In the Still of the Night

‘I wish you could. I miss you. I’ve had Harriet for company, but it isn’t the same.’

‘Why can’t I come home, then? You don’t want me, that’s it, isn’t it? You’ve stuck me in here and you’re leaving me here.’ Trudie pulled her hand away and turned her head on the pillow, closed her eyes. ‘Go away, leave me alone.’

‘Of course I want you home, Mum, I’d take you home now if they’d let me! But you’re ill, very ill.’

Trudie ignored her.

‘Oh, Mum,’ Annie said hopelessly, on the point of tears. Her mother had always been so strong, always there for her – and now, just when she needed her most, Annie felt her mother had abandoned her.

She bent to kiss Trudie and got shoved away violently. Her mother looked at her with hatred. ‘You leave me alone! Go on, get out! You’re not my Annie … I don’t know you, who are you? It’s you, isn’t it? You, you’re trying to kill me!’

The noise brought a nurse hurrying over. ‘What’s all this?’ She smiled at Trudie. ‘Now, don’t be naughty, Gran. Don’t get into one of your little tantrums.’ She looked at Annie and said soothingly, ‘Better go, now. She’ll be quiet once you’ve gone.’

Annie bit her lip and walked away, fighting with tears. In the corridor she walked into a little bevy of student nurses who immediately surrounded her asking for autographs and firing questions at her about The Force.

‘Have you ever shot any scenes in here, in the hospital itself?’

She shook her head. ‘We did shoot a scene outside, but they wouldn’t give us permission to shoot in the actual hospital.’

‘If you ever did, we could be extras!’ a Chinese girl giggled, her hand politely in front of her mouth.

‘Less noise, please!’ the ward sister said, coming out to frown at them. ‘We have some very sick old people in this ward – we don’t want to upset them, do we?’

Annie made her excuses and left. None of the students had asked her why she was there.

Twenty minutes later, as Jason drew up outside her home, Annie saw Johnny’s car parked just in front of them. Her heart at once seemed to implode as if a giant hand was squeezing it; she could scarcely breathe and yet she was intensely happy.

Giving Jason a radiant smile, she handed him a £50 note. ‘I’m sorry you missed your fare yesterday, Jason. My fault. Buy Angela something pretty with this.’

He didn’t argue; the note vanished into his jacket as if sucked in by a vacuum cleaner. His grin broadened his face. ‘You’re an angel, Miss Lang. This’ll make our night. We’re going to a rave, out at Milton Keynes – starting at eleven o’clock; huge, utterly huge, should be magic, especially if I’ve got some cash to spend. Dancing in that sort of crush makes you real thirsty; they sell around a million popsicles.’

‘What?’ asked Annie, baffled.

He laughed. ‘Frozen drinks on a stick; really refreshing. You get hot enough to explode after a while – the bouncers walk around all night squirting the dancers with cold water. The floor’s like a lake by the early hours.’

‘Sounds too exhausting for me! Especially if it goes on most of the night!’ said Annie.

‘I bet you’d love it!’ Jason hesitated, then said, ‘My mum was real upset about Mr Fenn, she was a fan – and she said to tell you those things the papers printed about you, well, everyone knows they’re liars, nobody is going to believe stuff like that about you.’

His mother had said to him explosively that she’d like to go down town and burn those newspaper offices to the ground, printing lies about Annie Lang. A person only had to look at her lovely face with those big, innocent eyes, to know it couldn’t be true. Some actresses might go in for that carry-on, she said, but not Annie. She was much too nice.

Annie smiled at him. ‘Thank your mum for me – I only wish everyone was like her, but there is always someone who’ll believe the worst.’

‘Ain’t that the truth?’ agreed Jason.

‘But give your mum my love, and enjoy your rave.’

Annie got out and heard Jason drive off smoothly as she unlocked her front door. She switched off the burglar alarm she had set the last time she left the house, and switched on the hall lights.

Without turning round she heard the firm tread of his feet and closed her eyes, waiting, her pulses wild. The door closed and Johnny’s arms came round her possessively; she leaned back on him for a second then turned with uplifted face, her mouth parting.

They kissed as if for the first time, and also as if for the last time, with need and hunger and desperation.

I must be a masochist; I never thought I was, thought Annie, eyes closed, arms round his neck, almost strangling him they held him so tightly. Loving Johnny was a sort of self-torture, it hurt so much and yet even the pain of it pierced her with happiness.

‘I can’t lose you,’ Johnny muttered into her open mouth. ‘I would die if I lost you again.’

‘Me, too,’ she said. ‘Oh, Johnny, I love you so much it’s killing me. I almost wish I was dead because this would be the right time to die, while I’m so happy. I’ve never really been happy since you vanished like that. I’m scared, Johnny. What if we’re never this happy again in our lives? It would be better to be dead.’