At noon the following Friday the crew broke for lunch. Annie had no more scenes that day and decided to eat lunch at home but as she was heading for the lift Harriet caught up with her and put a hand on her arm to detain her. ‘You haven’t forgotten you’re doing interviews in your dressing-room?’
Annie groaned. ‘Oh, no! I had. Remind me … who is it I’m seeing?’
‘You’ve got a mind like a sieve!’
‘I’ve got other things to think about at the moment,’ Annie snapped, and Harriet gave her a quick, sympathetic look.
‘How is your mother?’
‘Much the same. Very confused, and in a lot of pain unless they dope her up to the eyeballs.’
‘Sorry, Annie. It must be hard to concentrate when you’re so worried.’ Harriet gave her one of those comradely little pats on the shoulder. ‘OK, first you’re seeing a woman from The Sun. From what publicity tell me, she’s working on a big spread on women playing tough roles, no problem there for you. Just give her the stuff she wants and be friendly.’
‘Who is it? Do I know her?’
‘Bella Oxford?’
‘Never heard of her.’
‘She’ll be bringing a photographer.’ Harriet looked her over, nodding. ‘You’ll be fine in the suit, that’s her angle, she’ll want power dressing.’
‘OK. And the other interview?’
‘A reporter from Real Life Crime International Magazine.’
‘What the hell’s that?’
‘American originally – started up in Europe this year. They’re looking for stuff about the way we research the background material; they want to know how real our storylines are, if we work with the police, if we monitor court cases. All pretty obvious, don’t worry about it.’
‘Surely this is one for Sean?’
‘They will be talking to Sean, and me, but they want to talk to you and Mike, as well. They’ll want photos, too, but not today. – Publicity are supplying stills and official photos.’ Harriet gave her another encouraging pat. ‘The Sun woman arrives at two; you’ve got a couple of hours, but don’t leave the building, Annie. We don’t want to have to chase after you, or make apologies to The Sun. Do you want a lunch tray in your dressing-room? Or are you going to the canteen?’
‘The canteen — at least I’ll get a different view,’ Annie said bitterly, and Harriet grinned at her.
‘Tough at the top, isn’t it?’
‘Oh, get stuffed!’ Annie told her as she stepped into the waiting lift.
She spent an hour in the canteen talking to friends. At two o’clock she was back in her dressing-room to do the interview with the woman from The Sun; the photographer, typically, spent ages trying tricky shots using the mirrors lining the room, and then wanted to take pictures in the studio with a camera in the background. The publicity girl, who was present, quickly ruled that one out. The interview itself went quite smoothly, and then the PR girl insisted on showing the photographer and journalist out to the front desk.
She came back ten minutes later with the second reporter. Annie was just pulling a polite smile on to her face when she saw the man’s face, and almost fainted. It was Johnny.
5
‘Hello, Annie’, he said, holding out his hand, ‘Long time, no see.’
She was dazed, but she had had years of training in hiding her feelings.
‘Hello, Johnny,’ she said huskily, and put out her hand to meet his.
His hand was cold; that made it real, she wasn’t dreaming. Her body jerked in shock. She was touching Johnny. After eight long years of dreaming about him, mourning for him, she was touching him again. It was like being reconnected to the electric main after being cut off. There was a surge of current so powerful that she couldn’t breath for a second or two.
The PR girl did a double-take. ‘Oh, you’ve met before?’ Her professional smile was in place but her eyes were irritated, reproachful as she glanced at Annie. ‘Annie forgot to tell me that.’
Annie could have pointed out that she hadn’t been told the name of the magazine reporter she was going to see, only the name of his magazine, but she didn’t, because she wasn’t even listening. Nor was Johnny. They stood there, hands clasped, looking at each other without saying a word. Her ears beat with hypertension, a roaring like the sea on a stormy day. How many times in the past eight years had she dreamt of seeing him, looked for him in busy streets, from buses or trains, wondered where he was, what he was doing, and why, why, why, had he walked out on her like that?
