In the Still of the Night

She stood there on the path, waiting for him to turn round. He spun round the corner so fast, his bike leaned over, almost touching the ground. She heard the sound of the engine fading. Then silence. Still she stood there, minute after minute, like a statue, only her eyes alive. Johnny would come back to her. He was upset. He would come back when he got over the first shock.

Then the phone began to ring. Annie ran to answer it, her face lighting up, but it wasn’t Johnny.

‘Don’t think you’re going to get away with what you’ve done to me,’ Roger Keats said thickly. ‘I’ll get you, if it takes the rest of my life. I’ll have you, one way or another. You’re going to pay, you little bitch. I’m going to make your life hell.’

She dropped the phone blindly.

Her mother came home a minute or two later and found the front door open, snow blowing in across the carpet, and Annie lying on the hall floor in a dead faint.

Trudie Lang acted the way she always did, quickly and with commonsense. First, she shut the front door, then she called their doctor, and only after he had said he would come at once did she deal with Annie, help her to her feet, make her lie down on a sofa, got her a glass of water.

The doctor only lived two streets away. He arrived before Trudie had had a chance to talk to Annie.

He examined Annie, asked her questions; and that was when Trudie Lang discovered that her daughter was pregnant.

Annie had suspected it for a couple of months, but had kept hoping it wasn’t true, that her periods would start again. It was the way she always dealt with problems, she knew that and she kept meaning to change, but she didn’t. She went on hoping that by ignoring a problem she could make it go away. That was why she had ignored Roger Keats until he forced her to do something about him. Now she was being forced to admit that she was going to have a baby.

‘Ring and make an appointment for your first check up at the antenatal clinic,’ the doctor told her, writing out a prescription. ‘And get these – they’ll calm you down a little.’

Trudie Lang had just stood there without making a comment while the doctor was there. She had grown up in the school that didn’t wash the family’s dirty linen in public. She waited until the doctor had gone before she let her rage show. Coming back into the room where Annie still lay on the sofa, she came over and slapped Annie violently round the face.

‘You stupid little bitch. And don’t look at me with those big eyes. I’m not a man to be taken in by them. You’re not so dumb you don’t know what you’ve done. That’s the ‘end of acting for you. That’s your whole career down the drain. And for what?’ She shook Annie until it felt as if her head would come off.

‘Don’t, Mum!’

Hoarsely, Trudie threw at her, ‘It’s Johnny Tyrone’s baby, isn’t it? Oh, don’t lie. I can see it in your face. I knew you were seeing a lot of him when I wasn’t here, but I thought you had more sense than to … Christ, Annie, if you had to sleep with him, why in hell didn’t you go on the Pill?’

Helplessly, Annie shrugged. ‘The first time, it just happened, there was no time to think, and after that it didn’t seem to matter.’

Her mother looked at her as if she hated her. ‘How could you be so bloody stupid? After all I’ve sacrificed for you, the years of scrimping and saving to pay for your lessons, all the hours I’ve spent taking you to ballet class and piano lessons.’

‘I didn’t ask you to! It was all your idea in the beginning, you wanted me to be an actress, you pushed me …’

‘You little bitch!’ Trudie shouted. ‘I did it all for you – and you’ve started to get somewhere, I saw all the fuss they made of you when you were in Hamlet, you could be famous and rich – but you’ve chucked your chances away by letting some boy talk you into his bed. Well, he’ll have to marry you, he isn’t getting out of it. It takes two. He can take responsibility for what he’s done. I’m not keeping you and your bastard.’

Tears ran down Annie’s white face. ‘I’m sorry, Mum. Don’t be angry, I’m so sorry.’

‘Too late for that, isn’t it?’ Trudie bitterly said. ‘You had your big chance and you blew it. I’ll never forgive you.’ But the black rage had died out in her eyes as she watched her daughter’s tears. ‘He’s working tonight, is he? Did he say when he’d be back? I’ll wait up for him. I want to speak my mind before I get some sleep tonight. Butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth. I should have known, but I trusted him, I trusted the pair of you. More fool me. Wait till I see him! You’d better get to bed, you look half-dead.’

Annie was afraid to let her talk to Johnny alone. ‘I’ll wait, too,’ she insisted, and wouldn’t let her mother bully her into going to bed.

They waited until the early hours but Johnny didn’t come back. Disturbed and anxious, Annie went to bed at last, but didn’t sleep. Next day, her mother got in touch with his newspaper, but he wasn’t at work.

The editor had no idea where he might have gone. He said he had just been about to ring them to ask if Johnny was ill.

After hanging up, her mother turned on her, her mouth bitter, ‘He knew about the baby, didn’t he? You told him, and he’s bolted.’

‘No, I didn’t tell him!’ Annie was frantic with worry and unhappiness. Where could he have gone? Why had he run out like that? Had he been so appalled by her story that he never wanted to see her again?

‘Well, he owns that house, he can’t leave that behind. His lawyers will know where he is. I’ll get the truth out of them.’

Trudie rang Johnny’s solicitors later that morning, but they claimed they had not heard from him either.

‘I didn’t believe a word of it,’ Trudie said furiously. ‘But I’m not giving up on Master Johnny. He isn’t getting out of this. He had his fun, now he’s going to pay for it.’

Annie put her hands over her ears, screaming. ‘Don’t say that, don’t say that.’

She ran upstairs and locked herself in her bedroom. She got under the bedcovers, pulled them up over her head. She felt as if she was falling to pieces, her mind made scratchy, disconnected noises, like the sound of a fingernail down a window, every time she remembered yesterday, those moments with Roger Keats, the hatred in his eyes when he leapt to grab her by the throat.