She had never seen him again. He had vanished off the face of the earth and she still didn’t know why, not for sure. She had been too ill to think straight at the time, and for a long time afterwards she had been in a state of numbed trauma, but later she had tried looking at it from Johnny’s point of view. He must have been so appalled by what she told him that he never wanted to see her again. Johnny had been a romantic, an idealist; his image of her would have been tarnished forever when she confessed what Roger Keats had made her do – she shouldn’t have told him.
She had kept thinking he would come back when he got over his first horror, but he hadn’t, so eventually, many months later, she had gone to see his lawyers, but got nothing out of them.
‘I need to see him,’ she had pleaded, and the partner who had agreed to see her had looked faintly curious, but had shaken his head.
‘I’m sorry, I’m afraid I can’t help you.’
‘But you do know where he is?’
‘I’m sorry, I can tell you nothing at all about him.’
‘But he is still your client?’
She had tried to read the man’s smooth, bland face and got nowhere. He looked, she thought, like a spoon with a suit on: a bald head, narrow shoulders, a thin body and long legs, and that empty face.
He had paused to decide how to answer her question, then murmured, ‘We do look after his affairs, yes.’
There had been something evasive in the answer – what was he holding back?
‘His house … in Epping forest … has it been sold?’
‘I’m sorry, but I am not at liberty to discuss a client’s private affairs. I am very busy this morning, and I really cannot tell you anything else. Good morning, Miss Lang.’
She had stood up, hesitated. ‘If … if he gets in touch with you, will you tell him that I’d like to hear from him?’
She had learnt to drive by then, and had come there in her small red secondhand Ford. She had driven away from the office trying to assess what she had learnt – only to wonder if she had learnt anything at all.
Was Johnny even alive? Why hadn’t that house been sold? Why wouldn’t his solicitor tell her anything about him? There had been something furtive in his face when he talked about the Epping house. He hadn’t wanted to talk about it at all. Why?
A blinding light struck her. What if Johnny was living there? Why else wouldn’t the house have been sold?
She had been on her way home but she had turned the car round and driven back to Epping there and then, her heart beating painfully inside her breast. All the way through the winding forest roads, she had felt feverish, possessed, imagining walking up that path, knocking on that door. She refused to think any further than that.
If he came to the door she didn’t even know what she was going to say, what she could ask.
‘Why, Johnny? Why? Why did you go away and never let me know where you were?’
That was what she had to ask, but how could she bear it if he looked at her blankly and just answered, ‘I stopped loving you. When I heard what you had done with that man I didn’t ever want to see you again.’
Could she blame him? She hated the memory, too, didn’t she?
She had had no problem finding the house, although it was almost hidden on a rarely used road through the forest. She had stopped her car just short of the house and stared at it through the crowding trees.
It was spring and new leaves were unfolding on the branches, vivid green spirals of life exploding into air. The first time she saw it, it had been winter, the forest shadowy and quiet; now there were birds all around the house, busy and important as they built their nests, pausing breathlessly on a post or a tree to flute a few phrases before they got on with their work. The air was sharp with hope and anticipation.
Annie had got out of her car and walked to the gate, stood there, staring, her heart plummeting. The house was empty.
Nobody could live in a house that looked like that. It had deteriorated since she last saw it, the windows dusty, thickly cobwebbed, the garden a wilderness of scrubby bushes and trees and weeds, choked with nettles and rough grass among which the daffodils shone, golden as sunlight, dozens of them in clumps, their frilly trumpets blaring at the blue spring sky.
Nobody had lived here for ages, you could feel it. It was a house abandoned, forgotten, except by jackdaws nesting on the battlements who cawed angrily at her appearance, making her jump. The Gothic tower rose against the blue spring sky, shutters banged in the wind beside the high, arched windows.
