In the Still of the Night

There was an edge to playing the part that Annie enjoyed, and as Sean got to know Annie better he had given Inspector Granard more of Annie’s real character, given a spin to the role which had not been there before.

Annie’s very delicate, feminine looks made an ironic counterpoint to the toughness of the policewoman she played, and Sean emphasised the contrast between the way the character looked and the job she did, and always listened to Annie’s own views on the part.

They sometimes had lunch together, alone or with Harriet too, to talk over ideas for later scripts, and Annie liked the respect Sean gave her. Some writers got irritated if you tried to suggest ideas to them.

When they began work on a second series Harriet, though, had decided some changes were due. She’d felt the cast was unbalanced, and Billy Grenaby agreed with her.

&nbs

p; He was a tough businessman, but he had a simple mind when it came to programme-planning; his ideas were old-fashioned, basic, always taking the obvious line, which was probably why he had been so successful. He backed Harriet up a hundred per cent when she took her latest idea to him.

Nobody had told any of the cast what was afoot when the company began talks with Mike Waterford.

‘I don’t believe it! Tell me it’s not true!’ Annie had yelled at Harriet, waving the newspaper which had broken the story.

Unbothered by her rage, Harriet had laughed. ‘You gave me the idea yourself. Remember? When we talked about Mike and you said thank God he wasn’t in the series. I had a flash of inspiration. Don’t you see, this is what we need to turn a good series into a number-one hit? You two are going to make TV history. You loathe each other, and I’m going to make sure the media get to hear about it; they’ll eat it up.’

She had been proved right; the press had become obsessed for a long time with the famous ‘feud’ between the two stars of the series, and the torrent of publicity had pushed up the ratings week after week.

At eleven forty-five, with three brief scenes in the can, they broke for lunch from the mobile canteen. The food wasn’t cordon bleu stuff, but it was adequate – smoking hot pea soup in a mug, which was very welcome on a cold February day after standing around for hours waiting for cues, followed by either a cheese salad or beef stew and dumplings.

‘Stewed dog meat and cannon balls, you mean,’ Mike Waterford said to the girl dishing out the food. ‘Give me one of those cheese salads, darling.’

The girl gave him a fatuous smile. ‘Here you are, Mr Waterford. Would you like a jacket potato too?’

Annie was stamping her feet and blowing on her frozen fingers. ‘Get on with it, Waterford!’ she told him and Mike gave her a look over his shoulder.

‘What! my dear Lady Disdain, are you yet living?’

They had once appeared together at a charity benefit show in a scene from Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, playing the quarrelling lovers, Benedick and Beatrice, and ever since Mike had enjoyed quoting from the scene. He liked everyone to know that he was what he called a ‘serious’ actor, had played in Shakespeare, was a star, unlike the workaday hacks of television soap opera.

‘Oh, shut your face!’ snarled Annie.

‘Charming,’ Mike drawled, strolling away.

The girl behind the counter gazed after him, sighing. ‘He’s so gorgeous, isn’t he?’

‘Pea soup and cheese salad, please,’ Annie bit out.

The girl pulled herself together and handed over the mug of soup and the salad, giving her a filthy look with them.

Annie took her lunch back to her caravan, where she ate in front of the warmth of an electric fire, reading over the lines of the next scene. The lunch break was short. At this time of year, the light went fast, and they would start again at twelve-thirty, hoping to shoot another couple of scenes by four o’clock, after which they could all go home.

The first of these scenes worked without needing any retakes; after that they got in some close-ups while anyone not involved drank black coffee and huddled in their coats in the caravans, gossiping and hoping it would soon be time to go home.

The final scene of the day involved Mike, Annie and a number of police vehicles. The logistics of the operation were eased by the fact that by then the market had wound down and most of the people had drifted off, clearing the street.

Annie was sitting in a canvas chair watching Mike getting in and out of a police car while other cars raced towards him. The timing had to be exact; the stunt manager kept stopping the action and conferring with his stunt drivers before he tried again.

Annie was very tired now, she had run out of energy and kept yawning. Harriet gave her a wry grin.

‘Bored?’

‘Tired.’ Annie was never bored when she was working; she hoped to God she never would be.

‘You and me both.’ Harriet stretched, her face pale and exhausted by the strains of the long day.

One of Harriet’s trainees came running out of the production caravan, looked around and hurried over to them. She bent over Harriet and began whispering urgently.