In the Still of the Night

Suddenly he broke out, voice hoarse, ‘And your mother never told you I’d rung? She never even told you? And the letters – I wrote to you from prison for a few months … and never had a reply.’

‘Letters?’ Annie was shaking. So there had been letters too, letters she never got. Letters her mother must have destroyed – oh, how could she? How could she do such a cruel thing?

‘Why?’ Johnny muttered. ‘Why? Why did she do that to me, to us? I thought she liked me, I never did her any harm, I was fond of her.’

‘When you rang, did you tell her you were in hospital?’

He nodded. ‘Of course I did.’

‘Did you tell her about the crash, about the policeman you had hit? About having to go to prison?’

‘No, I just said I was in hospital. But when I wrote, later, it was from prison.’

Annie groaned aloud. ‘That explains it, then.’ Her mother’s ambition had driven her to separate them. She hadn’t approved of Annie getting involved with Johnny, anyway – he couldn’t help Annie, couldn’t push her towards success. When she discovered that Annie was pregnant by him she had been furious – and then Johnny wrote to her from prison. Trudie must have opened the letter. Annie could imagine her feelings when she read Johnny’s news.

Trudie had always been obsessed with respectability; her working-class background had taught her you had to work hard to survive. It was bred in her bones, the grim understanding of how easy it could be to slip, to slide down into poverty and hopelessness.

Discovering that Johnny was in trouble with the police, she would have been ruthlessly determined to part them for ever. He wasn’t dragging Annie and Trudie down with him.

Johnny looked hard into her face, as i

f hunting for something in her eyes.

‘She didn’t want you involved with me any more if I was going to prison for years? Well, I can’t blame her for that. I couldn’t have offered you anything; I was guilty, I couldn’t deny the charges, I knew I was going down for a long time. Maybe I shouldn’t have tried to contact you, maybe she was right.’ He held her eyes. ‘But … if you had got my letters would you have written back, Annie?’

She nodded, unable to speak.

He looked as if he didn’t believe her. ‘Sure? Would you – knowing that I was going to be in prison for years?’

‘Yes.’ Nothing could have come between them if he hadn’t simply vanished from her life. She had needed him, it had hurt her badly to lose him. It hurt her now, to realise how it had happened, to know that her own mother had deliberately separated them. And the baby, she thought, anguish turning in her like a knife. She made me kill my baby.

She pushed the thought aside. She always did. She had never been able to bear the memory. Those few weeks of her life had been hell. She had blanked them out in self-protection.

The door opened and the PR girl came in with a tray; she looked from one to the other quickly. ‘Interview going well? I’m sorry, but I’ll have to hurry you, Mr Tyrone. Miss Lang is needed back on the set for a re-take in half an hour.’

‘Sure,’ Johnny said, switching on his tape machine. ‘Now, where were we, Miss Lang? Oh, yes, tell me, how much research did you personally do before you began work on the series?’

Sean watched Marty Keats on the edge of the set; her mouth full of pins, she was adjusting the fit of a policewoman’s jacket.

‘It’s a size too big!’ protested the actress inside the jacket.

‘It won’t show when I’ve finished; stand still, for God’s sake.’ Marty was pinning rapidly as she spoke without moving her lips.

‘Come on, come on,’ shouted the studio manager. ‘Harriet’s waiting for her!’

Marty stood up. ‘That’s the best I can do.’

The actress looked into a mirror leaning against the wall, groaned, and ran.

‘It looked fine to me,’ Sean said, smiling at Marty Keats.

She glanced round at him, her eyes brightening at the sight of an attractive man. ‘Thanks. You’re the scriptwriter, aren’t you?’

‘That’s right. Sean. Who are you, apart from being very clever with your hands?’

‘Marty. Marty Keats.’

‘Marty, nice name.’ Sean took off his blue denim jacket and gestured to the right sleeve of his shirt. ‘I don’t suppose you could do anything about this rip in my sleeve?’