Trudie had to sit down. Under a bare, chestnut tree stood a green-painted wooden bench. She staggered along the path to it, a hand to her heaving chest, and sank down with a groan.
She watched people walking their dogs and children going down the slide or swinging. Annie always loved to swing.
People stared back but nobody spoke to her.
‘Nosy parkers,’ she shouted at two women who were giving her a wide berth as they walked past, eyes like saucers. ‘What’re you staring at? Haven’t you got anything better to do?’
A policeman came through the iron gates of the park and headed towards her.
Trudie got up and began to run. The path was wet and slippery. She skidded and fell heavily.
Sean was back within twenty minutes, having rewritten the shooting script to cut Mike out of one scene; they began work at once, under the fascinated gaze of the crowds gathering in the market. It was a slow process with many stops and starts, and intensely boring for much of the time. People got bored with watching them after a while and wandered away, but there was always someone with time to kill.
Mike Waterford finally arrived at ten-fifteen. He was clearly hung-over, pale and with red rims to his dark eyes, his auburn hair only roughly combed. Before going off to make-up, he came over to Harriet.
‘Sorry I’m late, darling, I slept through my alarm. Touch of flu, I expect.’
‘Too much whisky, more likely,’ Annie muttered.
He ignored her, giving Harriet a coaxing smile. ‘Can you leave my scenes until I’ve had some black coffee? I’ve got a pig of a headache.’
‘There is some justice, then,’ Annie said and he turned on her, baring his very white teeth.
‘What’s your problem, sweetie? Time of the month – or haven’t you got it off lately?’
‘I’m just sick of you swanning in here four hours late when the rest of us have been here since crack of dawn!’
‘It shows, too,’ he sneered. ‘Or do you always look like death warmed up? Oh, yes, you do, don’t you?’
Harriet grabbed his arm and steered him away before Annie could hit him, took him off to wardrobe and sent someone to get him black coffee, and lots of it.
‘One day I’ll kill that bastard!’ Annie told her when she came back.
‘It was your idea to have him in the series!’ Harriet teased her, and her teeth met.
Unfortunately it was true, although the last thing Annie would have wanted was to put such an idea into Harriet’s head.
When they first began working together Annie had complained to Harriet that she couldn’t sleep late on a Saturday, although she usually had the day off, because at ten o’clock every Saturday morning the courier from the studio arrived on his motorbike with the script, which she had to go downstairs to accept in person.
‘No excuses. Billy has a bee in his bonnet about it,’ Harriet had said.
Billy Grenaby, the chairman of Midland TV, was approaching forty but looking much younger, a short man with wide shoulders and a deep chest, and dark hair turning grey in streaks. He had incredible amounts of sexual energy, which made him hyperactive; he couldn’t keep still for a second, and kept his eye on every single nut and bolt in the organisation. His marriage had failed a year ago when his much younger wife took off with a tennis player she met in Florida on a long holiday. The shock to his ego had left Billy’s temper on a short fuse, and he had become practically paranoid overnight.
The company offices came out in a rash of notices signed by Billy giving orders on everything from never, never going over budget down to remembering to turn off the light if you were the last to leave a room. He was unable to delegate, either because he didn’t trust anybody after his wife’s defection, or because he needed to know what everyone was doing.
‘But why can’t they just slip it through my letterbox?’ Annie had asked indignantly. ‘Why do I have to get up and sign for it?’
‘That’s what they used to do, but last year Mike Waterford turned up for a big day’s taping on that nuclear series, Meltdown, not knowing his words. Claimed he’d never been sent a script. The couriers swore one had been posted through his letterbox, but they couldn’t prove it. It was their word against Mike’s.’
Knowing Mike Waterford, Annie had backed the couriers. She had worked with Mike once or twice. Tall, with thick auburn hair and dark eyes, he was Sexy and charismatic, with a multitude of fans, but his colleagues knew him better than the public did. He was lazy, a heavy drinker, a womaniser, and a selfish actor, always turning up late, going out of his way to upstage and out-act anyone even if it ruined a production. In Annie’s book that was Mike’s unforgivable sin.
