can think of anything
Any place and any life and any happy ending
I can think of sunshine
Think of joy
I can think of summer
Think of you, my boy
One day when our time is up
We’ll meet
On a beach
And I’ll hold your hand, my boy
We’ll run on the sand, my boy
And you’ll understand, my boy
