In the Still of the Night

by Charlotte Lamb

Genres: Romantic Suspense

Synopsis

Annie Lang, star of the TV police drama The Force, is a character known to millions. Men want to protect her; women want to be her friend. But the actress with the innocent face harbours her own terrible secret. Two very different men dominated Annie's past and both of them vanished eight years ago. Since that fateful night, ambition has driven Annie to the top. Now at the peak of her success, she has everything she has ever wanted except love. And then one day love begins to stalk her . . . How is this connected to what happened eight years ago? What else does Annie's perfect façade hide? And, after all this time, will love bring about Annie's end?

Release date: March 28, 2013

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 384

Sample

Annie Lang stood in the wings waiting for her name to be called and trying to hide the fact that she was trembling and sweating, even though the stage-school theatre was unheated and draughty. She was the last in the long line of hopefuls who had queued there today. She had almost been too late.

‘Weren’t you told nine o’clock prompt?’ the man on the door had grumbled, ticking her name off a long list without actually looking at her.

‘Sorry, I …’ She was so nervous she started pulling a wisp of her pale blonde hair down to her mouth and chewing it: a childish habit that had always earnt her a slap from her mother.

The stage-door keeper was in a bad temper; it was nearly opening time at the local pub and he needed a drink. ‘Never mind the excuses. You were told nine and I shouldn’t send you in there.’ She made an anguished noise; he gave her a quick look then grunted at her. ‘Oh, alright, alright. But you’re the last. Tell them that. Down the corridor, turn right, then left, and join the queue.’

Pale and feeling sick, she followed his directions. She didn’t know this part of London. She lived on the other side of the city; London was a web of little villages whose inhabitants stayed on their own patch most of their lives. She had got lost within minutes of leaving the Underground station. She’d asked someone the way and been misdirected; panic-stricken, she had run round corners, asked in shops, had finally found the street by accident, turning into it, seeing the name on a sign on a wall, and feeling her body sag with sick relief.

Now she was here and she wished she hadn’t come. There were a dozen people still waiting; she’d seen all the heads turn, had felt their eyes strip her, hard with rivalry and fear. One look and they had all smiled triumphantly, turning away again. She was no threat. Annie had almost turned and run then, seeing herself with their eyes. She had always hated looking in mirrors.

She was wearing black leggings and a black T-shirt – so were several other girls, she noticed. Black made Annie look paler than ever, a thin, gawky girl with very big, very blue eyes – her one claim to attention. She wore no make-up because she had had eczema most of her life and any sort of cosmetics could trigger an attack. Her hair was long and straight, almost colourless, it was so blonde. She would have liked to have it all cut off, but her mother got hysterical if she so much as talked about it.

What on earth had ever made her think she could ever make it in the theatre? Her dream was crazy; she didn’t even believe in it herself. She would never have had the nerve to apply, but her mother had stood over her while she filled in the application forms – had even her mother really believed she would get as far as an interview, though?

‘Is that the last one?’ she suddenly heard from the dark auditorium and realised the girl who had been in front of her had finished and gone.

Annie hurried out on to the lit stage and almost stumbled over her own feet. ‘No, there’s me … please … Annie Lang … I’m the last.’

A silence, and she peered out into shadows, could see nothing, then a small pencil light was switched on over a desk, and a man’s face came out of nowhere, gleaming eyes, a widow’s peak of hair, a full, moist red mouth.

‘Annie Lang? How old are you, Annie? You don’t look old enough to … were you on our list? Ah, here you are, got you. Still at school, Annie, right? Seventeen?’

She nodded, dry-mouthed. His eyes were worse than those she had met in the queue. She felt his stare like ants under her skin.

‘Looks about twelve!’ she heard, from someone else – a woman’s voice.

The man ignored that. ‘Tell us something about yourself, Annie. Have you done any acting at school?’

‘Yes,’ she whispered.

‘For instance?’

