Chapter 30.

“Coffee?” Anna offered as soon as Bibs and Penny had bundled out of the door with so much noise and commotion it was as if a whole party had left.

“Please,” Jess murmured, still in shock.

“She’s like a whirlwind,” Anna said over her shoulder as she filled the kettle and pulled out a cafetière. “Appallingly nosy and a gargantuan gossip, but with a big heart that’s always in the right place.”

“Yes,” Jess managed.

Anna set about making the coffee and Jess remained where she stood, paralysed by indecision and heartache. The silence beyond the clatter of the mug and the ring of a teaspoon was oppressive.

“I hope she kept you entertained,” Anna said, faced away. Jess could hear the hesitation creeping into her voice.

“Yes,” she said.

Anna stopped and waited for the kettle, hands resting on the top, all the while facing away. The kettle gurgled and rattled on its base, the steam billowing into the air, and when it seemed as if it might explode the switch clicked off and it settled almost with a sigh of relief into silence. Anna didn’t move, except for the slight slump in her shoulders.

“Penny told you didn’t she?”

“Yes, she did,” Jess replied. “It came up. She wasn’t gossiping.”

“Oh.” And the disappointment hung like a weight around Anna. Jess could see her trying to heave it off before she turned around and leant back against the surface, attempting a smile to lighten the moment. “I wondered if she had.”

Jess couldn’t move. If she’d doubted Penny’s story and the impact it’d had on Anna, here was evidence enough. Anna was the picture of someone changed.

“She said you didn’t want to act anymore,” Jess offered.

“Couldn’t is more accurate,” Anna said gently. “Stage fright. It sounds so simple and little doesn’t it – being a bit scared of going on stage – but I physically wasn’t able to act anymore.”

“Was it because of…him?” Jess realised Anna had never mentioned her stalker’s name, in fact how little Anna had told her about this, as if she wanted it kept in the past and to move on but couldn’t.

Anna nodded. “It's mind altering, having someone pursue you,” she said. “You question your own sanity after a while. I told him plainly many times that I wasn't interested and plainer still to stop contacting me. Every time he would invent another excuse. He told me that I wasn’t being fair and that I needed to listen to his side of the story, that I owed him that. How dare I ignore him. Who did I think I was.

“Every confrontation, I thought that I’d finally got through to him and he would stop calling or leaving messages. I believed he understood at last, that I wasn’t the person he thought I was and we shared the same reality at last. But then he’d appear at the corner shop near the theatre. He’d say it was by chance, but that was the thing, I’d told him not to talk to me ever again. Then perhaps that would stop, and he’d send a letter on behalf of someone else. He established a fanclub with others and made an utter fool of me when I freaked out in front of them all after a performance. He’d promised them that we were friends. It was relentless, like a bad dream that won’t stop.” She took a breath. “I began to think that nothing would get through to him and he would never ever stop.”

She peeped up, perhaps to see if Jess followed.

“It’s the unrelenting pressure of someone hounding you and inventing new ways to contact you and surprise you. You lose faith in your understanding of the world and your own perception. It’s profoundly disorienting and undermining. I still fear losing faith in my own judgement like that and trust in people’s behaviour.”

That hit Jess hard. How was she going to explain?

“Have you ever had that?” Anna said. “When you think so differently to someone else and they cannot entertain the possibility of divergence and insist on forcing their reality on you to your detriment.”

Jess had, often.

“Eventually I secured a restraining order,” Anna said, “but his behaviour deteriorated. Gone was any pretence of passing by or excuses to see me. Someone pinched me, hard, here,” she indicated the soft flesh at the side of her tummy. “I was on a packed Tube carriage. It was like a nasty prank, a stupid and childish thing to do. It sounds ridiculous doesn’t it, but it was him. I saw him as the train pulled away from the next stop, staring at me with glee and gloating as if challenging me to prove that it had been him. And that was just the start of another phase of escalation.” She hesitated, and Jess's heart heaved at Anna’s face so full of dread at her recollection of details left unsaid.

“So,” Anna said, shuffling. “It didn’t stop until he was imprisoned.”

“And the stage fright?” Jess gently encouraged.

