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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 onto the sofa, poured herself yet another glass of champagne, and forced her drunken mind to try to make sense of everything she’d just discovered:

Bee was away most weekends and lied about where she was going

She generally had no visitors to her flat

She had a cat called John whose whereabouts were unknown

She’d gone out at nine o’clock on the night she died

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 for clues, 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 that had been 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 colorful chiffon throws, fairy lights, etc. And it was possible, by the sound of it and by the look of it, that toward 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:

1× crash helmet

1× suitcase with Virgin Atlantic tag, unopened but still full

1× 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 it toward 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

That I loved you more