For a second her mind went blank, she struggled to remember, hoping she didn’t look as stupid as she felt, then blurted out, ‘I … was J-Joan of …’

There was faint, quickly smothered laughter somewhere in the seats around him, and she flinched.

Her eyes, accustomed to the dark by then, picked out two other faces, both women, one who wore dangling, glittery earrings, the other wearing pearly lipstick which gave her the look of a phosphorescent marine creature, a decomposing brilliance.

‘Anything else?’ the man asked her.

‘The Diary of Anne Frank.’ She shouldn’t be here; she shouldn’t have come, she hated being laughed at.

‘You played …?’

‘Anne.’ She wished she was dead. Why … why … had she come?

‘How did you feel about the play?’

‘It …’

‘Did you enjoy it?’

She gulped, then blurted out the truth. ‘I got so wound up, doing it, it gave me nightmares.’

She felt their attention. A moment, then the man said, ‘Which of the Shakespeare pieces we suggested did you prepare?’

‘Ophelia.’

The two women smiled again.

‘Why did you choose that?’ asked the man.

She fought not to stammer, her hands screwed into balls. ‘It’s very d-dramatic.’ She could never get what she felt into words. How did you say: madness is terrifying, losing yourself is being sucked into a nightmare? She knew something about it. She had loved her mother’s cousin Edie, who’d often looked after her when Annie was small; now the old lady was senile, didn’t know who she was or even where she was. Annie had only visited her a couple of times. She couldn’t bear to go again after that.

Her class was studying Hamlet that year; its disturbing echoes of madness made her stomach clench. What if her mother … what if it was hereditary? What if she, herself, one day began to forget? How did it feel to be Auntie Edie? Did you know what was happening to you?

‘Begin, please,’ said the voice beyond the footlights, and she jumped back to the present, confused.

She wasn’t going to remember the words. Her mind was a blank. She stared at the back of the theatre, where a little red light lit the Exit sign, trying to concentrate – and at last the first line came up out of the well of memory and then another and another.

When she had finished there was a silence. It seemed a long time before the man said, ‘Thank you. What modern piece did you prepare?’

‘Look Back in Anger,’ she stammered. ‘The scene where …’

‘Fine, off you go,’ he interrupted, and she flushed with humiliation, realising he knew exactly which scene she would have picked, who she would be playing.

But she couldn’t get out of it, she was there, standing in a blue light, on the bare stage, her knees knocking, feeling hopeless, feeling sick. What was the point of going on when she was bound to fail?

It would be too humiliating to run away, though. She took a deep breath, and after a few words forgot herself in the pain of the woman she was pretending to be.

Coming out of it, she was dazed for a second. The dark dazzled her. She heard breathing, then the light on the desk was switched off, and she heard seats banging back as the three people below stood up. They hadn’t said a word.

She’d known she wasn’t going to get in. She wasn’t good enough. Why had she thought she could act?

Turning away, shaking, icy cold, she stumbled off the stage to go back along the corridor to the stage door.

‘Where are you going?’

They met her in the wings, three of them, the man the tallest, between two women, one of them with a very familiar face, an actress she had often seen on the stage of the National Theatre. The women smiled at her.

‘Well done. Enjoyed that. Must rush, Roger will talk to you. Bye.’ They looked at the man and said, ‘Bye, Roger,’ in voices that seemed teasing, or mocking, then they walked off.

Annie began to follow them, muttering, ‘Well … thanks …’

The man caught her arm. ‘I haven’t finished with you yet. One or two more questions. Come to my office.’ He urged her round the back of the stage. Annie dragged her feet, wanting now just to get away. It was so cold back here, cold and dusty. She found herself going through a door, into a corridor that led to an office with a name plate on the door.

She read it as he waved her inside. Roger Keats, Senior Tutor.

Her favourite poet was John Keats. She had a picture of him pinned up on the wall over her bed: a thin, pale, willowy young man with golden hair. Nothing like this man, with his fleshy mouth and those eyes that kept staring at her in a way that made her very uncomfortable.

