couldn’t stop touching each other, as if needing the reassurance of touch to believe that they were really together again. He gazed into the flames, listening to the music, and she simply looked at him, drinking him in through her eyes. Every so often he would catch her wrist and pull her hand down to his mouth, kiss her palm.
‘Oh, Annie, God knows how many times I’ve dreamt of being back here with you when I was in prison. At night when we were locked up in our cells I’d lie on my bunk and stare at this tiny square in the wall that was my only view of the sky; sometimes you could see a star or two, or even the moon, although the prison wall was ringed with electric lights that reflected back from the clouds and made it hard to see anything else. I’d blank it all out, imagine this room, and you. It kept me sane. They let me have headphones and a personal cassette player. I had a tape of this music, and played it all the time because we’d liked to listen to it together, remember?’
‘I remember.’ Lying there, he looked so much like the boy she had known. She had waited for him all these years. Only now did she realise that she had turned her back on any other possible happiness because she secretly believed that one day he would come back to her.
And he had. No wonder it was easy to tell herself that nothing had changed between them, their love was exactly the same. At first it had seemed true.
But she was starting to doubt it. How could they both be the same?
No matter how you tried, you could not stay unchanged for years. Even for a short time, come to that. Life wouldn’t let you.
She was not the shy eighteen-year-old who had known Johnny eight years ago. He was not that gentle, eager boy. She wasn’t sure what changes time had made in her – but she could see some of the differences in Johnny, the visible ones, anyway. She smoothed out with her fingertips some of the lines etched into his brow and he closed his eyes, sighing.
‘That’s nice.’
‘You didn’t have any lines there, eight years ago,’ she thought aloud.
He laughed. ‘Maybe you just don’t remember them.’
‘I remember everything,’ she said, and he smiled again.
‘Do you, Annie? So do I. But I’ve had some help, of course. I’ve had pictures of you to remind me. Over the years I cut out hundreds of pictures of you from magazines and newspapers – and when I was arrested there was an old photo of you in my jacket pocket, taken here, in the garden, feeding the birds – do you remember that day?
She nodded, and he gave a ragged sigh.
‘I had that next to my bed, all the time I was in prison, alongside a photo of my mother.’
‘You loved her very much, didn’t you? I used to feel quite jealous, the way you always talked about her.’
‘She was wonderful. I wish you’d known her, I know she’d have loved you.’ His eyes glowed and she smiled down at him.
‘I’m sure I’d have loved her, too.’
‘She was always delicate. The years with him didn’t help – my father, I mean. He used to beat her up all the time. He couldn’t hold down a job, we never had any money – so he drank to forget what a stupid, useless failure he was. I hated him.’
His body was tense and strained, his face dark with angry blood. ‘If he hadn’t died I know he’d have ended up killing her.’
Annie was horrified. ‘Oh, Johnny!’
He picked up her disbelief and said fiercely, ‘Yes, he would! I’m sure of it. But once he was gone, everything was so different – we were so happy together. I was shattered when she died while I was still at school.’ He sighed. ‘At least she never had to know I was sent to prison.’
Hesitantly, she asked him, ‘Was it really awful being there?’
His eyes were wild. ‘It was a nightmare. Being shut in one tiny room year after year. I nearly went mad. Almost every night since I got out I dream I’m back there and I wake up sweating. I’ve got claustrophobia now; it started in prison. I felt the walls were starting to close in on me, I couldn’t breathe, thought I’d suffocate. I don’t know how I got through those eight years. I had no one to talk to – the other prisoners didn’t like me because I wasn’t one of them; I was educated, I’d been to college, I read a lot. We had nothing in common. And I was a target for some of the warders because I’d half killed a copper.’
Annie shivered. ‘Don’t talk about killing! Oh, Johnny, isn’t it terrible about poor Derek? I can’t believe it – he was the last person I would have expected to get murdered. Did you see Mike Waterford’s interviews in this morning’s newspapers? I was so angry!’
‘So was I. I’m amazed the TV company let him talk about you that way. It must have done the series a lot of damage.’
She groaned. ‘That’s what I said. I hope to God the police don’t believe what he’s suggesting – it wasn’t true, any of it, but people are always ready to believe the worst. Oh, Johnny … who can have killed Derek? Some of the press seem to think he was gay and picked up somebody dangerous, but I keep thinking … what … what if it was Roger Keats? He was the type to resent his wife having another man. I wouldn’t put murder past him. But if it was him … I can’t help thinking … he might come after me.’
Johnny sat up and took her face between his hands, kissed her softly, looking into her eyes. ‘Don’t look so scared, darling. You’re safe while you’re with me.’
Mike Waterford got a call that evening. The voice was low and husky, a man’s voice. He didn’t recognise it. ‘I saw you on breakfast TV this morning. Talking about Annie Lang.’
Mike was about to hang up. He had been getting hostile calls all day from her fans; he was sick of listening to them going on and on about her and what a wonderful person she was and how much they hated him for talking like that about her. Some people didn’t want to know the truth.
‘I know something about her that nobody else knows,’ the voice whispered, and Mike froze, listening. ‘Something that would ruin her, if it got out.’