Darling Sweetheart (30 page)

Then came the voice exercises – Sylvia introduced a digital recorder, so that Annalise could hear herself speak, an experience that she hated at first but which, by the time they moved on to accents, she accepted as just another slightly humiliating method of doing something better than she had the day before. Once, when she could not replicate Ava Gardner’s Southern drawl from the film
Show Boat
to Sylvia’s satisfaction, Annalise burst into tears and shouted that she didn’t want to be an actress anyway. Sylvia shocked her by laughing out loud.

‘What?’ Annalise raged. ‘What’s so bloody funny?’

‘My dear, that’s like a pigeon saying it does not want to be a bird! You
are
an actress – I am merely ensuring that you become a good one.’

‘But why? Why? What’s it to you?’

Sylvia’s finger stabbed the Stop button on the recorder.

‘Because once upon a time, a very wonderful lady took me under her wing and taught me a great many things. She opened doors to a better life, a life that I have enjoyed immensely. I also owe my life to a great many doctors, so maybe,’ she raised an eyebrow, ‘you are just my way of putting something back.’

‘Oh.’

‘And also,’ she looked away momentarily, ‘I knew your father.’

‘What?’

‘I cast him in his first Fanshawe and Grovel film, back in the late seventies. The producer wanted Ustinov but he wasn’t available, so I showed him some of your father’s early work. He took a bit of persuading, but it turned out to be a good call.’

‘You never said you knew my father!’

‘You never asked.’

‘Were you and he… you know…?’

‘Lovers?’ she asked crisply. ‘No. Although he did try it on a few times because, if you don’t mind me saying, he was the sort of man who chased anything in a skirt. The lady who came to the school that awful night; she was a familiar face from those days, one I hadn’t seen in quite some time.’

‘Monica? Monica Goddard? Are saying that–’

‘I’m not saying anything. You asked me why I’ve chosen to coach you and I’ve given you my reasons. Now,’ she consulted her watch, ‘we have another two hours and twenty-three minutes left of this particular exercise and then, after dinner, I want you to have a good night’s sleep because tomorrow we start stage fighting and you must be fresh and ready.’

‘Huh?’

‘Two of the best stuntmen in England run a stage-fighting school at a gym in Holland Park and I’ve booked you in for the next three weeks. You know, you can’t assume that every role you’ll be offered will be Scarlett O’Hara.’

‘Who?’

Sylvia sighed and restarted the player. ‘A character from a very great film which I will show you as part of your education. Now, repeat after me,’ and she copied Gardner exactly, ‘“Gimme a neat rye, just to get my courage up.”’

‘So the old girl is buried here?’

‘Quiet. A bit of respect, please.’

Holding Froggy, she stood before a simple stone plinth in Kensal Green Cemetery. She’d slept a few hours in Heathrow, then taken a tube into Hammersmith and walked north through the busy morning traffic, which had quelled now to a distant rumble beyond the statues, crooked crosses and ivy-choked mausoleums of the Victorian necropolis.

‘She took you away from me,’ Froggy sniffed. ‘I’m not sure I like her for doing that.’

‘She saved my life. She gave me so much.’

‘Yeah, yeah, whatever… so why are we here?’

‘I haven’t visited her grave for so long, but I’ve been thinking about her a lot lately and it seemed like a good place to start.’

‘To start what?’

‘I miss Sylvia. She’d have known what to do about all the…
crap
that’s been happening.’

‘My first time in London and you take me to a graveyard? Could we not do something fun instead, like get really drunk or go on the London Eye? Or maybe both?’

‘Her heart gave out. She went into hospital for yet another operation and just didn’t come out again. She always said it was a miracle she’d made it so far. By then, she’d helped me get my
first television part. She left me three thousand pounds in her will and gave everything else she owned to St Bartholomew’s. It was like, one day she was here and the next she wasn’t.’ Her eyes moistened. ‘It’s not fair; everyone flipping well
dies
on me!’

‘I’m gonna die of fecking boredom if we stay here much longer. Okay: we’ve seen the grave, we’ve bought the T-shirt – what’s the plan?’

‘I… don’t have a plan. I thought that fetching you would help, but I want to run away more than ever. Bloody Harry, bloody Jimmy, bloody Peter Tress – everywhere I turn, there’s a man, messing with my head.’

‘I don’t like it when people mess with our head, so here’s a plan: bring the fight to the enemy.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean no more Mr Nice Girl. How far is Paddington from here?’

‘Paddington?’

‘As in the asswipe bear.’