She looked away. He’d called this his office, but although it held a desk and filing cabinet, it looked too cosy to be an office. Lined with shelves of books, the walls hung with faded old prints of famous paintings, the room was dominated by a red velvet Victorian chaise-longue piled with cushions of many colours.

Roger Keats shut the door and strolled forward. ‘We’ll let you know, in a week or so.’ He threw his clipboard, rustling with papers, on the desk, and lounged there, his hands gripping the edge of the desk, his stare wandering over her in that odd, smiling way. ‘I see from your application form that you sing, you’re in the school choir, and have had ballet lessons since you were four.’

‘Yes.’ She wasn’t good enough at either to think of making a career as a singer or a dancer, though.

‘Your posture is terrible. Hasn’t your ballet teacher tried to correct it?’ He took a leather-bound book off the shelves and put it on top of her head. It wobbled and was heavy. She grabbed for it before it fell.

Mr Keats slapped her hand away. ‘Leave it. It should balance there if your posture is correct. Come on, head up, shoulders back. Don’t slouch. Let me see you walk towards that wall.’

Annie walked, trying not to shake. Reaching the other side of the room, she turned to go back, but he blocked her way. Grabbing her shoulders, he pushed her up against the wall; the book fell to the floor with a crash and she jumped, eyes wide.

He stared down into them. ‘Always be aware of your body, Annie,’ he softly said. ‘I am. Think about it now. Your head. Your neck, balancing your head on top of it, feel it, concentrate on it,’ he ran a hand up her nape and the little hairs on the back of her neck prickled unpleasantly. He pressed her backwards until she felt the wall forced into her spine. ‘I don’t ever want to see you stooping and hanging your head down again. Walk like a queen – and keep your stomach in …’ His hands released her shoulders and slithered downwards, making her nerves jump, making her stiffen, with a little gasp. His fleshy mouth smiled wider. ‘What sort of bra do you wear? Do you wear one?’ He squeezed as he asked. ‘Doesn’t feel as if you do, your breasts are small but soft. These little tiny buds are breasts, aren’t they? How old did you say you were? You have the breasts of a little girl.’

He looked into her frightened eyes; his mouth was moist and very red. He smiled as if he enjoyed her fear. ‘Never mind, I like little girls. I like them very much.’ His fingers smoothed, pressed, dug into her.

Frozen in panic like a rabbit in headlights she didn’t try to get away, just trembled.

‘There is a lot of competition to get in here, Annie, and we expect our students to work hard and do as they’re told. It’s up to you, Annie. We’ve seen fifty girls, all of them talented. To get in, a student has to have something special. I make the final decision – so, do you want a place here, or don’t you?’

Annie lived in one of the older suburbs of London, South Park, on the wrong side of Regent’s Park. Her street was shady in summer with plane trees whose dappled bark gave a sleepy country air to the white and green Edwardian houses with their gables and pink roofs, and on warm evenings there was a heady scent of privet from every garden as you walked past. On very hot days flying ants swarmed from the sand below the paving stones and dive-bombed you as you walked over them, terrifying her when she was a child. Even today she panicked if an insect flew at her.

The house had been left to Annie’s mother by her first husband, whose parents had bought it while it was still half-built in 1907, and had lived in it until they died.

In those days this had been a very middle-class area, with servants sleeping in the attic and a horse and carriage stabled at the back of the house in a cobbled mews. Today there were no horses in the mews, although the cobbles remained; they gave class to the tiny, pastel-painted cottages where trendy, highly paid secretaries and city executives lived.

By the time Annie was born the road had become shabby. Some of the houses were sub-divided into flats; the gardens were wildernesses. The sixties were in full swing and living was easy, except for women like her mother. Sometimes Annie felt her mother had been born middle-aged, always worrying, always working. From her first husband she had inherited a greengrocer’s shop just round the corner, as well as the house, but they had had no children. Annie suspected that that first marriage had not been happy, but her mother never talked about it. She only talked about Annie’s father, long since dead. Her mother still ran the greengrocer’s shop; it was their only source of income now and Annie was expected to help whenever she wasn’t at school or doing schoolwork.

