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She pulled it over her head; it dropped almost to her knees, old and baggy, but warmth enveloped her with it.
‘I guessed it was your mother in the photo – you’re just like her.’
Johnny’s smile lit the whole room. ‘I wish you’d known her. She would have loved you. In a funny sort of way you’re rather like her, not so much your colouring as the shape of your face, and your eyes.’ Then his smile died. ‘Mum died while I was still at school. It was lucky I had Gran. If I lose Gran, there won’t be anyone left.’
Annie shyly curled her fingers into his hand. ‘Poor Johnny,’ she whispered.
Tears came into his eyes, horrifying her. He dropped to his knees beside her chair and put his head down on her lap. She stroked his hair, bent down to kiss his cheek.
They stayed like that for a long time before they collected the cat and bundled it inside Annie’s raincoat for the drive back to her home.
As they were leaving, Mrs East met them at the gate of the house, waving. Johnny hit the brakes and the motorbike stopped.
‘Hello, Johnny – how is she? I keep ringing the hospital but they never tell you much.’
‘I don’t really know any more than you do, Mrs East. They let me see her, and she looked terrible, but they said she might still pull through. They’ll let me know at once if she gets worse.’ He broke off, swallowing audibly, and Annie felt his body shiver against her. ‘I’m going back tomorrow morning. I hope I’ll see her again then.’
‘Well, give her my love.’
‘I will, and thank you, Mrs East. They told me in the hospital that if you hadn’t found her she would have died.’
‘I’m glad I went in when I did; I was thinking of going shopping first. I see you’ve got Tibs.’ Her sharp eyes fixed on the cat’s head poking out of Annie’s coat.
‘Gran asked me to look after her.’ Johnny started
his engine again. ‘Sorry, we have to get back, Mrs East. I’ll keep in touch.’
‘I hope your gran pulls through,’ the other woman called after them, and Annie tightened her arms around him, feeling the tremor running through his thin body.
Her mother was not too pleased by the cat’s arrival. Their own cat immediately took umbrage at the sight of it and started a fight, but Trudie Lang was sorry for Johnny, so she let the animal stay and it settled down gradually.
His grandmother died a week later and the house was shut up by the executors; it would have to be sold. Johnny inherited everything, but there was no money and he could not afford to keep the house.
‘I’d love to live there, I’ve always been so happy in that house,’ he said unhappily. ‘But I shall have to sell. They say I have to wait for probate before I can put it on the market.’
‘But surely that won’t take long? I mean, there is a will and you were her only relative.’
‘Lawyers take forever to do anything. In a way, I’m not sorry. At least I can visit it now and then. Once it’s sold it’s gone forever.’
That winter, whenever they were both free, they drove over on Johnny’s motorbike and spent hours there, pretended they were married, and the house was their home, like children playing house. They brought food with them, chops or steaks, which they cooked in a battered frying-pan on the old range in the spidery kitchen; potatoes they baked in the ashes sifting down through the old iron grating. Annie tossed salads to go with the meal and they ate fruit afterwards. The food was ambrosial: neither of them had ever tasted anything so marvellous.
Those days were dreamlike. They were both so happy Annie was scared. It couldn’t last, but while it did they both breathed the air, promise-crammed.
Annie had very little free time towards the end of term, because she had been given the part of Ophelia in a production of Hamlet which her year were putting on in the drama school’s little theatre. They had rehearsals five times a week after school hours during the last fortnight before the first night; you were expected to forget about a private life while you were in a production.
The play was on for four days; both Johnny and her mother came. Annie hadn’t wanted her mother there; she had been too nervous, too afraid she might forget her lines, dry up, drop something. Having her mother in the theatre was the last straw on a night which she knew already promised to be an ordeal.
The theatre was going to be packed with parents and friends of the cast, as well as some very important names in theatre who had once been students here and were always invited to any major production the school gave – famous actors and directors whose presence in the audience would attract the attention of agents, theatre proprietors, and, most importantly of all, critics from national newspapers.
The night went well; afterwards Annie couldn’t actually remember a thing about the actual performance. She seemed to wake up when the cast assembled on stage and there was a sudden roar of clapping. Dazed, she stared out into the auditorium and saw faces. Clutching the hands of those on either side of her, she bowed as they did for several curtain calls, not daring to look at the seats where Johnny and her mother sat.
Roger Keats came on stage with a cellophane-wrapped bouquet of roses. Annie almost dropped them when he gave them to her. Dumbfounded, she stared up at him and Roger Keats leaned forward and kissed her, his mouth wet and hot, his tongue tip sliding in and out between her lips like a snake going into a hole.
It was over in a flash, then he was holding her hand, pulling her towards the audience, who applauded again. He kissed her hand, bowing, then gestured to the boy playing Hamlet and stood between him and Annie while the audience clapped, before bringing forward several others from the cast to take special bows.
Afterwards Annie stumbled off stage into her dressing-room and threw up in the lavatory.
Scott patted her on the back. ‘I was sick before we went on! Now I feel great. Stage fright’s a funny old game.’
