In the Still of the Night

Alone again, Annie went round the house, checking that every door and window was locked, then she settled down to go over her words for tomorrow’s filming. They had rehearsed last week, but that seemed a very long time ago.

She went to bed early, afraid to go to sleep and yet knowing she had to – she was tempted to ring Harriet, but she had to face being alone sooner or later, so she took a sleeping pill to make sure she got some sleep or she wouldn’t be fit to work tomorrow.

She had set her alarm as usual; when it went off she woke with a violent start and then sat up, in pitch darkness, fumbled with her bedside lamp, and as it came on looking hurriedly around the room. This morning there was nothing out of place. She gave a long sigh of relief and slid out of bed. She had to hurry; the car from the studio would be here in fifteen minutes.

Before she left, she rang the hospital; the night sister was still on duty and was irritable when she first answered the phone, but as soon as she heard who was calling her voice changed.

‘Oh, hello! Your mother has had a good night, Miss Lang. Now don’t you worry, we’re taking the best of care of her.’

‘Was she still in a lot of pain during the night?’

‘No, she’s coming along nicely, for someone her age.’

Annie sighed. ‘Sorry to call you so early in the morning, but I won’t get another chance later.’

‘Off to the studio, I suppose?’ The night sister’s voice was fascinated. ‘You do get up early. Practically a night worker, like me, but your life is much more glamorous and exciting.’

‘Don’t you believe it,’ Annie said wryly.

‘Well, I’d change places with you any day,’ the sister said. ‘I bet you got hundreds of Valentines – I only got one! But that’s the one that matters!’

She couldn’t get away from reminders of Valentine’s Day, thought Annie later, as she was driven past shop windows still covered in a rash of red hearts and romantic cards, shiny heart-shaped balloons bobbing against the glass. It was an icy grey morning; she couldn’t stop shivering.

‘Why do we have Valentine’s Day at such a dead time of year?’ she thought aloud.

‘Cheer us all up and keep us going until spring? And make money,’ her driver said cheerfully, swearing as a boy on a motorbike swerved past them. ‘Lunatic!’ he yelled after the rider.

The boy looked back, saw Jason’s black face and snarled, ‘Get stuffed, nigger!’ sticking two fingers in the air in an obscene gesture.

Jason didn’t respond but his shoulders, under his black leather jacket, rose and fell in an involuntary, revealing shrug. Although she couldn’t see his face, Annie felt his anger and his pain.

‘How many Valentines did you get, Jason?’ she asked, to comfort him.

His shoulders relaxed again, he shot her a grin in the mirror over his head. ‘Six. One of them from Angela, my fiancée.’

He had been engaged to Angela ever since Annie met him. A backing singer with a group which was doing good business in the London pubs that year, Angela had a figure that made men’s heads turn and a voice like molasses. Annie had met her at a party thrown by Harriet for everyone associated with the series: technical people, actors, the catering staff, the drivers. Harriet had left nobody out, typically generous and thoughtful.

Angela seemed nice enough, but she was not, Jason said, favoured by his mother, who had very strict views on the sort of girl she wanted for her only son and thought Angela wasn’t good enough for her boy. Neither of the engaged couple seemed in a hurry to get married, however. Annie suspected that marriage was not actually on Angela’s mind at all. She enjoyed her life as a single girl too much.

‘Who were the others from?’

‘I got my ideas,’ Jason said, laughing.

Annie knew that quite a few girls who worked at the television studios fancied him, including one of the make-up girls who always asked after him when she was doing Annie’s face and hair. With his warm black skin, Jason was sinewy and lithe, had a lazy, sexy way of walking and a grin as wide as Texas.

‘How about you?’ he asked. ‘A couple of sackfuls, right?’

She managed a smile, nodding.

‘I love getting them, don’t you? Especially when they’re not signed and you have to guess who sent them … and you can send them yourself without feeling stoopid. You can write something really lush … yours forever … be mine forever … without being afraid of getting laughed at. I love it, I’m a romantic. Yeah, that’s me!’

Annie wished he would stop talking about it. She couldn’t bear it. ‘How’s your mum?’ she asked him.

‘She’s fine,’ he said, beaming be

cause she had asked, and watching her in the mirror, making a mental note of what she was wearing this morning, so that he could tell his mum that night, when he got home. Proud as punch, his mum was, that he drove Annie every day.

She never missed an episode of The Force, and the first thing she would say when Jason got in that night was, what did she wear today? Mind you, it was usually the same thing in the mornings; old blue jeans, a warm jacket in winter, a shirt in summer, a sweater, soft leather moccasins. She never wore make-up either, not that she needed it, with that clear, pale skin, and those great big blue eyes.