In the Still of the Night

He was always sleepy in the mornings. He spent his long day running from job to job, and never had enough sleep, even at weekends.

His room was a narrow, oblong box, holding just a bed, a small chest of drawers, a wardrobe and a chair. A mirror hung on one wall. The window looked out over the garden; the curtains matched the coverlet on the bed, light green cotton. The walls were painted cream; there was something springlike in the colours. Annie had chosen them, had helped her mother do the painting, had made the curtains too.

When he was out and her mother was busy at the shop, Annie sometimes crept into the room. She liked to imagine him in there. She made his bed and tidied up, looked at the titles of the books he had put out on top of the chest of drawers. Some stood up, their spines showing, propped there by a little pile of other books on either side.

She listened to him breathing in the night sometimes, knew when he was asleep and when he was awake and reading. She even heard him turn the page, a light fluttering sound. He read a lot. He liked poetry, he had a lot of poetry books. Annie liked it, too; she was thrilled to see he liked the same poets.

One day when her mother was out shopping Annie lay down on his bed, her long blonde hair brushed down over her shoulders, and read Tennyson aloud.

She was so engrossed that she didn’t hear him let himself into the house or come quietly upstairs.

When he pushed open the door of his room she almost fainted. She dropped the book and jumped off the bed, her face dark red, trembling violently.

‘Don’t stop,’ he said, staring at her. ‘You read beautifully. You’re going to be an actress, aren’t you? Your mother told me. You’ve got a wonderful voice. Do you like Tennyson? He’s my favourite poet and that’s one of my favourite poems.’ He murmured some of the words she had just read aloud. ‘O, for the touch of a vanished hand and the sound of a voice that is still.’

His voice was so sad Annie’s eyes stung with tears. Had he been in love with someone who died? He sounded as if he really meant the words.

He sat down on the bed, patted the place next to him. ‘Read me some more. Please.’

That was how it began.

She started at drama school mid-September, a windy, bright, chilly day with leaves chasing down the gutters and wet cobwebs glittering like diamond windows in the hedges as she walked to the station.

She was tense and shaking as she joined the little crowd of other students pushing in through the open doors of the school. All the time, Annie was looking out for Roger Keats, but he wasn’t in sight. She checked her name on the lists hanging in the hall, and went off to the room indicated. That first morning was spent in having the daily routine explained, being shown which rooms to go to for fencing, dancing, singing lessons, after which they went to see the well-equipped gymnasium, the music rehearsal rooms, which were full of pianos and other musical instruments, and had padded doors with goldfish-bowl windows in them, double-glazing, and sound-proofing in the walls.

The new students soon began to recognise each other’s faces, got to know some of their tutors, and saw a lot of their year tutor, a short, ferocious man with a droopy moustache.

It was a long morning. Everyone was starving by the time they broke for lunch in the gloomy, narrow dining-room. It was self-service. They queued up with their plates to get salad and cold meat.

‘And I hoped I’d got away from school dinners!’ a girl behind Annie said glumly as they sat down again at one of the long, scratched tables. She had introduced herself earlier; Scott Western was her name, she claimed, but Annie suspected she’d made it up. A redhead, sylphlike and blue-eyed, she had already got a lot of attention from the tutor and every other male who had so far set eyes on her. She wore what Annie wore, jeans and a black top, but Scott wore it with a difference – on her it looked expensive. Maybe it was? She talked as if she came from a moneyed background.

Annie felt a jolt of shock as Roger Keats walked into the room. A gleam of autumn sunlight lit up his high forehead, the dark brown widow’s peak of his hair brushed back from his face, that very red mouth.

‘The vampire has arrived,’ Scott said in a sepulchral voice, and Annie almost choked on her salad. It fitted him exactly.

She wished she could laugh at him. She wished she had Scott’s laid-back assurance.

‘That’s the guy who auditioned me,’ Scott said.

Had he propositioned her, too? She was so lovely – surely he must have been interested in Scott?

Scott didn’t seem bothered, if he had. Annie was so on edge, she couldn’t swallow; she kept chewing one piece of ham over and over. Her throat seemed to have closed up.

He was prowling from table to table, pausing to talk to people.

Finally, he arrived at theirs. ‘Ah,’ he said, his moist lips curling upwards and his eyes glinting on Annie. ‘My Alice in Wonderland. I hadn’t forgotten you – but I’m rather busy just at present. I’ll see you soon.’

He walked away and Scott gave her a curious, sidelong look. ‘What was all that about?’

Annie swallowed the ham at last and almost choked. ‘No idea.’ She knew Scott didn’t believe her.

On her way to fencing class a week later Annie caught sight of Roger Keats again and tensed, but luckily he was too busy talking to a small, dark girl to notice her.

‘Dirty old man,’ muttered a boy behind her.

‘Is she his latest?’ someone else asked.

‘Yeah, silly bitch. I don’t know why they let him get away with it. But there’s a new one every term. I wouldn’t mind his job with perks like that.’