‘Billy should have sacked him,’ she said vindictively, and Harriet laughed, giving her an amused, knowing look.
‘What did he do to you? Personal, or professional?’
Annie had grimaced her distaste. ‘It would never be personal, I wouldn’t touch him with a barge-pole!’ Mike Waterford reminded her too much of Roger Keats – they were the same type. Under all that phony charm there was cruelty, malice, a delight in humiliating and hurting women.
‘He’s big box-office, though,’ Harriet had drawled, grinning. ‘Billy couldn’t sack him, much as he was tempted to – Mike was that series. No, they shot round him as much as they could, but it put the schedule back twenty-four hours and Billy went spare, you know how he hates delays. They cost money, and money is Billy’s life blood.’
‘Can I quote you?’
Harriet laughed wryly. ‘No, I like my job too much. Anyway, since Mike screwed up, a courier has to deliver a script to the actor in person, and get a signature for it. So don’t forget – you always have to be there on a Saturday morning to sign for the script.’
‘I won’t forget. At least Mike isn’t working on this series,’ Annie had muttered.
Harriet had done a double-take, her head whirling round as she stared with parted mouth and round eyes. Only six months later did Annie discover why – the day Mike Waterford’s name appeared in the tabloids as the new chief constable and co-star of The Force. It infuriated Annie that she had put the idea of hiring him into Harriet’s brain. Up till then, Annie had been the major name in the series: the rest of the cast were solid, well-known British character actors, trained in the theatre, highly professional, easy to work with, but none of them big names.
Annie herself hadn’t been a big name when she began working on The Force, but Mike was, undeniably, a star, with an enormous following and a big salary. Billy hadn’t wanted to pay anybody the sort of money a star would expect; the new police series had been intended to make money, not cost it.
Annie’s career had been considerably enhanced by appearing in the series. It had been a plus that she really enjoyed the part. What she had liked, particularly, was the fact that her policewoman didn’t have a man in the background.
Sean had created the central role of Inspector Ruth Granard as a very modern career woman, tough and ambitious, even abrasive in relation to the men she worked with, and so determined to get to the top that she had no time for a private life. She did not want to be distracted from her work.
There was an edge to playing the part that Annie enjoyed, and as Sean got to know Annie better he had given Inspector Granard more of Annie’s real character, given a spin to the role which had not been there before.
Annie’s very delicate, feminine looks made an ironic counterpoint to the toughness of the policewoman she played, and Sean emphasised the contrast between the way the character looked and the job she did, and always listened to Annie’s own views on the part.
They sometimes had lunch together, alone or with Harriet too, to talk over ideas for later scripts, and Annie liked the respect Sean gave her. Some writers got irritated if you tried to suggest ideas to them.
When they began work on a second series Harriet, though, had decided some changes were due. She’d felt the cast was unbalanced, and Billy Grenaby agreed with her.
&nbs
p; He was a tough businessman, but he had a simple mind when it came to programme-planning; his ideas were old-fashioned, basic, always taking the obvious line, which was probably why he had been so successful. He backed Harriet up a hundred per cent when she took her latest idea to him.
Nobody had told any of the cast what was afoot when the company began talks with Mike Waterford.
‘I don’t believe it! Tell me it’s not true!’ Annie had yelled at Harriet, waving the newspaper which had broken the story.
Unbothered by her rage, Harriet had laughed. ‘You gave me the idea yourself. Remember? When we talked about Mike and you said thank God he wasn’t in the series. I had a flash of inspiration. Don’t you see, this is what we need to turn a good series into a number-one hit? You two are going to make TV history. You loathe each other, and I’m going to make sure the media get to hear about it; they’ll eat it up.’
She had been proved right; the press had become obsessed for a long time with the famous ‘feud’ between the two stars of the series, and the torrent of publicity had pushed up the ratings week after week.
