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Annie went on staring out at the garden, bare trees, a few snowdrops under them, a robin on a black branch chattering angrily.
Trudie came back into the kitchen, her face uncertain. ‘It’s that friend of yours from drama school – Scott. Do you want to talk to her? I could tell her you’re ill, but she said she might come round and we don’t want that, do we?’
Annie shook her head obediently. No, they did not want visitors. She was too weary and listless to want anything. She went out into the hall with its odour of polish and chrysanthemums, the chill February wind whistling under the sill of the front door.
‘I just heard you were leaving,’ Scott said. ‘Why? Annie, you’re good – don’t give up! You’re a born actress!’
Annie told her about Derek Fenn’s offer and Scott said, with scorn, ‘TV? A children’s programme? You could do much better than that – you should be in the theatre, not on TV!’
Annie changed the subject. ‘How is everyone?’
Scott was distracted by gossip. She talked about the latest play being put on at school, love affairs among their friends, then said, ‘And of course we’ve lost Roger Keats. We’ve got a new senior tutor, quite dishy. Everyone’s talking about Roger – nobody knows for sure what happened, but there are all sorts of rumours flying about.’
Annie was silent, her stomach cramped with sickness. Had it all got out? Did everyone at the school know? Did Scott?
‘I’ve got to go, Scott, sorry.’ Annie hung up, turned slowly, and found her mother watching her, frowning.
‘What’s wrong? What did she say?’
Annie was trembling, she couldn’t meet her mother’s eyes. ‘She was just talking about school.’
Trudie gruffly said, ‘Forget about school. You don’t need them any more. You’re a professional now.’ She put an arm round Annie and hugged her. ‘It will be OK, you’ll see. We’re doing the right thing. The future is what matters.’
After talking to Scott, Annie was so scared of Roger Keats that she wouldn’t go out of the house, wouldn’t open the door if anyone knocked until she had checked through a window, never answered the telephone.
But week after week went by and there was still no sign of him. Or of Johnny. She began to believe she would never see either of them again, until a year later, on another cold, raw, February day, she opened a Valentine’s card. The message was printed in capital letters.
‘Did you think I’d forgotten you? I haven’t, so don’t forget me, because I’ll be back.’
2
Seven years later, on a mild, rainy January morning, a man sitting in a dentist’s waiting-room saw a photo of Annie in an old magazine among those littering a low coffee-table in the middle of the room between the chairs lining the walls, and felt his body jerk as if he had touched an electric wire.
The article on the TV series in which she was starring was very short and told him nothing he did not know. He had seen every episode and read every article on the series that he could get his hands on. But he obsessively read every word, and then his gaze returned to the photo.
She never seemed to change, except that she’d cut her hair; it was short now, and he didn’t like that, it made her look like a boy and he had loved it the way it was, all that long, straight, silky hair, pale and shining, especially when she wore a blue headband to keep it back from her face, like Alice in Wonderland.
He remembered touching it, remembered her face, looking up at him. Those eyes …
His body burned. He shut his eyes, remembering, breathing fast.
One day. One day, he promised himself, then opened his eyes to look at the photo again. God, it never ceased to amaze him – eight years and she still had that wide-eyed, shining innocence, the shy, nervous mouth.
The years had done almost nothing to her. They had crucified him.
He deliberately dropped the magazine and knelt down to pick it up, his body hiding what he was doing from the three other men in the room. Soundlessly, deftly, he tore out the page and slid it into his pocket, then stood up, holding the magazine, and sat down again.
Another one for his collection. He had dozens of pictures of Annie pinned up in his room on every available piece of wall; he lay on his back, staring at them for hours.
‘Next,’ the dentist’s nurse said, looking at him, and he dropped the magazine back on the table and followed her into the room which smelt of disinfectant and fear and years of polish on the woodblock floor.
The dentist was a middle-aged man who reminded him of his father; something about the mouth, the cruel lines around the eyes. As he leaned back in the worn, old leather chair he stared at the man with hostility. He had hated his father.
‘Which tooth hurts? Upper right molar? What … here?’ grunted the dentist, probing mercilessly. ‘Oh, don’t be such a coward, man. It can’t hurt that much. Just a little spot of decay. Have to be cleaned out and refilled. Relax, this won’t hurt. Much.’
It did, of course. He gave a gasp of pain as the needle went in, then slowly his mouth began to go numb; he closed his eyes to try to ignore the buzz of the dentist’s drill. At least he wasn’t in pain any more. He had been in agony with it all night, not that anybody cared.
There was nobody in the world who cared about him. He had lost everything. He had had to leave everything he knew, it was years since he had been back, and all because of Annie.
