In the Still of the Night

Automatically, she took her house keys and car key, from her own handbag, and her wallet, containing her credit cards and money, then her chequebook, and dropped them into the bag she would use on the set. She had nothing else of any value in her handbag; she could leave it locked in the caravan she used as a dressing-room.

Of course the Valentine couldn’t have been from him! Roger always sent them to her home. For seven years now, every Valentine’s Day, a card had arrived, printed in the now-familiar capitals. The message was always the same, too.

She hated the month of February. The minute it began she was on edge, waiting for the fourteenth and what it always brought. Other people yearned to get a Valentine. Annie dreaded them. One day, she knew, he wouldn’t just send a card – he would come himself. At first she had hoped he would stop, would forget about her – but he hadn’t, and gradually she began to understand that the waiting was part of the punishment. He wanted her to sweat. He was biding his time somewhere out there, playing cat-and-mouse with her, making her wait until he was ready to pounce.

It wasn’t bluff, or an empty threat; the waiting was part of the pleasure for him. He was in no hurry to end her agony; he was enjoying it. Sadists got their deepest pleasure out of the slow twist of a knife in a wound, and Roger Keats was a sadist, a man who loved to humiliate and terrify.

Eight years was a long time to wait for revenge – but Roger hadn’t forgotten or forgiven. She had once expected him any minute, any day – but gradually she realised he wasn’t in a hurry. She had come to see that he wanted a long-drawn-out revenge, the slower the better, and the irony of sending her a Valentine’s card would appeal to his tortuous nature.

Where was he living? The postmarks on the Valentine’s cards gave her no clues – they were posted in a different place each time, as if he was always moving about. What was he doing? Working in a theatre? Repertory? A touring company? Or had he got a job in another field altogether? Maybe he was a travelling saleman? That was a job that would suit him, with a new woman in every town.

Would she even recognise him now? Eight years can change someone. Look at the way it had changed her. She had been a nervous teenager; now she was a woman used to giving out an aura of self-assurance, even if, on the inside, she was still prone to nerves and uncertainty.

But she couldn’t disappear the way he had. Fame made it impossible for her to hide. Since The Force took off up the ratings, her face was recognised everywhere; millions of TV screens took her into every home in the country.

She was a tethered goat waiting for a tiger to leap out of the jungle, hearing it move around, out of sight, in the darkness of the thick green leaves, hearing it breathe, feeling the gleaming eyes fixed on her.

Of course, she could have changed her address, moved to a new house, but her mother wouldn’t leave their home in the London streets among which she had lived for so long, and Annie couldn’t leave her mother.

She couldn’t even explain to Trudie why she wanted to move, because Trudie no longer had a grasp of reality. Annie loved her mother, and it frightened her that Trudie was becoming so forgetful, always having little accidents, unexplained breakages happening if you took your eye off her. Annie wouldn’t do anything that upset her mother because Trudie was scared enough as it was; she knew she was losing her mind and she went in dread of getting worse.

It was all too much like Auntie Edie, who had died without ever remembering who she was, let alone who anybody else was. How long before Trudie’s memory lapses grew longer, her moments of lucidity fewer?

Annie paid someone to come in and look after her mother while she was at the studio, but Trudie could be amazingly cunning. She kept getting out of the house alone, to go shopping and buy things she didn’t need, pointless, inexplicable things.

Once she bought hundreds of light bulbs. Another time it was bolts of material for curtains she could no longer make, or she ordered carpets and furniture. Annie had a problem cancelling some of these purchases.

Other times her mother went out and was missing for hours because she had forgotten the way home, or forgotten her name and address. Sometimes she began to cook and then wandered off, leaving a saucepan on the hob to burn and set light to the kitchen – the fire brigade had to be called.

She’ll have to go into a home, Annie kept being told, but she hadn’t the heart to take the medical advice. She would miss her mother too much. She would hate living alone and, anyway, Trudie would be so frightened and unhappy if she was taken away to a strange place among strange people with nothing familiar around her. Whatever the doctors might say, Annie was convinced that nothing would more surely hasten her mother’s collapse.

Annie stretched with a yawn, and went out into the market, where Harriet was in conference with Frank Goodwin and the cameraman, Pete, over where the cameras should be sited. The three of them kept peering into the camera, checking out what would be in shot, moving the camera again, trying a new angle.

Trudie Lang sat in front of the TV set, staring into the blank screen and seeing herself reflected. She was knitting, making a scarf for Annie, a long, long bright red scarf which was trailing down to the floor already.

‘You haven’t turned it on,’ said the woman who was supposed to look after her, and went across to flick the switch. Bright, smiling, unreal faces zoomed up out of nowhere.

‘I don’t want to watch it,’ Trudie said, but Jerri, her minder, ignored that.

‘And now the weather, Janice,’ said a voice from the TV.

‘I’m not Janice,’ said Trudie, hunting for the zapper down the side of her chair.

‘I’m going to make your breakfast, Trudie,’ Jerri said. ‘You sit here and watch the programme. There’s an interview with Annie later; you remember, she recorded it on Friday? You know you said you want

ed to see it.’

Trudie’s face lit up. ‘Annie?’

‘That’s right, you see, you do remember. You’ll enjoy that,’ Jerri said. ‘OK, sit there, like a good girl, and wait for it. I’ll cook your bacon and egg now.’

Trudie stared eagerly at the TV screen. Jerri went out and a moment later Trudie heard deafening pop music from the kitchen. She glared at the open door. What a racket. She got up stiffly and shuffled to the door to close it, but the grandfather clock in the hall began to chime as she got there so she slowly walked along towards it, counting. Four. Five. Six. Seven.

She got up early because she couldn’t sleep any more. Her eyes wouldn’t stay shut. They flew open every five minutes. She was afraid of sleep in case she died before morning. At one time she had prowled around the house all night until Annie started locking her bedroom door until morning.

She stood in front of the clock, staring at the cracked, yellowing face of it. Seven o’clock. Was it morning or evening? She opened the front door to look up at the grey sky.

The sun was a pale wraith like the moon; she wasn’t sure if it was getting dark or the sun was coming up. The trees growing all along the street were bare. Winter, she thought, shivering.