At eleven forty-five, with three brief scenes in the can, they broke for lunch from the mobile canteen. The food wasn’t cordon bleu stuff, but it was adequate – smoking hot pea soup in a mug, which was very welcome on a cold February day after standing around for hours waiting for cues, followed by either a cheese salad or beef stew and dumplings.
‘Stewed dog meat and cannon balls, you mean,’ Mike Waterford said to the girl dishing out the food. ‘Give me one of those cheese salads, darling.’
The girl gave him a fatuous smile. ‘Here you are, Mr Waterford. Would you like a jacket potato too?’
Annie was stamping her feet and blowing on her frozen fingers. ‘Get on with it, Waterford!’ she told him and Mike gave her a look over his shoulder.
‘What! my dear Lady Disdain, are you yet living?’
They had once appeared together at a charity benefit show in a scene from Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, playing the quarrelling lovers, Benedick and Beatrice, and ever since Mike had enjoyed quoting from the scene. He liked everyone to know that he was what he called a ‘serious’ actor, had played in Shakespeare, was a star, unlike the workaday hacks of television soap opera.
‘Oh, shut your face!’ snarled Annie.
‘Charming,’ Mike drawled, strolling away.
The girl behind the counter gazed after him, sighing. ‘He’s so gorgeous, isn’t he?’
‘Pea soup and cheese salad, please,’ Annie bit out.
The girl pulled herself together and handed over the mug of soup and the salad, giving her a filthy look with them.
Annie took her lunch back to her caravan, where she ate in front of the warmth of an electric fire, reading over the lines of the next scene. The lunch break was short. At this time of year, the light went fast, and they would start again at twelve-thirty, hoping to shoot another couple of scenes by four o’clock, after which they could all go home.
The first of these scenes worked without needing any retakes; after that they got in some close-ups while anyone not involved drank black coffee and huddled in their coats in the caravans, gossiping and hoping it would soon be time to go home.
The final scene of the day involved Mike, Annie and a number of police vehicles. The logistics of the operation were eased by the fact that by then the market had wound down and most of the people had drifted off, clearing the street.
Annie was sitting in a canvas chair watching Mike getting in and out of a police car while other cars raced towards him. The timing had to be exact; the stunt manager kept stopping the action and conferring with his stunt drivers before he tried again.
Annie was very tired now, she had run out of energy and kept yawning. Harriet gave her a wry grin.
‘Bored?’
‘Tired.’ Annie was never bored when she was working; she hoped to God she never would be.
‘You and me both.’ Harriet stretched, her face pale and exhausted by the strains of the long day.
One of Harriet’s trainees came running out of the production caravan, looked around and hurried over to them. She bent over Harriet and began whispering urgently.
Harriet turned to look at Annie, and, seeing her expression, Annie felt a leap of alarm and got to her feet. ‘Is something wrong? What is it? What’s happened?’
Harriet came and put an arm round her, watching her with concern. ‘There was a call from London Hospital – your mother’s been taken there, she’s had an accident.’
3
‘I’ll drive you there now.’
Annie was so distraught she didn’t realise who was speaking for a moment or two, then she recognised Sean’s deep voice and looked at him, her blue eyes wide and darkened with distress and anxiety.
‘That’s OK, I can get a taxi. Harriet will need you.’
Sean put a hand under her elbow, his face insistent. ‘I’ve finished here for the day. Someone should go with you.’
‘Yes, I agree, I’d come with you myself, but I can’t leave until this last scene is safely in the can,’ Harriet said. ‘I hope it isn’t anything serious, Annie. If you need time off, let me know – we can work round you or Sean can rewrite the script to leave you out of next week’s schedules.’
Annie nodded, but she was too worried about her mother to think of anything else. She followed Sean over to the sleek black Porsche, stopped and looked down at her suit, said abstractedly, ‘Oh, I should change into my own clothes. Wardrobe will want this back.’