The PR girl gave them a sharp, curious stare. ‘Can I get you a drink, then? Coffee, tea?’
‘Tea would be nice,’ Johnny said, finally letting go of Annie’s hand.
The connection broken, she snapped awake, her blue eyes opening wide, dark with shock and disbelief.
Johnny was carrying a black leather briefcase in his other hand; setting it down on the smooth plastic top of the dressing-table, he took out a tape machine and began fiddling with it, his black head bent.
The PR girl asked Annie, ‘Tea for you, too? Or do you want coffee?’
‘Tea, please.’
The girl went out, closing the door quietly behind her.
Annie didn’t even notice her going, she was too busy watching Johnny’s mirrored reflection. He looked so different. But she would have recognised him anywhere. Johnny, she thought. Johnny. He was here, in the same room with her. She couldn’t believe it.
His eyes were still that dark, magnetic blue, his black lashes still as long and thick. He was not a boy any more, though. This was was a man, with a hard, striking face, rawboned and angular, very spare-fleshed, as if he ate very little.
His head lifted, he looked at her, right into her eyes.
‘Where have you been?’ she broke out. ‘Why did you go away without a word? You might at least have told me you were going.’
His voice was harsh. ‘What do you mean, without a word? I got in touch … I told you what had happened …’
She stared blankly at him. ‘You didn’t tell me anything. What are you talking about? You just ran out of the house and never came back. You left all your things upstairs in our spare room, you didn’t pay that last week’s rent, you simply vanished.’
‘I rang to explain and …’
‘Rang? You never rang us.’ She had listened for the phone hour after hour, for what had seemed like eternity, but must have been the next week or so, but he hadn’t rung.
‘Yes, I did – but your mother said –’
‘My mother?’ interrupted Annie, stiffening, alerted by the mention of her mother. Even at the time she had known that Trudie wanted to cut her off from Johnny, but Trudie had been at the shop most of the time, she hadn’t been in the house.
‘Yes, I kept ringing without getting a reply, then I realised you must both be out, you at the school and your mother at the shop, so I rang after six one evening and finally got your mother, but she said you weren’t there.’
‘When was this?’ Annie was trying to think back to that time, but it was as if there was a great stone wall in her memory; something had happened that was too painful to push through or see past. It made it hard to remember the exact sequence of events.
Johnny looked as uncertain as she felt. ‘I can’t remember the date … I was in hospital, I’d been in a crash and I had head injuries, I was still recovering when I rang, I was heavily sedated, and very confused.’
‘But I rang the police and the hospital, they said they hadn’t had any report of an accident that day.’
‘They wouldn’t know anything about it, it didn’t happen up here in London, I crashed on a motorway in the West Country, not far from Salisbury.’
Her eyes widened. ‘What on earth were you doing there?’
He looked paler than ever, his eyes a darker blue. ‘God knows. I never remembered afterwards – I was taken to a hospital nearby, I was unconscious for a few days, when I came to I had some sort of memory blank. It was days before I could remember a
nything much, but when my memory started coming back I asked for a phone and they wheeled a portable phone to my bed, and I rang you, but your mother said you had gone away, she wouldn’t say where, she said you never wanted to see me again, and to leave you alone.’
That was the moment when Annie believed him. She clutched at a chair, sat down. Oh, God, so that was it? All this time she had been blaming Johnny for leaving when it had been her mother who sent him away.
‘I rang every day for weeks, but she just hung up every time she heard my voice,’ Johnny said in a slow, heavy voice, staring at her. ‘I kept hoping you would answer the phone, but you never did. Why, Annie? Why didn’t you ever answer the phone? Where were you?’
‘I was ill; I had … a sort of nervous breakdown …’ She wanted to tell him about the baby, but she couldn’t, she couldn’t get the words out. She had never talked about it to anyone, it was all bottled up inside her, buried deep inside, an agony she was afraid to release because of what might spill out of her, emotions she had not felt able to face at the time and couldn’t even now. Locking it all away had seemed the only way to cope with what she felt.
