one-hit wonder Read Online Free PDF Page B

almost up to her crotch, towering Vivienne Westwood platforms fastened with ribbons, and her sleek hair was greased back off her face. She looked like one of the girls in the “Addicted to Love” video.
    “Thank you,” she smiled, giving him a little curtsy, “and you’re looking rather lovely yourself, if you don’t mind me saying.”
    Bill scoffed pleasurably.
    “ Twiglet !” Bee exclaimed, noticing Ana skulking behind her father. “How’s my skinny-minny?”

    Ana smiled reluctantly and leaned down to kiss her big sister. “I’m all right,” she murmured, feeling a blush forming on her face and shoving her hands into the pockets of the sensible twill skirt her mother had bought her from Long Tall Sally.
    “Jesus, you are getting so tall ,” she said, appraising Ana at arm’s length. “You’ll never find a boyfriend now, you know—
    men hate tall girls—they make them feel inadequate.” She winked, to let Ana know that she was only joking, but it was too late—her words had already left a brand on Ana’s fragile soul. “Mum,” she said, turning to Gay, who was waiting impatiently in line, wearing her new green suit, “how are you?”
    Gay offered up her cheek for Bee to kiss. “Tired,” she said,
    “exhausted. The traffic. Terrible. And this heat.” She flapped at her face with her hand, and Bill immediately strode off to find a chair for her.
    Gay sat down primly on the chair that Bill had brought her and looked around the club with undisguised disgust. “And what ,” she began disdainfully, “could you possibly be doing in a place like this?”
    “Oh—don’t start, Mum. Please. I’ve had a bad week. Can’t we just have a nice time for once? This place belongs to a friend, OK? A very kind, very wonderful friend who has also lost someone to AIDS, who is about the only person who can make me smile at the moment and who I happen to be staying with tonight.
    “Bill,” she said, turning to her stepfather and clapping her hands together, “let me get you a drink. What would you like?”
    “Oh—just a soft drink for me, Belinda. I’m driving. A lemonade or something.”
    “Twiglet?”
    Ana looked at her and shrugged. “I don’t care,” she said, forcing a smile, “anything.”
    “Er, right—OK.” Bee grimaced at her sideways and Ana felt herself die a little inside. She never knew what to say to Bee.
    That was the trouble. She was always worried she was going to say something stupid or embarrassing. So she usually ended up saying nothing at all—which was just as bad, because then Bee just thought she was an illiterate cretin.
    And Bee was so beautiful, thought Ana. Look at her. Those huge eyes, framed by thick lashes. And her tiny little nose.
    Ana would have quite happily killed for that nose.
    Sometimes she’d play around in the mirror at home, trying to see what she’d look like with a little nose like Bee’s. She’d already decided she was going to get a part-time job the moment she turned fifteen and she was going to save up every penny and have a nose job. And when she did, she’d take in a picture of Bee and tell the surgeon, “I want that nose.”
    And her breasts. Round and creamy, tucked into her tight Lycra dress. Why? thought Ana, staring at them with a gut-churning envy, why? Same mother. Same gene pool. Same chances of being petite and big-bosomed and pretty. But no, she thought, looking resentfully at her father, I get to look like Bill Wills.
    Bee handed Ana a can of Coke with a straw in it and smiled at her. Ana smiled back tightly.
    “How’s your father?” Gay asked in a tone of voice that suggested she was secretly hoping that Bee would say he was dead.
    Bee sighed and leaned back against the chipped black bar.
    “Bad,” she said, “very bad. He’s been talking about the hospice.”
    “Hospice?”
    “Yes. The place in St. John’s Wood. You know.” Gay nodded sagely and pursed her lips.
    Ana took a slurp of her Coke and wondered what a