‘What’s in Paddington?’

‘You know what’s in Paddington.’

‘Do I?’

‘Yes. You read it on the internet.’

‘But… I can’t do that!’

‘Oh yes you can.’

‘I think I need a drink.’

‘Now you’re talking – pub first, then let’s go to work.’

She set off along the gravel path. She dumped her shoulder-bag in the nearest bin and, still carrying Froggy over one arm, made for the cemetery gates.

She walked into the city centre along the Grand Union Canal towpath, past trees, warehouses, tall blocks of flats and busy flyovers. That way, she did not meet many passers-by. At Maida Vale, she left the canal and stopped in a pub. The young barman
gave her an amused look but made no comment as he served her a large brandy and Coke with lots of ice. She took her drink to the payphone, rang directory enquiries and asked for Shepperton studios, then the
Perfect Heresy
production office.

‘Let me speak to them,’ Froggy told her.

‘Not yet.’ She sat him on top of the telephone. The number rang twice then answered. She used her politest voice. ‘Hello, Annalise Palatine here, who’s that? Amanda? Oh, hi, fine, fine. No, I’m perfectly fine, I just felt a bit sick yesterday… What? Harry’s been looking for me, has he? He called at my house? Gosh. I took a few tablets and went straight to bed, I didn’t hear a thing. In a bit of a panic, is he? Look, I know I’m running late but tell him I’ll meet him on set after lunch. No, don’t send a car, I’m not at home. Where? Oh, some payphone somewhere, hold on… oh bum, there goes my credit…’ She hung up, gulped her drink then walked down the Edgware Road, through St John’s Wood.

She had last walked through St John’s Wood at the age of sixteen, on a midsummer’s night at four o’clock in the morning. She and Lucy had blagged their way into the Groucho Club with some publicist that Lucy had picked up at a gig. They were barely through the door when they’d spotted the bass player from a well-known pop group, so in classic Lucy fashion, she had dumped the publicist and within five minutes had wormed her way over beside the musician until she was whispering in his ear. That left Annalise with his drinking buddy, a much older, balding man who told Annalise he was ‘a really famous fucking TV presenter’, but when he named the show he presented, Annalise had never heard of it. She explained that she had only recently arrived from Ireland. The man had laughed at that, but not in a nice way. Still, every time she sipped her champagne he’d topped her glass up and next thing she knew they were in a cab together and off to a party in St John’s Wood. Lucy and
the bass player had snogged all the way there.

But the party turned out to be just the four of them at the presenter’s flat – a very private party, he had leered. He had chopped out some cocaine, but Annalise had refused to take any. As he had fetched drinks from his fridge, Lucy had dragged the bass player off to a bedroom. Soon, from the noise they were making it was obvious they were having S-E-X.

‘Your friend’s having a good time,’ the presenter had smiled. He flopped down beside her on the sofa and she’d thought he’d overbalanced because suddenly his weight was against her, but then he sucked her face with his old person’s mouth.

‘Stop that!’ she’d cried. ‘Get off me!’

He’d laughed his nasty laugh and had stuck his hand up her skirt. That had made her shriek.

‘What the fuck is wrong with you?’ He’d grabbed her jacket. ‘Your little friend’s enoyin’ it, ain’t she?’

She’d tried to pull away and for an awful moment he had been too strong, but she’d given a superhuman tug and her jacket had ripped and his grip had slipped.

‘Lucy!’ she’d screamed. ‘Lucy!’ But Lucy had just kept on making noises.

‘What is this?’ the man had spluttered. ‘You’re just a bit of fluff from a nightclub and it’s like you’re doing
me
the favour?’ She’d fled into the hallway and had pushed open a bedroom door and had been greeted by the bass player’s naked backside and Lucy’s wide-open legs, still clad in spangly socks. The rest of her had been buried beneath the bass player’s hunched form.

‘Lucy!’ she’d yelled. ‘We’ve got to get out of here!’

‘What?’ Her voice had been muffled.

‘We have to leave!’

Lucy’s face had appeared from underneath the bass player. ‘Annalise – do I
look
like I’m leaving anytime soon?’

Her attacker had staggered out of the lounge, so she had run. She’d lost a shoe but hadn’t stopped. She’d crashed through the
apartment door and had fled down the stairwell, his evil laughter echoing behind her.

Now, eight years later, as she walked down the Edgware Road in broad daylight, she could almost see her younger self, limping along on one shoe in the dark, wondering how on earth she would ever find her way back to the Goddards’. That had been her first walk across London, and it had not been a pleasant one. But she had made it eventually, trembling and exhausted, only to find Lucy sitting on the steps of the house with the yellow door, smoking a cigarette.