‘Nervous breakdown?’ He stared at her, his irises dilated, glistening with feeling. ‘Was that over what happened with your drama school tutor? What was his name? The bastard who …’
‘Roger Keats.’ She shuddered as she said his name aloud.
‘Roger Keats,’ Johnny repeated, looking confused, as if he didn’t remember exactly what had happened. ‘That’s right. But … you said they were going to sack him.’
‘I left the school anyway, I never went back after that day. I was ill – my mother didn’t lie about that. It was a bad time for me, I don’t like to remember.’ She had been in hospital for a few days, having the abortion, and after that she had been very depressed.
He stared at her fixedly. ‘Was that because I left, then?’
She flushed. ‘Oh, it was all such a muddle, I just hate remembering. I didn’t know where you had gone, or why – it was a terrible time. I don’t actually remember it in much detail.’ She had never wanted to; she had only wanted to forget. ‘I tried to find you … I rang the police, and the hospital, and later on … weeks later … I went to see your solicitor, but he wouldn’t tell me anything. Why wouldn’t he tell me you had been in an accident? Did he tell you I’d been to see him?’
‘No, but I’d given him instructions not to tell anyone where I was, by then. I’d decided just to vanish, once I faced the fact that you weren’t going to write back.’
Puzzled, she watched him intently. He was wearing dark blue jeans and a black shirt without a tie, open at the collar. The clothes fitted him like a glove, emphasising his long legs and small waist. He looked very fit, and yet there was a gauntness about him, as if he had been ill. His face had no colour in it which was maybe why those eyes looked so blue.
‘Why didn’t you want anyone to know where you were? Where have you been all this time, Johnny?’
He looked away, frowning. ‘In prison.’
It was like an aftershock during a time of earthquakes; she stared at him incredulously, feeling the tremors running through her, no longer certain of the ground she stood on, afraid to move because nothing was safe or sure any more.
First she had had to come to terms with the idea of Johnny having crashed his bike, of his claim to have rung, her, of her mother having lied to her in order to separate them. And now this!
He looked back at her, his mouth a white line in his pale face. ‘You might as well know the truth. When I crashed I was being chased by the police for speeding. I drove off that night in such a state of mind that I didn’t know what I was doing. I was doing around a hundred miles an hour, but I didn’t even know it. The police stopped me, and I lost my temper, attacked one of them, hit him with a spanner, and drove off again. I crashed an hour later.’
Another deep tremor of shock shook her. ‘Johnny,’ she whispered. ‘I can’t believe it, Johnny – you of all people. I can’t imagine you being violent.’
‘I was almost crazy that night; half out of my mind after what you’d told me … I drove around in a daze, I didn’t know where I was going, or what I was doing, I wanted to kill someone, and when the police stopped me I just went for one of them. He was a big chap with a bullet head; he started pushing me around, and I lost my temper. I hit him hard, I half killed him and I got ten years for it.’
She couldn’t believe her ears. Johnny, trying to kill a policeman? She thought of him eight years ago, a skinny boy … Well, he wasn’t skinny any more. Still slim, of course, but his shoulders were wide under that shirt, his chest deep; when he moved she saw muscles ripple against the cotton cloth. He was different in other ways; this man was not the boy she had known. She couldn’t imagine her Johnny trying to kill anyone. He had been too gentle.
‘Eight years in prison … it must have seemed like a lifetime,’ she whispered.
‘It did,’ he flatly agreed. ‘When I came out of hospital I went straight into prison. If you half kill one of them, the cops make sure you don’t get bail. I had to wait months before my trial. I’m surprised you didn’t read about it, there was quite a lot of press coverage.’
She shook her head dazedly. ‘I rarely read newspapers, don’t you remember? I still don’t read them, especially the review pages. They depress me.’
And for a year or two after Johnny vanished and she had the abortion she had been so unhappy that nothing she did, nothing that happened around her, had made any impression. She had been in a fog of misery.
Johnny smiled quickly. ‘I remember. I remember everything.’
