Jason’s mum wanted to hear about the designer label gear. Mum couldn’t afford stuff like that, of course, but she spent every spare penny she had on clothes, she loved them, and she was still a good-looking woman, although she was big, with rich, smooth skin and lots of it – a cushiony woman, with big breasts and swinging hips.
She loved to get dressed and go out dancing, and she knew what suited her, she had a good colour sense. That was important to Jason, too. Colours changed his moods – red put him into fight mode, orange made him happy, green was better than a tranquilliser. Angela wore a lot of black; black was sexy on a woman, especially when she wasn’t wearing much at all, a black lace bra and panties, or a black slip with nothing underneath – that really turned him on, seeing all that smooth coffee-coloured skin through black silk and lace.
‘Did you go anywhere hot on your night off?’ he asked Annie, who was being very quiet.
She started as if she had been miles away, then blinked, shook her head. What could she tell him? That she had been half out of her mind? He didn’t want to know that, and she couldn’t talk about it. Who could she talk to about what was eating her up inside?
‘You wasting yourself, girl,’ Jason said and she laughed, her mouth crooked with irony.
‘Am I?’
‘Sure are – wasting your opportunities.’ That was what his mum always said when he told her Annie wasn’t the party type.
‘She prefers to go home and take a hot bath and relax, she isn’t one for ritzy occasions, no first-night parties for her,’ he always told his mum.
‘If I was her!’ his mum would sigh. ‘What a waste!’
‘If you was Annie, mum, you’d set the town on fire!’ he agreed, and his mum always began to laugh with her deep old-whisky laugh, not that she drank whisky, not mum. She liked a drop of rum in her coffee now and then, but she was no heavy drinker. Her voice just naturally came out with that smoky, husky sound because she had spent so many years singing her tonsils out, first in church, where their gospel choir was famous, and then in the clubs.
‘I should have gone on singing when I was a girl instead of marrying your father. I’d have been another Bessie Smith,’ she said. And she would have been, he’d bet his life on it. She had tried to get him to sing when he was a little kid, but he hadn’t inherited her voice, nor did he want a showbiz life. He loved cars, that was all he ever wanted to do, drive cars, own cars, maybe one day have his own garage.
‘You a big disappointment to me, Jason, honey,’ his mother would say, shaking her head. ‘With your looks you could have been a star, if you’d only had a voice and some temperament. You got no temperament, boy. That’s your problem.’
‘Mum, my problem is you,’ he would say, and she would start to laugh again.
‘No, boy – you wrong. Your problem is trashy girls with no class.’ You could never win an argument with his mum.
Jason slowed as they reached the studio gates, where they had to be checked by the uniformed man in his glass cubicle.
There were usually a few people hanging around the-gates to celebrity-spot, even at this hour in freezing Febuary. The old faithfuls knew what time the actors arrived; they peered into the windows of the car, recognised Annie in the tight blue jeans and white sweater, her slicked back, very short blonde hair under a midnight-blue and silver Chanel scarf.
‘Annie!
‘It’s Annie Lang!’
Some of them rapped on the car windows to get her attention, leaned on the side of the car. That always alarmed her.
‘Loved the show on Tuesday!’ one of them said, and hands waved in a flurry of pink palms and fingers.
‘Did you get my Valentine’s card?’ yelled someone, and in a reflex action she swung her head to stare, but it was only a teenager, a boy with spots and long hair.
She managed a forced smile, gave him a wave, then the gates opened and they drove through into the studio complex. Purpose-built a few years ago the three black-glass towers were set well apart in grass lawns, bisected by wide roads along which studio traffic permanently moved; carrying costumes, props, furniture from place to place. The complex was often used as the background for sci-fi productions; filmed by night from the right angle it took on the slightly sinister air of a futuristic city, the black glass windows glowing like a string of black opals against the sky.
Filmed by day it looked pretty weird too, thought Annie, staring out of the car as they drove to the back of Tower Two, which housed the studio where the indoor scenes of her series were shot, and where the offices of the staff who produced the programme were housed. As well as shooting on location, in the City itself, in order to get convincing backgrounds they had a mock-up of a city street which had been built for them and which could be changed as required by the carpenters and scene designers.
Many offices were unlit, the staff hadn’t yet arrived, but when they passed the bay of the mail department it was blazing with light. A post office van was unloading.
Jason pulled up beside the main entrance of Tower Two and Annie smiled at him as he came round to open her door and help her out.
‘Thanks, Jason, see you.’
She hurried inside and walked up a flight of stairs to the wardrobe department, a huge open barn of a place filled to bursting with rails of clothes from every period, from futuristic plastic uniforms for space drama to fur tails for cavemen. There was a surreal feel to the place, but the women who worked there seemed unaware of the bizarre nature of their surroundings.
In her black case Annie had the clothes she had worn in Petticoat Lane; she checked them back in to the woman in charge this morning.
‘Sorry, I had to rush off before I could change. I don’t need anything else – I’m only in two scenes today, and I’m supposed to be off duty, so I’ll be wearing what I’ve got on.’
Indifferently, the woman nodded, and Annie hurried away to make-up. When she got down to the studio, she found the rest of the cast already there, huddled on hard wooden chairs feverishly reading their scripts while lighting men swarmed around adjusting overhead arcs, trying not to trip over the snaking cables which littered the floor.