‘Where the hell did you get to?’ she’d demanded. ‘I’ve been waiting here ages!’

‘But how did you…?’

‘I took a taxi, you moron. What the fuck happened back there?’

‘I don’t know. I didn’t want to… you know… that guy, he tried to–’

Lucy had snapped. ‘Why did you think he invited us home from the club, you little hick? To do the dishes? What’s wrong with you? I thought you Irish fucked like rabbits!’

‘But I’ve never… I mean, I don’t–’

‘Oh shut your blithering spazz! He wouldn’t give me his number and it’s all your fault for not keeping his friend happy!’ She’d flicked her cigarette at the gutter. ‘If you say a word to my parents, I’ll kill you in your fat, stupid sleep.’

‘Are these the two paedophiles you were telling me about?’ Froggy asked her.

Jimmy Lockhart lay on a hospital bed, although if his legs hadn’t been in plaster, he would have fallen out of it, such was the look of surprise on his face. Donnie Driscoll gaped from a bedside chair – his eyes were hidden behind a pair of black Ray-Bans, but his mouth hung wide open. Annalise had simply walked into St Mary’s Hospital in Paddington, asked for J.
Lockhart at reception and then taken a lift to the second floor – it had been that simple.

‘Should you two not be on the children’s ward,’ Froggy rasped, ‘where all the talent is?’

Annalise snorted. ‘Strictly speaking, I don’t know if paedophilia is the correct term for what these two get up to. Hey, Jimmy,’ she addressed him in her own voice, ‘is shagging teenage schoolgirls paedophilia, or is it just statutory rape? I mean, if I told the police what I saw in Bristol, what would they charge you with?’

‘Now see here, doll…’ Driscoll jumped up. His spiky black mane made him look taller than he was.

‘She’s not a doll,’ Froggy growled. ‘I am. And she’s way too old for you, so save your sweet-talk for the kiddiewinks.’

‘Annalise,’ Jimmy groaned, ‘what is this?’

The occupants of the five other beds in the ward simply stared, as did their groups of visitors. One old man had tubes up his nose and there was a teenage boy opposite, rigid in a neck-brace.

‘Sorry, are we interrupting something?’ Froggy snarled. ‘Planning your next press conference, maybe?’

‘Annalise,’ Jimmy half-whispered, ‘please, talk in your normal voice, you’re giving me the creeps. And what are you doing with that stuffed toy?’

‘You’re the creep, Jimmy,’ and she did answer in her own voice, but that made the tears start. ‘And I used to think you were… I mean, since Darling Sweetheart, I never let anyone in, but with you I really tried to be a normal… a normal… I just wanted to be
normal
, you know?’

‘She’s mad,’ Driscoll muttered, then announced to the room, ‘Anythin’ this woman says is a pack of fuckin’ lies. Look at her – she’s a nutjob!’

But she kept her bleary gaze on the prostrate singer, trapped in his bed. ‘I was a virgin when I met you.’ The confession, enormous
to her, felt pathetic in its utterance. ‘I… I know that doesn’t mean very much these days, and b-because I was twenty-two you probably didn’t even notice the first time you… I mean, the first time we… I wanted to know what
it felt
like, falling in love.’

Jimmy’s face reddened – but then Driscoll came around the bed and took her arm, as if to usher her away.

‘C’mon babe, you’re causin’ a scene. Jimmy Lockhart is a bona-fide rock star and he don’t need any of this shit. Sorry, folks,’ he addressed the rest of the ward. ‘Autograph hunter.’

Before she knew what she was doing, her hand flashed out, grabbed a jug from Jimmy’s bedside table and smashed it into the side of Driscoll’s head, sending him and his ridiculous sunglasses sprawling across the floor in a tide of water and broken plastic.

‘Owww!’ His cheek was bleeding. ‘That’s assault!’

‘Assault?’ Froggy cried. ‘You ain’t seen nothin’ yet!’ Annalise raised Froggy and walloped the cowering manager about the head and shoulders. ‘Yah-hoooo!’ Froggy yelled. ‘Take that, child molester! And that! Yeah!’

‘Annalise!’ Jimmy sat forward, but he too got a smack in the face. ‘Hey!’ He shielded himself with his hands.

‘A virgin, Jimmy!’ She belted him again. ‘A bloody virgin!’

He lowered his hands and glared at her. ‘And what was I to you, eh?’