They looked at each other and she could barely breath.
Huskily he said, ‘I pleaded guilty, although my lawyer thought I was mad. I got ten years, but I only did eight. I came out a few weeks ago.’
‘So all this time, all these years, you’ve been in prison?’
He nodded as if he wasn’t really listening. His eyes were staring at the wall behind her, their centres black holes into which his thoughts had vanished. What was he seeing? What terrible things had happened to him in prison? No wonder he was so pale and gaunt, as if he had been living at the bottom of a deep, dark hole. She felt her heart move with pity.
Suddenly he broke out, voice hoarse, ‘And your mother never told you I’d rung? She never even told you? And the letters – I wrote to you from prison for a few months … and never had a reply.’
‘Letters?’ Annie was shaking. So there had been letters too, letters she never got. Letters her mother must have destroyed – oh, how could she? How could she do such a cruel thing?
‘Why?’ Johnny muttered. ‘Why? Why did she do that to me, to us? I thought she liked me, I never did her any harm, I was fond of her.’
‘When you rang, did you tell her you were in hospital?’
He nodded. ‘Of course I did.’
‘Did you tell her about the crash, about the policeman you had hit? About having to go to prison?’
‘No, I just said I was in hospital. But when I wrote, later, it was from prison.’
Annie groaned aloud. ‘That explains it, then.’ Her mother’s ambition had driven her to separate them. She hadn’t approved of Annie getting involved with Johnny, anyway – he couldn’t help Annie, couldn’t push her towards success. When she discovered that Annie was pregnant by him she had been furious – and then Johnny wrote to her from prison. Trudie must have opened the letter. Annie could imagine her feelings when she read Johnny’s news.
Trudie had always been obsessed with respectability; her working-class background had taught her you had to work hard to survive. It was bred in her bones, the grim understanding of how easy it could be to slip, to slide down into poverty and hopelessness.
Discovering that Johnny was in trouble with the police, she would have been ruthlessly determined to part them for ever. He wasn’t dragging Annie and Trudie down with him.
Johnny looked hard into her face, as i
f hunting for something in her eyes.
‘She didn’t want you involved with me any more if I was going to prison for years? Well, I can’t blame her for that. I couldn’t have offered you anything; I was guilty, I couldn’t deny the charges, I knew I was going down for a long time. Maybe I shouldn’t have tried to contact you, maybe she was right.’ He held her eyes. ‘But … if you had got my letters would you have written back, Annie?’
She nodded, unable to speak.
He looked as if he didn’t believe her. ‘Sure? Would you – knowing that I was going to be in prison for years?’
‘Yes.’ Nothing could have come between them if he hadn’t simply vanished from her life. She had needed him, it had hurt her badly to lose him. It hurt her now, to realise how it had happened, to know that her own mother had deliberately separated them. And the baby, she thought, anguish turning in her like a knife. She made me kill my baby.
She pushed the thought aside. She always did. She had never been able to bear the memory. Those few weeks of her life had been hell. She had blanked them out in self-protection.
The door opened and the PR girl came in with a tray; she looked from one to the other quickly. ‘Interview going well? I’m sorry, but I’ll have to hurry you, Mr Tyrone. Miss Lang is needed back on the set for a re-take in half an hour.’
‘Sure,’ Johnny said, switching on his tape machine. ‘Now, where were we, Miss Lang? Oh, yes, tell me, how much research did you personally do before you began work on the series?’
Sean watched Marty Keats on the edge of the set; her mouth full of pins, she was adjusting the fit of a policewoman’s jacket.
‘It’s a size too big!’ protested the actress inside the jacket.
‘It won’t show when I’ve finished; stand still, for God’s sake.’ Marty was pinning rapidly as she spoke without moving her lips.
‘Come on, come on,’ shouted the studio manager. ‘Harriet’s waiting for her!’
Marty stood up. ‘That’s the best I can do.’
The actress looked into a mirror leaning against the wall, groaned, and ran.
In the Still of the Night Page 15