She had peered through the dirty glass into the drawing-room. The room hadn’t changed an inch; the hearth where they had built up great fires of logs had been swept clean, although a sprinkling of soot had fallen since then and was sprayed across the shabby old carpet, the furniture was all covered in sheets, everything was tidy, so someone had been here, to clean the place, but there was an air of desolation.
The house was haunted, by memories, by ghosts, and a multitude of spiders. Spiders spun great grey swags of webs from every corner, sunlight glinted on the delicate fibres of a web across the window, they had swung silk ladders from light-fittings and picture rails. Flies which had somehow got into the house had bred there and buzzed hopelessly against the window, trying to escape into the light. There was an earwigs’ nest on the windowsill, and wood lice, which an actress from Lancashire she knew called parson’s pigs, clicked along the floorboards in their grey, primeval armour, like tiny armadillos.
She had gone back to look at the drawing-room, had closed her eyes and seen it as it had been all those wintry days when they drew the curtains to shut out the world, turning the room into their own private universe, lit a fire in that cold hearth and lay in front of it, naked, making love.
‘I’ll love you for the rest of our lives,’ he had whispered, his cheek against her warm breast, and she had echoed what he said.
‘I’ll love you forever.’
Three months later he had walked out of her house, out of her life.
But she hadn’t stopped loving him or thinking about him. All those years, while she was building her career, working in TV or on the stage, she had tried to forget Johnny, but she couldn’t. No other man she met had ever matched up to her memory of him.
Well, at least she had more confidence now, she controlled her own life instead of letting her mother do it, not that Trudie could, any more. Trudie couldn’t even look after herself. Annie increasingly found herself taking on the role of adult to her mother’s child.
She knew that getting this part had helped her grow up a lot. The series was set around the City of London police force; her character was an detective inspector in CID for which she was grateful, as it meant she did not have to wear a serge police uniform, which would have been hell under the lights. Actors who had to wear them were always complaining.
Slightly built, her breasts still small, although her hips had a more rounded curve now, Annie knew she looked younger than her actual age. The bone structure she’d inherited from her mother made her face striking rather than pretty; she was lucky it was so expressive, reflecting every thought, every emotion for the camera to pick up. She found it easy to act on the small screen – the less you did, the better. She just let a thought fill her head, and it would show on her face without her trying.
Her skin had cleared up, she no longer had a tendency to eczema, and she had cut her long blonde hair. These days she wore it very short and straight, the part she played demanded that. Women police officers generally did wear their hair short, for good reasons, Harriet had explained when she asked Annie to have hers cut. Long hair was too easy to pull, if you were attacked, for one thing, and for another, short hair was a police tradition, and easier to keep tidy. Looking neat and capable also disguised the fact that you were a woman, and, in a male-dominated world, that helped.
Annie still saw herself as plain, for all the attention she got, but she’d discovered with surprise that a lot of other actors were just a
s shy and uncertain. Acting was one way of dealing with shyness. You hid inside the shell of someone else. When she was in a part, she could feel beautiful, brilliant, exciting, and make her audience see her that way.
When she took off her make-up, her real self-image took over again and her confidence crumbled. Her slow but steady rise in her profession hadn’t made any difference to the underlying uncertainty about herself.
She looked into her eyes and saw the nervous glitter in them; she was always keyed-up before she started work, afraid that this time the magic wouldn’t work, she would fail, make a fool of herself.
‘CID card, put it in your inside jacket pocket,’ said the girl who looked after props. ‘Handbag, check the contents with me?’
Annie pulled herself together to go through the neat black handbag item by item while they were ticked off to make sure continuity was preserved for that day’s filming.
She had to open the bag in the first scene; the contents would be visible and there was always an eagle-eyed viewer who would spot any discrepancy.
‘Valentine’s card,’ Props said and Annie’s head jerked up, her face turned white.
‘What?’ She looked at the stiff white envelope in the bag then, not touching it, suddenly sick. Oh, my God. How had he got it in there?
Then she heard the giggles and realised. She took a deep breath, forced a smile, reached for the card, willing her hand not to shake, opened the envelope and read the scrawled words.
