He was the band’s leading joker; the others all chuckled.
‘I just hate pictures of myself!’ she muttered, wondering if it had been Brick who had rung her last night, and he looked down at her slanting vivid green eyes, her sleek black hair and the small, pale-skinned triangular face which some journalist had not long ago described as giving her the look of a kitten caught out in the rain. That had made the band laugh their heads off! But it had infuriated Annie.
‘You can’t be serious!’ Brick said, shaking his head at her. ‘You’re amazingly photogenic, love! And you should be used to cameras by now; your face is always in some magazine or other these days.’
She shrugged without answering. Her dislike of cameras was another of her instinctive reactions, a gut feeling based on nothing rational, purely primitive, no doubt. People never understood; she rarely tried to explain any more.
‘Did you ring me last night, Brick?’ she asked, and he looked blank.
‘Ring you? No. Did you ask me to? I don’t remember anything much about the wedding after the reception started.’
The others all roared with laughter. Annie smiled wryly. No, it hadn’t been Brick, or, from the expressions of the rest of the band, any of them, either. She knew them well enough to be sure she would have picked up a self-conscious expression if the phone call had been a joke by one of them.
She and the band rehearsed for hours, not breaking for lunch, just having a yoghurt and an apple some time during the day. Philip got angry if she put on weight. It ruined the image he had spent years building up.
He was always telling her, ‘Image is everything in this business! It isn’t what you are, it’s what they think you are that matters, and you have to be certain always to look the way they think you should.’
The public saw her the way Philip intended they should—a street singer, small, sad, lonely, defiant.
She wore her long black hair down, framing her pale face. Her make-up highlighted her big eyes, her wide mouth. Her stage costumes were simple and inexpensive; she wore mostly black, accenting her slenderness, her frailty. And although the songs changed with the years, the mood of her singing remained the same. Her fans liked her that way.
Sometimes, though, Annie felt trapped inside a persona Philip had created but which she wasn’t sure fitted her any longer, even if it had when she first began singing.
‘Missing Phil and Di?’ Brick asked her as they left the rehearsal rooms. ‘Come and have a curry with us; we’re going to that Indian place down the street.’
She shook her head. ‘Too fattening. I’ll eat at home; see you all.’
When she got home she automatically switched on the answering machine while she was slitting open her private mail, all of it from friends in the music business. There was a letter from Philip’s office about the forthcoming tour, signed in his absence by his secretary, a telephone bill and a postcard from Budapest from a previous member of the band who had left to join another group, who were touring Hungary.
Annie read that first, smiling over the few scribbled words, and then her head lifted in shock as she heard the whispering voice on the answering machine. She had been so busy all day that she had forgotten last night’s crank call, but she remembered now as he said softly, ‘Remembered me yet?’
The phone clicked off again, but that wasn’t the end of it. The recording whirred on again. He had rung a second time; this time he whispered, ‘I remember you, Annie. I remember everything.’
Annie felt ice trickle down her spine. She stared at the machine, waiting, but there was nothing else on it; it clicked off.
Who on earth was it? Not Brick. It wasn’t one of his silly jokes. These phone calls were no joke. They were too disturbing to be funny. Were they veiled threats? Some sort of come-on meant to intrigue her? She had no idea what was behind them, but one thing was certain. She had never heard that voice before.
She was sure she didn’t know this man, that they had never met, or if they had it had been so brief, so casual, that she had simply forgotten all about it.
Why hadn’t he? She shivered, frowning. It was scary to think that out there was a man who thought he knew her when he didn’t. Was it some crazy fan who had started to believe his own fantasy? She had heard about things like that; it hadn’t occurred to her that it might actually happen to her.
And that accent of his... It was odd in some indefinable way, perfectly good English, but there was a faint note occasionally that made her wonder if he was a foreigner.
She was very aware of being alone in the flat. It was night again, very quiet. Was she the only person awake in the whole block of flats?
Walking over to the window, she looked out into the London sky, glowing with sulphurous yellow light from the street-lamps below. Annie gazed at the tall houses opposite, some rooms lit, others dark. There were people in all those houses, people in the other flats above and below her. Yet she felt intensely alone, and she was frightened.
The phone rang and she jumped violently. Swinging round, she stared across the room. She had forgotten to put the answering machine on again.
Well, she wasn’t answering him. She would let it ring and ring; he would give up in the end, believing she was out.
She went to the bathroom and ran the shower full on to drown the sound of the phone, had a lengthy shower. As she switched off the jet of water and stepped out, wrapping herself in a towelling robe, the flat was silent again and she heaved a sigh of relief, but as she walked towards the kitchen in bare feet the phone began to ring again.
She angrily shut herself in the kitchen and made some supper: a small mixed salad sprinkled with chopped nuts and fruit. The phone still rang and rang.
He wasn’t reacting the way she had thought he would. Why wasn’t he giving up? Surely it must be obvious that she was out?
She wasn’t, of course. But he couldn’t know that. Could he? Her nerves jangled. Could he? But what if he was out there, somewhere, near by, watching her?
Her heart almost stopped. If he lived near here, or was down there in the street, he could see her lights on; he would know she was in the flat.
Suddenly a new idea occurred to her. What if it wasn’t the guy who had been ringing her? What if this was Philip or Diana, ringing her from their honeymoon hotel, to check that she was OK? They would be worried if she didn’t answer, at this hour of the night.
She ran out of the kitchen into the sitting-room, snatched up the ringing phone.
‘Hello?’ she breathlessly said.
‘I wondered how long it would be before you answered,’ the smoky voice said, and her heart skipped a beat.
‘Why are you doing this? Stop ringing me; leave me alone—who are you?’ she gabbled, hardly aware what she was saying.
‘Haven’t you remembered yet? Never mind, you will.’
‘Look, it’s very late, and I’m tired; will you get off this line? And don’t ring again!’ Annie shakily said.
‘Are you ready for bed?’ he whispered, and she began to tremble, almost believing he could see her. He knew she was only wearing a robe and was naked underneath it. ‘You must be tired; you’ve had a long day,’ he said, and her eyes stretched wide, in shock. ‘I won’t keep you up; I just wanted to say goodnight,’ he murmured softly. ‘I’ll be seeing you soon, Annie.’
The phone went dead again, and she slammed her own down, panic pouring through her. He was coming here. What else had that meant?
She ran to the front door of the flat to check it was locked, stood in the hallway listening