In the Still of the Night

‘I’ll kill you, you little bitch, you set me up …’

And the bone-white tension of Johnny’s face as she told him, the way he had rushed out, her last glimpse of him on his motorbike driving away through the snow, much too fast when the roads were so icy. Motorbikes were dangerous enough at the best of times, but when black ice coated the roads it would be so easy to crash.

She sat up in bed. That was it. An accident, he must have had an accident. Why hadn’t she thought of it before?

A second later, she was running barefoot down the stairs in her nightdress. Her mother was in the kitchen; Annie could hear the kettle whistling. Her hand trembling, she looked up the local police station number and rang them, but they had no reports of any accident involving a motorbike in the past twenty-four hours.

‘He’s your lodger and he’s gone off without a word? Paid his rent, has he?’ said the police sergeant she spoke to, and when she hesitated, said drily, ‘Ah, run off without paying, then? Happens every day. Chalk it down to experience, miss.’

She rang the local hospital next, but there had been no motorbike rider brought in after an accident. No Johnny Tyrone was a patient on any of the wards.

She tried to think what other avenue she could explore, but her mind had gone blank. Her brief spurt of energy all gone, she went back to bed.

Johnny might have gone to ground in his grandmother’s house, of course. Maybe he would be back once he had got over the shock of what she had told him? If he didn’t come tomorrow she would make her way there; it was a long, roundabout route on buses or Underground, and then a long walk along the little-used back road through the forest. She didn’t feel up to the journey today. She would g

o tomorrow.

Next day, however, she was running a temperature so high that the doctor was afraid it might turn into pleurisy. Her mother shut the shop for the day to stay with her; Annie was almost hallucinating, flushed and breathing thickly, tossing and turning in the bed. It was a week before she recovered enough to get up and come downstairs in the afternoon.

There had still been no sign of Johnny; she was beginning to think he was never coming back.

That evening she and her mother had a visit from Derek Fenn, the TV actor-producer who had been at the first night of the school production of Hamlet, and who Roger Keats had claimed wanted her to appear in his children’s series.

Derek Fenn was in his late thirties, a slight, distinguished-looking man with rather mournful dark eyes. She had asked around about him after meeting him at the first-night party for Hamlet. Everyone else seemed to know all about him. He had once been a Shakespearian star at Stratford, but his star had set when he started hitting the bottle, forgetting his lines and even falling over on stage.

‘Went to pieces, couldn’t cut it any more,’ Scott had told her. ‘He drifted into TV, an easier option for a drunk. He only has to remember a few words at a time and if he bangs into the furniture they sober him up with black coffee and start again. Easy-peasy lemon-squeezy.’

‘How sad,’ Annie had said, remembering his melancholy eyes.

‘Drunks aren’t sad, they’re pathetic,’ Scott had said scornfully. ‘He’s lucky – he’s still a big name. TV makes you more famous than Shakespeare.’

Her mother was certainly impressed by him, but she wouldn’t leave Annie alone with the man; she was afraid of what Annie might tell him. Derek Fenn seemed to find that amusing; he was flattered, imagining that it was his reputation with women that was making Trudie Lang so edgy.

‘You know why I’m here?’ he smoothly asked Trudie, accepting the small glass of sherry she had offered him.

Trudie smiled hopefully. ‘You tell me.’

He gave her one of his practised smiles. ‘I saw Annie do Ophelia – a very moving experience, such a little, lost girl. I’ve never seen it played quite so young before, but it worked, I was very impressed. I think she would be perfect for a very interesting part in my new series.’

‘I can’t. I’m pregnant,’ Annie bleakly said, not caring.

Trudie almost hit the roof.

‘Oh, that’s right! Ruin the last chance you’re likely to get! Why did you have to open your mouth? You stupid little bitch.’

Derek Fenn stared at Annie, frowning. ‘How many weeks? Are you going to have it?’

‘Well, that’s it,’ Trudie said. ‘The boyfriend has dumped her and God knows what she’s going to do.’

Tears came into Annie’s eyes. They still hadn’t heard from Johnny; she was afraid he had gone for good. She missed him badly, she had never been so unhappy in her life. She had believed he loved her as much as she loved him. Why had he gone away? Did he blame her for what Roger Keats had made her do? Oh, God, surely, surely, he hadn’t thought she enjoyed doing it? Didn’t he know her better than that?

‘Go to bed, Annie. I’ll talk to Mr Fenn,’ her mother ordered, and Annie listlessly got up. She didn’t care about losing the TV job. All she thought about was Johnny, and her mother would never let her leave the house; she wasn’t left alone all that week. Trudie had closed the shop, hung a sign on the door, Closed Through Illness.

All Annie’s decisions had always been made by her mother. Trudie made them now and Annie didn’t have the strength to argue. She no longer cared what happened to her. Sadness consumed her; she just did what she was told, unquestioning, indifferent, even to signing a letter to the drama school which her mother wrote for her, resigning her place.

She got a phone call from her friend Scott a week later. Annie was helping her mother cook lunch when the phone began to ring out in the wide hall passage.

Trudie hurried out to answer it. Annie checked on the potatoes simmering on the stove, then looked out of the kitchen window at the grey wintry day, hearing her mother say sharply, ‘Yes, who is it?’