Her mother was back from the shop when she got home. The table in the long, shabbily furnished lounge was laid with a blue glass bowl of salad, a dish of cold meat and some cheese. The kettle was boiling as she walked into the kitchen. Her mother looked round eagerly. ‘Well?’

‘They said they’ll write in about a week.’ Annie couldn’t look at her mother. If she told her … but she couldn’t tell. If she did, she would never get that place at drama school, she would never be an actress. Who would believe her? He was an important man there; the senior tutor – he’d just say she was making it all up, it would be her word against his, and who was she, after all? Just another stage-struck kid.

‘But how did it go? Did you think they liked you?’

‘I don’t know,’ Annie mumbled. ‘I must go and wash.’ She rushed upstairs to the bathroom and was sick; her stomach was still churning as she splashed her face with cold water. She avoided seeing herself in the little mirror over the washbasin.

‘Did they like you?’ her mother had asked.

‘Be a good little girl and I’ll be pleased with you,’ he had said.

Her stomach heaved again. ‘Do you want to be an actress?’ he had asked, his hands wandering up inside her top, his fingers hot on her cold skin. ‘Do you want a place at the school? How much do you want it? There are lots of others who would jump at the chance, Annie.’

She closed her eyes and leaned on the wall. No, she could never tell. She hated the memory of what happened; it would be impossible to tell anyone about it, especially her mother.

The letter came a week later. Her mother stood over her while she opened it. Annie’s hands trembled. She couldn’t see the words.

‘Well?’ Trudie Lang was too agitated to wait, she tried to read the letter over Annie’s shoulder. ‘Don’t just stand there reading it over and over – what does it say?’

Saying nothing, Annie gave her the letter. What should she do? All those hopes and dreams of being an actress – she couldn’t give them up now. When she first applied, she hadn’t dared hope she would be accepted. Now she wasn’t sure she could go through with it. People always said, ‘You get nothing for nothing!’, but how could she bear to pay the price tag on her dream?

Her mother’s hand was shaking as she held the letter and read it. Trudie Lang had never been beautiful; now she was nearly sixty, grey-haired and lined after years of hard work, and she had the worn brightness of old silver, her strong nature showing through her bony face. She had had a tough life, worked hard from her childhood up, been married twice, often been hurt and lonely, only had one child, Annie, born when she was nearly forty.

Annie watched her, knowing that her dream had been Trudie’s dream first. From when she was very small, her mother had encouraged her to perform: she had paid for private music lessons, dancing lessons, elocution lessons, paid money they could ill afford, and all to see Annie get up in front of an audience and shine.

‘You got in!’ Trudie burst out. ‘Annie! You’ll get your chance, that was all I wanted, for you to get the chance I never had. I’d have given my eye-teeth to be an actress, but of course there was no chance of that, not with my family. They’d rather have seen me dead.’

Annie knew all this, had heard it a hundred times before. She didn’t listen now.

‘But this makes up for it,’ her mother said. ‘One day you’ll be famous, I’ll sit in the front stalls and listen to them applauding on your first nights.’

Desperately, Annie broke out, ‘Mum, I …’ But her voice died away. She couldn’t kill the joy she saw in her mother’s eyes.

Trudie wasn’t listening, anyway. She was too excited. ‘This is the chance of a lifetime, Annie. Don’t waste it.’

Her heart sank. She was trapped – how could she explain wanting to turn it down? Except by telling her mother … and she couldn’t, she couldn’t. Oh, maybe he had only been kidding when he told her what he would expect from her if he awarded her a place? She’d never been pretty: she was too thin, flat as a pancake. None of the boys at school had ever given her a second look.

