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The house already smelt damp and upstairs on the landing mould was growing on the wallpaper, but they were in love and wildly happy with that out-of-all-proportion passion that marks first love.
They could lie naked together in total silence for an hour at a time, just staring into each other’s eyes, not even touching, just breathing and absorbing each other.
And then Roger Keats told Annie to meet him in his office after classes one Friday night.
Her first reaction was to decide to tell him to go to hell, but what if she did? What might he do to her? He had enormous power at the school, he could blight her life.
The work she was doing, the reactions of her tutors, watching other students perform, had convinced her she did have a chance of making it in the theatre, if she got the right break. She wanted to be an actress more now than she had before she began to train.
Annie spent that day thinking desperately. She couldn’t just refuse to go; she had heard enough gossip about him at the school to know that he would take his revenge. He meant what he said. He could ruin her career. Get her kicked out of the school. Make sure she got none of the offers which came in every so often for students. Make sure she didn’t get big roles in school productions which were a shop window for agents and producers looking for new talent. Her performance in Hamlet had been noticed, but it was only a first-year production – she had to follow it with better work.
She couldn’t confide in anyone. Least of all Johnny. She knew he would go crazy if she told him what had happened at that first interview, what Roger Keats had done to her, made her do with him. Her stomach heaved at the memory: his hand on the back of her neck, forcing her down on her knees.
She had tried to blank out the memory. She couldn’t bear to remember.
She certainly couldn’t tell Johnny. It would hurt him too much, because he loved her and Johnny was romantic, an innocent. If she told him what she had been made to do she knew he would never look at her without remembering and being sickened.
Roger had got her backed into a corner. There was no escape that she could see.
During lunch she saw Lee Kirk, the little dark girl Roger had been seen with a lot that term. She was picking at a tiny salad. Annie went over to sit next to her.
‘Can I talk to you?’
Lee gave her a brief, unfriendly glance. ‘What about? This is my last day here. I’m leaving I’ve got a place in a touring company, we fly to Australia next week.’
‘Did Roger Keats get you the job?’
After the last class, when the school was almost empty, Annie slowly made her way to Roger Keats’s office.
She walked into the room she remembered so well from her first visit there, and Roger was sitting on the cushion-piled chaise-longue, drinking a glass of red wine.
‘Shut the door, lock it and come here,’ he said, looking her over with bright, greedy eyes.
She stayed there, without moving, as if paralysed. ‘Mr Keats, I don’t want to do this.’
Act, act, she thought. She gave him a pleading look.
His red mouth smiled in enjoyment. ‘Roger, call me Roger, and don’t waste my time. You wouldn’t be here if you weren’t ready to keep our bargain.’
‘Bargain?’
‘We made a deal, remember? You got a place at the school, and in return you were going to be nice to me, so start being nice. Lock the door, little Alice, and come over here. We’ll have a run-through of what you did for me before, to start with – you were good at that.’
She didn’t have to act her sickened revulsion; she almost threw up at the memory he’d conjured up, that hot, stiff flesh in her mouth, his grunting enjoyment, the way he stared down, watched her.
‘No.’ She looked at him with hatred, not moving. ‘I won’t, I’ll never do … that … again. You can’t make me!’
‘But that’s what I like about you, Alice – I can make you do anything. Sweet little Alice with your long blonde hair and big, frightened eyes. You didn’t say no last time, you were very obedient.’
‘I hated it!’
‘I know you did. That was half the pleasure, to know you hated doing it to me, but to have you do it all the same.’ He ran his tongue-tip over his fleshy lips. ‘If you’d enjoyed it, it wouldn’t have been so much fun. This time we’ll try something new, something even more enjoyable.’
‘No!’
His voice hardened. ‘Yes. I can do so much for you, remember. I’ve just been asked to recommend a girl for a small part in a children’s TV drama. Remember Derek Fenn, who judged the end-of-term competition? He’s looking for someone to play a fifteen-year-old in his school series. You won’t even have to act. It’s type-casting.’ He laughed, taking another sip of the red wine; she watched it stain his tongue, and shuddered. ‘Only a few weeks’ work,’ he drawled. ‘But the pay’s OK, it’s good experience, and nothing gets your face known quicker than TV.’
Her voice rising she said, ‘You mean, if I sleep with you, I get this part? And if I refuse, I don’t?’