“Well, I thought it was all over.” Anna raised her eyebrows. “Time to be free again and not live in the prison of his making. Not having to think about him every second of the day. Where he could be. What he’d do next. What new way he’d find to contact me. I thought all that was behind me. Then I froze on stage. Like I say, it sounds so little doesn’t it – a bit frightened of appearing before an audience – but I couldn’t move. It was completely debilitating. I thought I was going to have a heart attack it was such an overpowering physical experience. It wasn't even at the opening act of the play. I was into the second half and someone had coughed. I’m not sure if it sounded like him, but my mind was already convinced – I would never be safe, he would always come back, he was relentless and I froze.”

Anna shook her shoulders and stood up straighter. “So,” she said. “I took a break, but then I was seen as demanding, an awkward precious diva. I felt ridiculous having stage fright after all my experience and years of treading the boards. I tried work in smaller theatres but eventually no-one would take a chance on me. My current business partner was the one to suggest voice coaching. Therapy helped. It gave me enough coping skills to leave the flat and enough confidence for coaching work and to meet new clients in a single location, but that was the end of my acting career.”

Her words trailed off and her face fell into forlorn desolation as she stared at the ground. The loss was obvious and more profound to Jess because she could empathise so deeply.

Jess took a step toward her. “You must have been devastated, losing that on top of everything else.” And Jess couldn’t keep the sympathy from her voice.

Anna nodded but turned away, not inviting Jess's consolation. She sighed, hard. “Sorry, I’m not used to talking about this, even after all these years. Honestly, I feel foolish about it sometimes, knowing rationally that he’s gone but avoiding the life I had. I think if I dwell on the past it might set me back further, and other people…well, no-one wants to hear anymore. They’re impatient and think I should be well, even Penny, although she’s kinder about it. They want me to be my old self.”

Jess opened her mouth and was about to step forward but Anna stopped her with, “Let me get us a coffee and we'll sit down.” And Jess nodded, giving her space.

They sat at the island, steaming cups in front of them, and some of Anna’s usual cheer seemed to revive.

“Look, I hope Pen didn’t exaggerate,” Anna continued, more upbeat, “about the loss of my career, but acting did mean an enormous amount to me. Had you heard of me?” she added as if the thought had only that second occurred to her.

Jess shook her head. “No, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. I mainly enjoyed theatre work. I wasn’t a huge household name.”

Anna took a sip then rested the mug on a mat, her fingers wrapped around its entirety.

“Did she tell you about my family?” Anna asked.

“No.”

“Ah, small mercy then,” Anna said with something approaching sarcasm. “Sorry,” she added, again trying to cast off the seriousness. “They were never supportive of my going into the profession. I wonder sometimes if that’s why acting is so closely bound up with my identity and why my failure is so,” she took a deep breath, “debilitating in a way.”

Jess made a noise to show she was listening.

“Does this all sound rather precious to you?”

“Nothing of the sort,” Jess blurted out. “I can imagine how much acting meant to you.” And Jess had to stop herself from telling her everything.

“Good, because I don’t want to exaggerate about my background. My parents were nothing like abusive or negligent, but I couldn’t describe them as nurturing or accepting either.”

“That can still hurt,” Jess said, not for the first time grateful for her family, who muddled through every eventuality with love and best intentions.

“They are a traditional conservative family in general,” Anna continued. “My father’s a barrister and my brother and sister have worked in the City. I’m the odd one out – the actor and the bisexual of course.” She squeezed her coffee mug. “I think that’s why I loved acting from such an early age. I knew I was different to the rest of the family and I was always drawn to ‘deviant’ roles.” She grinned at the word. “I always leapt at the chance to play the character with the subtext: the girl who dressed as a boy, the woman who led, the woman who fell in love with someone of an unacceptable gender. It helped me discover who I was. I always find that ironic, that I discovered who I was by pretending to be someone else. But it’s true, I think, for many actors.”

Jess's heart thudded in her chest. She knew exactly what Anna meant. She could feel the truth of it in her bones. How much confidence had the character of Kalemdra given her as a teen when she played with her friends, and how much more so now that she shaped the role herself.

“My parents have always been dismissive of my ‘little career’.”