‘Never mind that now, don’t worry about it.’ Harriet kissed her cheek. ‘Keep in touch. Ring me and let me know how your mother is.’
Sean started the engine and the Porsche shot away; Annie almost catapulted through the windscreen.
‘Seatbelt!’
The bark of Sean’s voice made her jump. She fumbled with the seatbelt, finally managing to slot it into place across her. What sort of accident had her mother had? It wasn’t the first time Trudie had hurt herself — she was always doing it, she got cuts and bruises all the time, but she rarely hurt herself badly enough to be taken to hospital and Annie was frightened. This might be it, the moment when her mother was taken away from her for good.
Doctors had been warning her for a year past that Trudie was fast losing her grip on reality, but she kept hoping against hope that her mother would improve.
When they reached the hospital’s grim Victorian grey walls, she stared up at them with foreboding.
‘It looks like a prison, doesn’t it? My mother hates coming here,’ she muttered, shivering.
‘She probably didn’t see it if she was in an ambulance,’ comforted Sean. ‘My mother hates hospitals, too, but she never lets on what’s really bugging her. She’s too busy looking after everyone else.’
Annie looked at him in such obvious surprise that he laughed.
‘What’s the matter? Didn’t you think I had a mother?’
She laughed too. ‘Is she proud of you for becoming a famous writer?’
‘She’s a fan of yours, rather than mine,’ he said, startling her again.
‘I’m sure she isn’t!’ Annie got out of the car; so did Sean.
‘Come home with me one day and meet her and find out.’ He locked his Porsche and turned to join her. ‘I’ll come in with you.’
‘I’ll be OK, I’ll get a taxi home,’ Annie said, but he ignored her protest and followed her as she hurried towards the great glass doors of the hospital, which slid apart electronically.
She looked small and lost in the busy ant heap of the hospital reception lobby – like a child, in spite of the grey suit and police haircut. She didn’t want him around, but he wasn’t being shaken off. She might need someone around to lean on if she got bad news about her mother.
Annie asked at the reception desk where she could find her mother, and was directed to the right ward. ‘On the first floor, keep turning left, follow the signs overhead, you can’t miss it,’ the
receptionist told her, staring. She was a woman in her forties, plump, fresh-faced, with henna-dyed hair. ‘You’re … are you … Annie Lang? The actress? You’re in that police thing, that soap … with Mike Waterford, aren’t you?’
Annie nodded, desperate to get to her mother, turning away.
‘I knew I knew you, the minute you walked in, I couldn’t put my finger on it, but I recognised you.’ The receptionist laughed excitedly, very flushed.
As Sean joined them the woman glanced eagerly at him, obviously hoping to recognise him, too. Her face fell when she realised she had never seen him before and she looked back at Annie.
‘I never miss your series, it keeps you on the edge of your seat – and that Mike Waterford’s so sexy. I love it when you and him have one of those fights. Mind you, in your shoes, I’d grab him before someone else does. Are we going to see you two get closer together? I did laugh this week, when he frisked that girl and she slapped his face! Tell him from me I’d let him frisk me any time.’
Annie managed a watery smile and escaped. Sean laughed softly as they walked miles along narrow, shadowy corridors to find the ward.
‘You see? The authentic voice of the great unwashed. She wants more of you and Mike – especially the fights, and she wants the two of you in bed. Billy’s right, damn him. Sex is what sells.’
Annie wasn’t listening to him, she would normally have snapped back angrily, but she couldn’t care less at that moment. She was too anxious.
The ward sister, tall and willowy, in white and blue, came out to meet them and gave Annie an eager smile, recognising her.
‘Oh, Miss Lang … it is you! You got our message, then? The TV people told us you might not get here for hours. You were quick.’
‘How is she?’
The sister’s face took on a more professional look. ‘Well …’ She glanced quickly at Sean and her expression changed, she seemed taken aback, even startled. ‘Are you related to the patient, too?’
Annie kept forgetting he was there. She shook her head. ‘A colleague.’
In the Still of the Night Page 9