In the Still of the Night

‘They couldn’t trace him. She had to wait years before she could divorce him in his absence – she only did it a couple of years ago. Funnily enough, a few weeks after the divorce came through she says she met someone who had seen him in Devon, working for a rep company touring the West Country.’

Annie was icy cold. She looked around the market – he could be here, now, watching them.

There were all these men working on the series – he could be one of them. Extras playing policemen, anonymous in their uniforms, wearing helmets which half-hid their faces; actors in one of the bit parts as market traders or criminals; the various craftsmen, electricians, sound men, carpenters who put together mock façades to change the look of shops and houses. There were a dozen different trades working on any programme and they were often switched around, apart from the top men who Harriet liked to have working with her.

Roger could have changed his appearance out of all recognition in eight years. She might be seeing him every day without knowing him.

Trudie Lang was lost; she had been walking for ages and she didn’t recognise any of the streets. She had a feeling she had lost something. Had she been alone, or had Annie been with her? Her heart skipped a beat. She turned to go back home and stopped, confused. Which was the way home?

‘I’ve lost my little girl,’ she said to a man walking just behind her. ‘Have you seen her? She’s so high …’ She held her hand knee high. ‘With long blonde hair and blue eyes.’

The man was wearing jeans and a thick denim jacket with a black sweater under it. I’ve seen him before somewhere, Trudie thought.

‘Do I know you?’ she asked uncertainly, and then remembered the car that had stopped, the face staring at her. That had been him, hadn’t it? He?

??d followed her!

‘Do you?’ he softly said.

Why had he followed her?

‘Who are you?’ Her voice quavered. She knew him, she was sure she knew him. A long time ago, she had done something terrible to him; she couldn’t remember what she had done but she was sure he didn’t like her, and she was frightened.

‘Let me take you home. Come along.’

He smiled, but she wasn’t taken in. She backed, staring. He was older than she remembered. What was his name? She tried to remember but it slipped away. That happened more and more often these days. She looked fixedly at his high forehead, the way his hair sprang back, thick and wiry, his eyes and mouth. Panic surged through her.

No, she knew now – she’d got it wrong. She hadn’t done anything terrible to him. It was the other way round. He had done something terrible to Annie. He had hurt her Annie.

Rage flared inside her. She ran at him, began hitting him with screwed up fists, punching him in the chest, the face.

‘You bastard … bastard … bastard … stay away from my Annie! Don’t you go near her, ever again.’

His face was livid. She saw rage, hatred, in his eyes, he reached towards her, she felt a blow in her chest, went flying backwards, off the pavement, just as a bus came towards them.

There was a grinding of brakes, the bus skidded sideways across the road, missing her by inches.

Trudie couldn’t remember what had happened for a moment. The bus had stopped; the driver got out and began shouting at her, passengers stared out of the windows, passers-by stood on the pavement staring, too. Trudie limped hurriedly across the road to the other side, ignoring them all, began shuffling along beside iron railings, a green hedge behind them.

She looked through gaps in the hedge and saw green turf, trees. A park, she thought – of course, that was where Annie must be!

Annie loved to play in the park, on the swings, chasing a ball across grass.

When she got through the gates, though, she couldn’t see Annie anywhere. Maybe she had gone home? There were children running about everywhere, but Annie wasn’t with them.

Trudie had to sit down. Under a bare, chestnut tree stood a green-painted wooden bench. She staggered along the path to it, a hand to her heaving chest, and sank down with a groan.

She watched people walking their dogs and children going down the slide or swinging. Annie always loved to swing.

People stared back but nobody spoke to her.

‘Nosy parkers,’ she shouted at two women who were giving her a wide berth as they walked past, eyes like saucers. ‘What’re you staring at? Haven’t you got anything better to do?’

A policeman came through the iron gates of the park and headed towards her.

Trudie got up and began to run. The path was wet and slippery. She skidded and fell heavily.

Sean was back within twenty minutes, having rewritten the shooting script to cut Mike out of one scene; they began work at once, under the fascinated gaze of the crowds gathering in the market. It was a slow process with many stops and starts, and intensely boring for much of the time. People got bored with watching them after a while and wandered away, but there was always someone with time to kill.