LITMIR.BIZ

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for a ring on the door.

      It was minutes before she remembered the security system in the flats. He couldn’t get in; the night porter downstairs on the desk would ring her, wouldn’t admit anyone until she said it was OK.

      Yet somehow she wasn’t entirely sure. She waited, her heart in her mouth. The minutes ticked by; nothing happened. No phone rang; nobody came to the door. She shakily retreated to the living-room, sat staring at the silent phone, waiting.

      It was two hours before she realised he wasn’t coming; not tonight, at least. She wondered then if she should ring the police, move out, go to a hotel, but she wouldn’t let this crazy person drive her from her home. When Phil and Di got back they would be horrified if they heard about it; they’d feel guilty, think that she couldn’t cope alone.

      No, this was some sort of war of nerves. For some reason this man was trying to frighten her, but she wasn’t going to let him. What could the police do if she told them about it? Monitor her phone calls? Maybe she should have her number changed again. But then how had he got this number in the first place, and would he get the new one too?

      Who was he? How did he know so much about her?

      She went to bed, and managed to sleep after a while. When she woke up next morning she had a confused memory of a dream; phones had been ringing, a voice had haunted her sleep, there had been strange, terrifying flashes of light, and for some reason she had kept hearing the sea.

      It must have been the traffic of London in the distance, she decided as she got ready. It sometimes sounded like the sea when you heard it at night, and the flashes of light must have been headlights from passing cars.

      She and the band rehearsed hard for eight hours that day. She had no time to think about anything else, but as she drove home that evening she began to wonder what messages she was going to find on the answerphone, and her nerves leapt as she switched on the machine.

      There were none. Relief made her feel almost sick, but the next day she rushed to the answerphone as soon as she got back to her flat. This time there was a short message from Philip’s office. No messages from the whispering voice. Perhaps he had got tired of playing cat and mouse with her, had given up the game or turned his attention elsewhere.

      She got a card from Philip and Diana a couple of days later: blue skies, palm trees, a ludicrously blue sea and on the other side a message that made her laugh, ending with a reminder that they would meet her and the band in Paris in a week. They would need time to rehearse at the venue itself, and do Press interviews before the tour began, and Annie hoped to get in some sightseeing.

      Annie was beginning to get used to living alone by the time she drove to Heathrow to catch the flight to Paris. The equipment was going overland, and then by sea, in large vans, and the band had all elected to go with it. Brick, in particular, had a neurotic fear of something happening to his amazingly expensive drums if they got out of his sight. Annie preferred to fly, though; it was quicker and more comfortable.

      There had been no more of the weird phone calls; she was sleeping normally again and looking forward to seeing Di and Phil very soon. She was going to have to get used to the fact that they belonged to each other now, more than they did to her, of course. It would be painful, difficult at times; but Annie was determined to get over this first awkward phase of the new relationship. The other two meant too much to her for her to want to lose them. She would simply have to live with her feelings, as she had for years now, and maybe one day she would meet someone else, and get over Phil at last.

      She would be the first to arrive in Paris, since the band would take quite a while to drive across France with all their equipment. They planned to stop en route at a hotel for the night, and they would join Annie at the hotel the following day.

      Philip’s secretary had arranged for Annie to be met at the airport by a chauffeur-driven car, and she had an escort on the plane, a couple of security men hired by Phil to make sure she had no problems on the flight. They all sat in first-class, the men on the aisle side, in case someone tried to talk to Annie, who sat by the window.

      She was casually dressed in a black and scarlet skiing jacket under which she wore a white silk jersey shirt, and black ski-pants and boots. A few passengers walked past, staring, but she kept her face averted, staring out of the window, and when they landed she was whisked through the VIP channel at Charles de Gaulle and escorted almost immediately out of a side-door. A large black limousine was waiting. The two security men had words with the chauffeur in a dark suit, who got out as they approached. He held the door open for Annie, half bowing, murmured a greeting in French, and Annie climbed into the back and settled down in the luxurious, leather-upholstered interior, while her Gucci luggage was loaded on to the car.

      The two security men weren’t coming with her in the car; they were returning to England. A French security team would take over whenever required. The driver closed the door and got behind the wheel, then the limousine purred softly away and from behind smoked glass windows she watched the airport terminal disappear as they followed the unwinding ribbon on the auto-route.

      It was some minutes later that she turned her gaze to the front again, and noticed the driver. She hadn’t noticed his face when she got into the car, and now she couldn’t see it, but he had smooth black hair and wide shoulders. She caught a glimpse of his neck, tanned and powerful above a white collar. He hadn’t said a word to her since they set off, for which she was grateful, because now that she was in France she was nervous about practising her French. She had been learning it for years, and could talk quite easily to her teacher, but that was a very different matter from talking to French people in their own country.

      She stared curiously out of the window at the boring, ugly environs of Paris, so similar to the outskirts of London and any other major city in the world, the typical urban sprawl of the late twentieth century. There was a lot of traffic, but the driver sped past it all, the effortless power of the car engine making her faintly nervous. She thought of leaning forward and asking him to slow down, but something about the powerful shoulders, the set of that dark head, made her decide against the idea.

      She watched the city thicken around them on either side of the wide motorway: roofs, tower blocks, spires of churches. They passed familiar names on road signs: Neuilly, Clichy, St Denis, entry points for the inner city, but the car purred on past, and after a while it began to dawn on Annie that the driver seemed to be heading away from the city, out again into the suburbs on the other side of Paris.

      Had he lost his way? Or been given the wrong destination? Or was he taking some route she didn’t know about?

      She was about to lean forward to ask him when they approached a toll barrier which stretched right across the motorway. The limousine slowed and joined a queue, and Annie looked up at the huge signs giving directions for the road ahead. Lyon? That was a city right in the centre of France—why were they taking a road that led there?

      They reached an automatic ticket machine and the driver leaned out and took a ticket; the barrier rose and the car shot forward with a deep-throated purr.

      Annie leaned forward and banged on the glass partition. ‘Where are you going?’ she asked in English, then in French, ‘Monsieur—où allez-vous?’

      He still didn’t turn round, but he did glance briefly into his mirror and she saw his eyes, dark, brilliant, with thick black lashes flicking down to hide them a second later.

      ‘You’re supposed to be taking me into Paris,’ she said in her badly accented, agitated French. ‘Don’t you know the way? You’ll have to turn back. Do you understand, monsieur?’

      He nodded his head, without answering, but the car drove onwards along the Peage, so fast that Annie had to cling to the leather strap beside her, her body swaying with the speed at which they moved. He must be doing a hundred miles an hour, she thought dazedly, watching another road sign flash past. Versailles. Wasn’t that about fifteen miles outside Paris? Where were they going? Then the black limousine began to slow down again, took a right-hand turn off the motorway, and joined a queue passing through another toll barrier.

      Annie breathed a little

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