‘Love from all of us!’
In the mirror, she saw them all crowding into the doorway, grinning at her and looking a little sheepish: all the technical people, cameramen, electricians, sound-men, Frank Goodwin towering behind them.
‘A day early,’ Frank said, ‘But you won’t be working with us tomorrow, and we wanted to give it to you, not send it.’
‘Thanks, guys! It’s gorgeous,’ she said, putting a hand to her lips and blowing them a kiss.
‘That’s enough fun and games from you lot, get back to work,’ Harriet said, but she was grinning too. She had been in on the joke.
Annie relaxed again but she was trembling faintly now, a thin film of perspiration on her forehead.
Automatically, she took her house keys and car key, from her own handbag, and her wallet, containing her credit cards and money, then her chequebook, and dropped them into the bag she would use on the set. She had nothing else of any value in her handbag; she could leave it locked in the caravan she used as a dressing-room.
Of course the Valentine couldn’t have been from him! Roger always sent them to her home. For seven years now, every Valentine’s Day, a card had arrived, printed in the now-familiar capitals. The message was always the same, too.
She hated the month of February. The minute it began she was on edge, waiting for the fourteenth and what it always brought. Other people yearned to get a Valentine. Annie dreaded them. One day, she knew, he wouldn’t just send a card – he would come himself. At first she had hoped he would stop, would forget about her – but he hadn’t, and gradually she began to understand that the waiting was part of the punishment. He wanted her to sweat. He was biding his time somewhere out there, playing cat-and-mouse with her, making her wait until he was ready to pounce.
It wasn’t bluff, or an empty threat; the waiting was part of the pleasure for him. He was in no hurry to end her agony; he was enjoying it. Sadists got their deepest pleasure out of the slow twist of a knife in a wound, and Roger Keats was a sadist, a man who loved to humiliate and terrify.
Eight years was a long time to wait for revenge – but Roger hadn’t forgotten or forgiven. She had once expected him any minute, any day – but gradually she realised he wasn’t in a hurry. She had come to see that he wanted a long-drawn-out revenge, the slower the better, and the irony of sending her a Valentine’s card would appeal to his tortuous nature.
Where was he living? The postmarks on the Valentine’s cards gave her no clues – they were posted in a different place each time, as if he was always moving about. What was he doing? Working in a theatre? Repertory? A touring company? Or had he got a job in another field altogether? Maybe he was a travelling saleman? That was a job that would suit him, with a new woman in every town.
Would she even recognise him now? Eight years can change someone. Look at the way it had changed her. She had been a nervous teenager; now she was a woman used to giving out an aura of self-assurance, even if, on the inside, she was still prone to nerves and uncertainty.
But she couldn’t disappear the way he had. Fame made it impossible for her to hide. Since The Force took off up the ratings, her face was recognised everywhere; millions of TV screens took her into every home in the country.
She was a tethered goat waiting for a tiger to leap out of the jungle, hearing it move around, out of sight, in the darkness of the thick green leaves, hearing it breathe, feeling the gleaming eyes fixed on her.
Of course, she could have changed her address, moved to a new house, but her mother wouldn’t leave their home in the London streets among which she had lived for so long, and Annie couldn’t leave her mother.
She couldn’t even explain to Trudie why she wanted to move, because Trudie no longer had a grasp of reality. Annie loved her mother, and it frightened her that Trudie was becoming so forgetful, always having little accidents, unexplained breakages happening if you took your eye off her. Annie wouldn’t do anything that upset her mother because Trudie was scared enough as it was; she knew she was losing her mind and she went in dread of getting worse.
It was all too much like Auntie Edie, who had died without ever remembering who she was, let alone who anybody else was. How long before Trudie’s memory lapses grew longer, her moments of lucidity fewer?
Annie paid someone to come in and look after her mother while she was at the studio, but Trudie could be amazingly cunning. She kept getting out of the house alone, to go shopping and buy things she didn’t need, pointless, inexplicable things.