Even her best friend, Megan, had given up trying to do something about the way Annie looked. Megan had left school now and worked in an office; she lived for Friday and Saturday and spent all her wages on clothes. She had curly hair and big breasts, wore tight skirts and sheer stockings, giggled a lot and made out in the backs of cars; the boys all liked her. Annie didn’t see much of her any more. If Roger Keats had made a pass at Megan she’d have giggled and probably let him do whatever he liked. Megan hadn’t been a virgin since she was fourteen. Annie was. And she hated the thought of Roger Keats touching her.

‘But, Mum, the grant I’ll get is only for the tuition, but I’ll need lots of books, and they’ve sent me a list of clothes I’ll need – you’ll have to keep me while I’m there. Can we afford it?’

Her mother turned away as the kettle boiled. Over her shoulder as she filled the kettle she said, ‘I’ve been thinking about that. You’re right, equipping you will cost a lot, but I’ve thought of a way to make some more money. I’m going to let out that spare room. I should have thought of it before. I’ll put a card in the shop window. I’ll only let it to a woman. I don’t want any men here, especially when I’m out at work so much and you’re here on your own.’

On a humid morning in late July, a gangling boy in jeans walked into the shop while Annie was piling potatoes into an old woman’s basket.

‘There’s a card in the window,’ he said to Trudie, who looked sharply at him. ‘A room to let? Has it gone yet?’

Annie’s customer held out some coins; Annie took them and turned to the till to ring up the amount, listening to her mother talking behind her.

‘What’s your name?’

‘Johnny. Johnny Tyrone.’

‘How old are you?’ Trudie bluntly asked, and he went a bit pink.

‘Twenty. I’ll be twenty-one in October.’

Trudie Lang studied him with wary eyes. ‘Got a job?’

‘I’ve just started working on the local paper.’

‘Where d’you work before that?’

‘I’ve been at college, this is my first job.’ His voice was excited; Annie looked over her shoulder at him. His eyes shone, dark blue and thick with long black lashes. Longer than hers. She’d never seen eyes like them before, on a boy, anyway. He’s beautiful, she thought. It sounded odd to say that about a boy, but no other word applied.

‘Why aren’t you living with your family? Don’t you come from around here?’ Trudie Lang was staring at him, too, her face uncertain, but Annie could tell she liked him; her voice was softening.

His face changed slightly, Annie thought she saw sadness in his eyes. ‘I only have a grandmother. She lives too far from here for me to go home every day.’

Trudie hesitated. Annie crossed her fingers behind her back. Let her say yes, let her say yes. Her heart was beating so hard it shook her chest.

‘The house is just around the corner. I’ll walk round with you and show you the room. It isn’t very big, and there’s no cooking facilities, and you’ll have to share the bathroom with us. I’ll throw in breakfast every day, and if you like you can eat with us in the evenings, but I’ll have to charge extra for that.’ Trudie took off her apron and hung it up behind the door. ‘Annie, mind the shop. This is my daughter, by the way, Annie.’

She went to get her coat from the room behind the shop. Johnny Tyrone watched Annie, who was automatically polishing apples; her mother disapproved of idle hands and liked to see her keeping busy when there were no customers in the shop.

‘Hi.’

‘Hello,’ she shyly whispered, turning to face him. He had a wonderful smile; his face was so open and friendly when he smiled. His good looks didn’t seem to have spoilt his character – at school Annie had often noticed that the best-looking boys were often the most unkind, the vain ones, the ones who made fun of other people. Of her. She was often a target for their idea of a joke. Could Johnny Tyrone be an exception to the rule? Or was he clever enough to hide his real nature? Was she having the wool pulled over her eyes?

‘How much for one of those?’ He pulled a handful of coins out of his jeans pocket. ‘I’m starving. One slice of toast for breakfast and I won’t get anything else until I get back to Grandma’s tonight. Those apples look awfully good to me. I could eat a horse.’

Annie speechlessly held out two apples.

