He looked paler than ever, his eyes a darker blue. ‘God knows. I never remembered afterwards – I was taken to a hospital nearby, I was unconscious for a few days, when I came to I had some sort of memory blank. It was days before I could remember a
nything much, but when my memory started coming back I asked for a phone and they wheeled a portable phone to my bed, and I rang you, but your mother said you had gone away, she wouldn’t say where, she said you never wanted to see me again, and to leave you alone.’
That was the moment when Annie believed him. She clutched at a chair, sat down. Oh, God, so that was it? All this time she had been blaming Johnny for leaving when it had been her mother who sent him away.
‘I rang every day for weeks, but she just hung up every time she heard my voice,’ Johnny said in a slow, heavy voice, staring at her. ‘I kept hoping you would answer the phone, but you never did. Why, Annie? Why didn’t you ever answer the phone? Where were you?’
‘I was ill; I had … a sort of nervous breakdown …’ She wanted to tell him about the baby, but she couldn’t, she couldn’t get the words out. She had never talked about it to anyone, it was all bottled up inside her, buried deep inside, an agony she was afraid to release because of what might spill out of her, emotions she had not felt able to face at the time and couldn’t even now. Locking it all away had seemed the only way to cope with what she felt.
‘Nervous breakdown?’ He stared at her, his irises dilated, glistening with feeling. ‘Was that over what happened with your drama school tutor? What was his name? The bastard who …’
‘Roger Keats.’ She shuddered as she said his name aloud.
‘Roger Keats,’ Johnny repeated, looking confused, as if he didn’t remember exactly what had happened. ‘That’s right. But … you said they were going to sack him.’
‘I left the school anyway, I never went back after that day. I was ill – my mother didn’t lie about that. It was a bad time for me, I don’t like to remember.’ She had been in hospital for a few days, having the abortion, and after that she had been very depressed.
He stared at her fixedly. ‘Was that because I left, then?’
She flushed. ‘Oh, it was all such a muddle, I just hate remembering. I didn’t know where you had gone, or why – it was a terrible time. I don’t actually remember it in much detail.’ She had never wanted to; she had only wanted to forget. ‘I tried to find you … I rang the police, and the hospital, and later on … weeks later … I went to see your solicitor, but he wouldn’t tell me anything. Why wouldn’t he tell me you had been in an accident? Did he tell you I’d been to see him?’
‘No, but I’d given him instructions not to tell anyone where I was, by then. I’d decided just to vanish, once I faced the fact that you weren’t going to write back.’
Puzzled, she watched him intently. He was wearing dark blue jeans and a black shirt without a tie, open at the collar. The clothes fitted him like a glove, emphasising his long legs and small waist. He looked very fit, and yet there was a gauntness about him, as if he had been ill. His face had no colour in it which was maybe why those eyes looked so blue.
‘Why didn’t you want anyone to know where you were? Where have you been all this time, Johnny?’
He looked away, frowning. ‘In prison.’
It was like an aftershock during a time of earthquakes; she stared at him incredulously, feeling the tremors running through her, no longer certain of the ground she stood on, afraid to move because nothing was safe or sure any more.
First she had had to come to terms with the idea of Johnny having crashed his bike, of his claim to have rung, her, of her mother having lied to her in order to separate them. And now this!
He looked back at her, his mouth a white line in his pale face. ‘You might as well know the truth. When I crashed I was being chased by the police for speeding. I drove off that night in such a state of mind that I didn’t know what I was doing. I was doing around a hundred miles an hour, but I didn’t even know it. The police stopped me, and I lost my temper, attacked one of them, hit him with a spanner, and drove off again. I crashed an hour later.’
Another deep tremor of shock shook her. ‘Johnny,’ she whispered. ‘I can’t believe it, Johnny – you of all people. I can’t imagine you being violent.’
‘I was almost crazy that night; half out of my mind after what you’d told me … I drove around in a daze, I didn’t know where I was going, or what I was doing, I wanted to kill someone, and when the police stopped me I just went for one of them. He was a big chap with a bullet head; he started pushing me around, and I lost my temper. I hit him hard, I half killed him and I got ten years for it.’
She couldn’t believe her ears. Johnny, trying to kill a policeman? She thought of him eight years ago, a skinny boy … Well, he wasn’t skinny any more. Still slim, of course, but his shoulders were wide under that shirt, his chest deep; when he moved she saw muscles ripple against the cotton cloth. He was different in other ways; this man was not the boy she had known. She couldn’t imagine her Johnny trying to kill anyone. He had been too gentle.
‘Eight years in prison … it must have seemed like a lifetime,’ she whispered.
‘It did,’ he flatly agreed. ‘When I came out of hospital I went straight into prison. If you half kill one of them, the cops make sure you don’t get bail. I had to wait months before my trial. I’m surprised you didn’t read about it, there was quite a lot of press coverage.’
She shook her head dazedly. ‘I rarely read newspapers, don’t you remember? I still don’t read them, especially the review pages. They depress me.’
And for a year or two after Johnny vanished and she had the abortion she had been so unhappy that nothing she did, nothing that happened around her, had made any impression. She had been in a fog of misery.
Johnny smiled quickly. ‘I remember. I remember everything.’
They looked at each other and she could barely breath.
Huskily he said, ‘I pleaded guilty, although my lawyer thought I was mad. I got ten years, but I only did eight. I came out a few weeks ago.’
‘So all this time, all these years, you’ve been in prison?’
He nodded as if he wasn’t really listening. His eyes were staring at the wall behind her, their centres black holes into which his thoughts had vanished. What was he seeing? What terrible things had happened to him in prison? No wonder he was so pale and gaunt, as if he had been living at the bottom of a deep, dark hole. She felt her heart move with pity.