Three months ago a mix-up over luggage had meant that the two of them had missed a connecting flight during Annie’s coast-to-coast tour of America. A blizzard had raged for two days, making it impossible for them to fly on to catch up with Annie and the band. It had been the first time Philip and Diana had ever spent a long time alone together.
‘I really got to know him,’ Diana had said later, telling a pale, stunned Annie that she and Philip were getting married. ‘Funny, I’d known him for years without ever getting past the surface, but once we started talking it was like peeling an onion; there were layers I’d never suspected. We couldn’t go out of the airport hotel: the wind was like a knife, and the snow was six feet deep in places. There was a power cut, and we had no TV, no heat and no light, so we huddled under quilts, in our overcoats, and talked and talked.’
‘And fell in love?’ Annie had said, pretending to laugh, and Diana had turned a face glowing with happiness to her, nodding.
‘And fell in love. Crazy, isn’t it, after knowing each other for years? It was as if there had been a wall between us, and suddenly it fell down.’
Annie had felt sick at first. She had been hurt and jealous, bitterly shaken by this blow, but because she loved them both she had managed to hide her real reaction.
Neither of them had an inkling what the news had done to her. That was one good thing. She had never confided her love for Philip to Diana, and she had never let Philip himself glimpse it, either. At least they didn’t know how she felt, so all she had to do was go on acting, pretending to be delighted for them.
And in a funny sort of way, she was—she did love them both, and she wanted them to be happy, even if it meant that she was going to be left alone, after years of being the most important thing in both their lives.
She had first met Philip at a friend’s party where she had sung a couple of songs. It had never occurred to her to think of a life as a professional singer. When Philip told her he could make her a star she hadn’t believed him. She had no self-confidence and very little vanity, yet some instinct had made her trust him, and that instinct had been a sound one.
Everything he had promised her had come true, slowly at first, but over the last few years with dizzying speed. First she had worked in clubs, at night, while in the daytime she had had vocal training, stage training, dance lessons, and then Phil had got her that first recording contract, which really started her career. Now she was becoming known in America, and in two weeks’ time she would open her tour of Europe with a big concert in Paris.
She was becoming a star in the UK too, which brought its own problems, including getting crank calls, but she didn’t often get them now because her phone was no longer listed anywhere; only a handful of people knew her number. She had gone ex-directory several years ago when she started getting problems with fans ringing her day and night. At the same time she had moved to this flat in a rather exclusive district close to one of London’s big parks. The street was lined with trees; there was no passing-through traffic, just the cars of wealthy residents, or visiting tradesmen. There were big houses set in large gardens, so that one got a sense of living almost in the country, there was so much greenery around and on warm days a delicious country smell of leaves and flowers.
Even more important than all this, the large block of luxury flats into which Annie moved had a very thorough security system. There was a uniformed guard, with a savage-looking dog, on patrol all night around the grounds, and the electronically controlled doors of the building only admitted you if you had a card which you fitted into the computer by the door. You had to tap in your personal security number. Only then did the door open for you.
This was one of those anonymous blocks of flats where everyone behaved in a civilised fashion, not playing TVs or radios at top blast, not having riotous parties, not having violent rows with each other. There had been two bedrooms, one for her, one for Diana, who had shared the flat with her.
Now Annie would be living there alone, and she was finding it hard to adjust to that. She had never lived alone before. Before she met Philip she had lived with her mother and stepfather and her two stepbrothers in London. The family had all been relieved when she moved out: the house had been overcrowded, and Annie had never got on with her stepfather. She had barely seen any of them since.
Living alone was faintly nerve-racking. She listened to the silence: the only sound was the low hum of the central heating system, of the fridge in the kitchen. There were people living all around her, yet they were so quiet that it was like living alone, on the moon.
Every flat was occupied, in fact. This was a very popular apartment block; there was a waiting list of tenants wanting flats. A number of celebrities could be seen coming in and going out; often they had other homes and only kept their flat in this block for trips to London. It was well managed, comfortable, with a swimming-pool, saunas and a very well equipped gymnasium.
Life was easy here: lifts whisked you up and down, there was always a porter on the door, your garbage was disposed of by simply pushing it into a chute next to the lift. There was even an underground car park so that if fans did ever find out where she lived and waited outside she would be able to drive out of the building without being stopped.
Annie had felt totally safe there. Until now.
But it was stupid to let the phone call prey on her mind. After all, it hadn’t been obscene, just some stupid joke by one of the band, probably.
Yet as she climbed into bed she was still thinking about the call. If it was just a joke, why did it bother her so much? It did; she couldn’t deny it. The words kept ringing in her head. Remember me. Remember me? Had it been a question, or a demand?
Whichever it had been the intonation had somehow been disturbing, no doubt because she was here alone, for the first time in her life, feeling abandoned, left behind.
Tonight she was an easy target for whoever had rung. But nobody could have known that. She had tried to fool everyone at the wedding, tried to be the life and soul of the party afterwards—at all costs, Philip and Diana mustn’t guess at her real mood. They had every right to take happiness when they found it; she didn’t want to ruin their big day.
She wasn’t a teenager any more; she was twenty-five, for heaven’s sake! She could look after herself; she had flown the Atlantic several times, could speak French and Italian quite well, was learning Spanish—these days, as Philip said, music was an international business and meant a lot of travelling. The more languages you knew, the better.
So stop feeling sorry for yourself! she thought crossly. You’ve got plenty of life skills; you can manage on your own.
She could drive a car, cook; she had even had self-defence training and could throw a man over her shoulder if the need arose. Surely to heaven she could learn to live alone, and she could cope with grief and loss. You could cope with anything if you had to.
She turned over and settled to sleep, and some time during the night she vaguely heard the phone begin to ring, then cut out as the machine took over, but she was beyond caring by then.
In the morning she was in a rush to get to work, so she didn’t even bother to listen to the answering machine; she simply left it switched on.
The photo session was boring. She always felt like a dummy being arranged in a shop window, and her face ached from smiling by the time it was over.
‘Try to look happy, love!’ urged the photographer gloomily.
‘Sorry, I hate having my photo taken!’ she said.
‘It shows,’ the photographer told her. ‘Relax. Look, just a few more and we’re finished.’
The band lined up behind him and made elephant’s ears with their hands, and she laughed naturally.
‘That’s better!’ the