“Why though?” Jess couldn’t help saying. “Don’t they watch films, the TV?”

“All the time.”

“Have they ever gone a week without being entertained or informed by a radio play, or listened to a story read by a narrator who brought it to life?”

“They live for all of those.”

“Then why don’t they respect your choice?”

“Odd isn’t it,” Anna smiled, “how people dismiss the arts while elevating them at the same time. They’ll celebrate excellence and notoriety but dismiss aspirant actors as ridiculous. I always found that perplexing.”

“What about when you performed for the RSC?”

“That was the first time my family came to see any of my work. I was in my mid-twenties and after I received a rave review in The Times.”

“Wow,” Jess let out. “You had to do all that first?”

Anna pinched her lips together. “I say all this to explain how much that world meant to me, not to berate my parents. I admit I feel silly for how it has affected me sometimes, when things could have been so much worse, but at the same time it was what made me tick. It was always the high.” Her eyes sparkled as she recalled. “Appearing on stage, there’s nothing like it for me. When you have an audience’s heart and mind and they are consumed in the moment as intensely as you are, engulfed in the emotions of the character and situation, their suspension of disbelief complete, the trust between audience and actor unwavering and the moment so vivid it’s more powerful than any reality. That kind of experience is a potent drug.” Anna paused in thought. “Penny understands. She’s an actor too. I didn’t want you to think–”

“I understand.” Jess understood painfully well and she wished Anna wouldn’t apologise.

“I don’t think my parents ever did. I’m not sure they really understand the power of stories and performance.” A sad smile overtook Anna’s features. “I know what it means to others though. There was a woman once who came every week for an entire run of a play. I was cast as a mother who’d lost her child. It was an exhausting role. Every evening I had to fall apart on stage, broken into a thousand pieces and shattered by the death of her girl. It was a brutal experience.

“Then one evening, the audience member requested to meet me. She’d clearly been crying, her face all raw and glistening with tears. She said she’d found it cathartic. She’d lost a child of her own and couldn’t let herself fall apart for the sake of the rest of the family. She thought she’d never be able to put herself back together again. When she watched the play and another woman suffering the same way, it gave her permission to let go. She’d gone home and fallen apart. When she woke the next morning, she was in pieces but knew she couldn’t break anymore. All the fracture lines were excruciating, but she knew where they were now and how to take care of them, and that alone made her feel stronger.”

Anna looked up at Jess, “That woman thanked me as if I’d saved her life, in fact she said I probably had. With that play, that story and that cathartic performance, I realised I’d done something more important and more enriching for my life and that woman’s than anything my family had planned for me.”

Anna drew herself up. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to get quite so heavy. I was trying to lighten the mood by telling you what I loved. I only wanted you to know what it meant, what I was, what I still miss,” she paused, “so you understand why I avoid the subject.”

And Jess was crushed.

“Did you ever try acting again?” she asked. “Film? TV? Something away from the stage?”

“I had my chance once, but I’d already hit that point for women where roles rapidly dry up and, well, my reputation had changed from one of consummate professional to flake.”

“But...” Jess racked her brain for ways Anna could come back. “Is there anything you’ve wanted to try? Anything related. Radio work?”

“Do you mind if we talk about something else,” Anna said quietly, and the fatigue showed in her every muscle.

But there was so much more to say. Any semblance of a plan for how to break Jess's fame to Anna had flown out the window and Jess never regretted her inability to think on her feet as much as she did now.

The issue seemed colossal and Jess's brain stalled, contemplating how Anna would take the news. She couldn’t think of a single way to approach it without stamping over sensitive ground and yet she didn’t want to blunder her way through for the sake of getting it out in the open.

“Do you want me to go? Do you need to be alone?” Jess asked.

Anna was sagging with tiredness, but she tried to smile when Jess spoke. “No,” she said. “I’d like you to stay.”

“Of course.” Jess leapt off her seat and surrounded Anna, pulling her in as close as possible.

The evening was quiet and they went to bed early, Jess cradling Anna, who fell into a silent slumber. Jess held on tight, her mind racing and too fraught to manage any sleep until the early hours, then waking with a start and finding Anna again, acutely aware that this may be the last time they shared a moment like this.