one-hit wonder by Lisa Jewell Page A

going now?”
    Ana shrugged. “Well—I’ve got to see Bee’s lawyer first, sort out her financial affairs, that sort of thing. Then I’m going home. I guess.”
    “And home is?”
    “Home is Devon.”
    “Ah yes! The beautiful English countryside. You are very lucky. Very lucky girl. Maybe if your lovely sister here had stayed in the beautiful English countryside instead of living here in this cesspool city, then this bad thing here would never have happened?” He laughed uproariously and highly inappropriately, but it suddenly struck Ana that here was a man who may have been with Bee recently, may have had conversations with her while she was living and breathing—
    and possibly contemplating dying.
    “Mr. Arif,” she began, “I, er, didn’t see my sister very much in the last few years. Twelve years, in fact. I just wondered if you’d spoken to her recently or anything. You know—how she’d seemed?”
    “Seemed?” questioned Mr. Arif, his hooded eyes springing open momentarily in surprise. “Seemed?” He clicked closed his attaché case and adjusted the cuffs of his shirt. “Madam—I find this question very peculiar. If you are asking me how she seemed, all I can say is that she seemed like a very beautiful, very charming tenant who paid her rent on time and who died on her bed and left herself for me to find. Now. I have many urgent appointments and I will have to be leaving you.
    I thank you for your efficiency and I wish you a safe and pleasant journey home, Miss Wills.”
    He turned to leave but Ana had one last thought. “The cat, Mr. Arif . . . ?”
    “I beg your pardon?”
    “Bee’s cat. What happened to him?”
    “Ah. The animal. Naughty Miss Bearhorn deceived me for many months with her animal. But her deception was uncovered and now her animal resides with a friend.”
    “Friend? Which friend?”
    “Oh my goodness, Miss Wills. You cannot expect me to be knowing all this minutiae of my tenants. A friend. That is all I know. Now I leave.”
    And then he left, the only sign that he’d ever been there the dense fog of aftershave lingering in the living room.

    seven
    Bee’s lawyer worked from a very small office in a very large office building in Holborn and he looked like neither a lawyer nor someone who would be called Mr. Arnott Brown. He was wearing a T-shirt for a start. It wasn’t exactly a Megadeth T-shirt or anything—it was just plain and red—
    but it was still a T-shirt. (“I do apologize for my appearance, Miss Wills,” he’d said when he greeted her at the lift, “we’ve just introduced a dress-down Friday policy. I can’t say I’m awfully comfortable with it myself.”) And he looked extraordinarily young. The sun streaming through his office window sat on his smooth pink skin and clearly picked out the sparse, almost prepubescent tufts of hair poking from his chin. He wore a wedding band and on his desk sat photographs of an equally young-looking wife and a pair of photogenic toddlers.
    He was very shy and appeared to be having trouble maintaining eye contact with Ana through his spectacles.
    “Yes,” he was saying almost in a whisper, “your sister kept her financial affairs very much in order. Well, perhaps not your sister, exactly. I’ve always had the feeling that she’d have kept all of her money under her mattress if it had been up to her. But she had a good accountant and everything is as it should be. No debts, no tax bills, no overdrafts. Unfortunately she didn’t make a will. It was something I’d been trying to persuade her to do for a long time, but she thought it was a, aaah, silly idea. So. All her assets will go to her next of kin, who I believe is her, aaah, mother.” He looked up from his paperwork and directly into Ana’s eyes until she nodded, and then he looked abruptly away again.
    “Yes,” said Ana, “she is, but she’s agoraphobic, you see, she can’t leave the house, so I’m here on her behalf.”
    “I see. I see.” He