Once she bought hundreds of light bulbs. Another time it was bolts of material for curtains she could no longer make, or she ordered carpets and furniture. Annie had a problem cancelling some of these purchases.
Other times her mother went out and was missing for hours because she had forgotten the way home, or forgotten her name and address. Sometimes she began to cook and then wandered off, leaving a saucepan on the hob to burn and set light to the kitchen – the fire brigade had to be called.
She’ll have to go into a home, Annie kept being told, but she hadn’t the heart to take the medical advice. She would miss her mother too much. She would hate living alone and, anyway, Trudie would be so frightened and unhappy if she was taken away to a strange place among strange people with nothing familiar around her. Whatever the doctors might say, Annie was convinced that nothing would more surely hasten her mother’s collapse.
Annie stretched with a yawn, and went out into the market, where Harriet was in conference with Frank Goodwin and the cameraman, Pete, over where the cameras should be sited. The three of them kept peering into the camera, checking out what would be in shot, moving the camera again, trying a new angle.
Trudie Lang sat in front of the TV set, staring into the blank screen and seeing herself reflected. She was knitting, making a scarf for Annie, a long, long bright red scarf which was trailing down to the floor already.
‘You haven’t turned it on,’ said the woman who was supposed to look after her, and went across to flick the switch. Bright, smiling, unreal faces zoomed up out of nowhere.
‘I don’t want to watch it,’ Trudie said, but Jerri, her minder, ignored that.
‘And now the weather, Janice,’ said a voice from the TV.
‘I’m not Janice,’ said Trudie, hunting for the zapper down the side of her chair.
‘I’m going to make your breakfast, Trudie,’ Jerri said. ‘You sit here and watch the programme. There’s an interview with Annie later; you remember, she recorded it on Friday? You know you said you want
ed to see it.’
Trudie’s face lit up. ‘Annie?’
‘That’s right, you see, you do remember. You’ll enjoy that,’ Jerri said. ‘OK, sit there, like a good girl, and wait for it. I’ll cook your bacon and egg now.’
Trudie stared eagerly at the TV screen. Jerri went out and a moment later Trudie heard deafening pop music from the kitchen. She glared at the open door. What a racket. She got up stiffly and shuffled to the door to close it, but the grandfather clock in the hall began to chime as she got there so she slowly walked along towards it, counting. Four. Five. Six. Seven.
She got up early because she couldn’t sleep any more. Her eyes wouldn’t stay shut. They flew open every five minutes. She was afraid of sleep in case she died before morning. At one time she had prowled around the house all night until Annie started locking her bedroom door until morning.
She stood in front of the clock, staring at the cracked, yellowing face of it. Seven o’clock. Was it morning or evening? She opened the front door to look up at the grey sky.
The sun was a pale wraith like the moon; she wasn’t sure if it was getting dark or the sun was coming up. The trees growing all along the street were bare. Winter, she thought, shivering.
A car slowed down opposite the house; the driver turned his head to stare at her. Trudie felt a jab of alarm. What was he looking at her like that for? He drove on a little way and parked. She saw him getting out of the car. Was he coming back here?
Trudie had a feeling she knew him and didn’t like him. Was he one of the neighbours? Once she had known them all, everyone who lived in the street, but over the years one by one they had died, moved out, sold up, and now she knew hardly anyone.
He began to walk back towards her. I’m not talking to him, thought Trudie. She closed the door behind her and hurried away, down the road.
The air was chilly; she shivered. Have I got my shopping bag? No, she’d forgotten it. She felt in her pocket and hadn’t got her door keys, either, so she couldn’t go back; she would have to buy a plastic bag. What had she come out to buy, though? Oh, well, it would come back to her. Trudie set out down the road in her slippered feet, an old woman with thinning grey hair, walking along in a nightdress and dressing-gown which blew around her in the winter wind.
In the Still of the Night Page 6