LITMIR.BIZ

      CHAPTER ONE

      ANNIE got the first phone call at midnight on a cold spring night.

      ‘Remember me?’ a voice whispered, and the hairs on the back of her neck stood up.

      She had only just got back to her London flat, she was alone, and already on the verge of tears because her best friend, Diana, had just married the man Annie loved.

      ‘Who is this?’ she asked, then wondered if it was one of the band, who were all still drinking at the bar in the hotel where the wedding reception had been held. When they were drunk all five of them could do the silliest things.

      But there was no reply. The phone went dead. She hung up, frowning, then switched on the answering machine. The last thing she needed tonight was crank phone calls.

      She turned away with a swish of silk, comforted by the sensual feel of the sleek material against her skin. Annie loved good clothes. She had helped Diana choose her wedding-dress and had chosen the dress she herself wore as brides-maid—almond-green silk, a colour which exactly matched the colour of her eyes. She would be able to wear it for parties afterwards. There was a faintly Victorian look about the style of the dress, as there had been about Di’s wedding-dress; and Annie had put up her long black hair into a smooth chignon at the back of her head, carried a tiny Victorian-style bouquet of violets displayed on ferns.

      She must take the best-looking flower and a spray of fern out of the bouquet, and put them between the pages of a book of poetry. She often pressed wild flowers in books; she liked finding them when she turned the pages years afterwards, being reminded of some special day, some important moment in her life. They always seemed to retain their scent, yet altered and nostalgic, a gentle, faded sweetness that gave her back instant memories.

      However hurt she felt, she knew this had been a very important day in her life; she would want to remember it.

      Yawning, she looked at her watch. Bed! she thought, seeing that it was way past midnight now. Annie kept strict hours when she wasn’t performing on stage. She would be in bed by ten most days, up very early, and tomorrow was no different. Tomorrow she had to be up at seven. She had a photo call at nine at the recording studio where she was just putting the final touches to her new disc.

      She took off her green silk dress and hung it up carefully in her wall-to-wall wardrobe, put on a brief nightdress and matching négligé, then sat down at the dressing-table and started to take off her make-up, and smooth a toning lotion into her skin. However late, however tired she was, Annie always went through the same routine before going to bed.

      ‘When you’re in the public eye all the time people notice everything about you, so never forget to look your best. You are always going to be on stage!’ Philip had told her years ago.

      She hadn’t been sure then that she liked the idea. In fact, it had been her first premonition that fame and success were not going to be without their drawbacks.

      Philip had watched her shrewdly. ‘Not so sure you like that, kid? Well, now’s the time to make your mind up, before you really get started. If you want to be a star you have to take the rough with the smooth; there’s no two ways about it. If you want out now, you only have to say so. Nobody knows you yet; you can easily go back to your old life without anyone being any the wiser.’

      She hadn’t wanted out. She had looked at him with wide, melancholy green eyes and sighed.

      ‘There’s nothing for me to go back to,’ she remembered saying. ‘I want to be a singer more than anything else in the world.’

      It had been that simple then; it was that simple now, and yet it got harder every year, although that was something Philip hadn’t warned her about. The strain of being at the top and fighting to stay there was only a part of it; there was a more personal price to pay, because the public wouldn’t give you any space. They ate you up if you let them, and you never knew whether you could trust the people you met; you couldn’t be sure if they really liked you, or were starstruck, or wanted to use you in some way.

      That was a hard lesson to learn. It hurt, and you were tempted to grow a second skin, toughen up; but Annie instinctively knew you couldn’t let yourself get too tough or the music would lose something vital. Getting hurt sometimes seemed essential to the music. Some of her best songs had been written about her secret feelings for Philip, feelings of which he seemed blithely unaware.

      He had always treated her the same way from the beginning: as if to him she would always be the seventeen-year-old kid he had met all those years ago. In the beginning she had been relieved to find she could trust him to keep his hands to himself, not to proposition her or make off-colour jokes. Philip was a tough businessman, but he was kind and thoughtful to her; he treated her as if she were his daughter or his sister, and at first that had been fine. Until she had realised she was in love with him, but that Philip simply didn’t see her that way.

      It was from that time that her songs had begun to have a deeper tone, she thought wryly, looking back. Until then she had just been pretending to write about love; like most people when they were young, she had loved sad songs, had acted out emotions she had never really felt. Falling in love with Philip had made her work far more personal, far more real, and in the past six months she had written some of the best work she had ever done, because her grief and loss when she heard that he was going to marry Diana had made the songs pour out of her, often two or three a week, a very high production rate, for her or any other songwriter.

      It had helped to keep her busy. In preparation for her new disc and the forthcoming European tour she was to make, over the last six months she had been working so hard that she hadn’t had time to think too much.

      For eight years she had had Philip and Diana to rely on, for help, advice, comfort and companionship. Philip was her agent and manager, and to look after her when she first came to London he had found Diana Abbot, who was then a twenty-two-year-old secretary in Philip’s office. Diana had gone on working for Philip, but she had also shared Annie’s flat, made sure she got to the studio on time, accompanied her on tours, and dealt with the Press and any other problems Annie ran into. A tough, capable, streetwise girl from the back streets of Liverpool, Di had a kind heart, warm brown eyes that smiled all the time and an infectious laugh.

      Annie was as fond of Di as she was in love with Philip. He wasn’t handsome, but he had sex appeal. Tall and rangy, with steady, cynical blue eyes and hair the colour of toffee, he was always noticed by women. Annie had had to watch him dating other girls for years, a little comforted

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