‘I can only afford one,’ he said. ‘How much?’

She pushed the coins away, then heard her mother coming back and just had time to whisper, ‘Don’t tell her!’

He caught on at once. Pushing both apples into the pocket of his blue denim jacket, he gave Annie a slow, warm smile, his eyes searching her face as if he liked what he saw.

‘Thanks. See you again soon,’ Johnny said, following Trudie Lang out of the shop.

Annie stared after him, trembling with happiness.

That evening at supper, her mother told her what she had found out about him. ‘Irish family, I knew it the minute I heard that name. Tyrone; Irish name. He looks Irish, too. His parents are dead. He’s been living with his grandmother for a couple of years, but she lives in Epping; he wouldn’t be able to travel here and back every day. He got the job from an ad in a trade paper; he says it’s tough getting a reporter’s job, too many people chasing every job, so he had to take this one, even though it means leaving his grandma alone.’

‘He’s very fond of her, then?’ Annie was so interested she wasn’t eating; her mother looked at her untouched plate, clicking her tongue impatiently.

‘Don’t waste good food, girl!’

Annie hurriedly forced some potato into her mouth while her mother watched her. Only then did Trudie go on, ‘I liked the way he talked about his grandma; most kids his age don’t care about old people, but he said he would be going back to her house most weekends, doesn’t want her to feel he’s gone for good. He said he would be out a lot. He will have to work late some nights – they work them hard on those little local papers. Sounds as if he really wouldn’t be any trouble.’

Eagerly, Annie asked, ‘So are you going to let him have the room?’

‘I can always tell him to leave if it doesn’t work out,’ Trudie thought aloud.

‘Yes,’ Annie said, breathlessly, fighting to hide her joy.

He moved in a week later. He only had one suitcase; it seemed heavy as he dragged it upstairs. ‘Books, mostly books he brought,’ her mother told her next day, shaking her head. ‘Not much money there; all he has to wear is jeans and sweatshirts and one cheap suit. That’s what he wears to work every day. I suppose journalists have to wear suits, to impress people.’ She had inspected his wardrobe while he was out at work, to Annie’s shame. She only hoped Johnny Tyrone hadn’t realised his room had been searched.

Annie didn’t see much of him at first, because as the latest newcomer on the newspaper he was landed with all the boring jobs nobody wanted to do, he explained. Church fetes, flower shows, funerals, making a daily tour of the police station, the churches, to check up on any possible story. The court cases were covered by one of the senior reporters and any big news story went to them, too. Johnny was just the dogsbody, learning his trade, even though he had studied journalism at college.

Annie didn’t even see him at breakfast because Mrs Lang always sent her off to open up the shop, so she had her tea and toast and left the house long before Johnny came downstairs.

She heard a lot of him, though; his room was next to hers. At night she heard him get home late, often after midnight, creep upstairs, the creak of the bathroom door, the discreet flushing, the running of water as he washed, then his tiptoeing across the landing, the give of springs as he sat down on the bed to take off his shoes, his movements as he undressed, and then the long sigh of relief with which he finally got between the sheets.

He was always sleepy in the mornings. He spent his long day running from job to job, and never had enough sleep, even at weekends.

His room was a narrow, oblong box, holding just a bed, a small chest of drawers, a wardrobe and a chair. A mirror hung on one wall. The window looked out over the garden; the curtains matched the coverlet on the bed, light green cotton. The walls were painted cream; there was something springlike in the colours. Annie had chosen them, had helped her mother do the painting, had made the curtains too.

When he was out and her mother was busy at the shop, Annie sometimes crept into the room. She liked to imagine him in there. She made his bed and tidied up, looked at the titles of the books he had put out on top of the chest of drawers. Some stood up, their spines showing, propped there by a little pile of other books on either side.

She listened to him breathing in the night sometimes, knew when he was asleep and when he was awake and reading. She even heard him turn the page, a light fluttering sound. He read a lot. He liked poetry, he had a lot of poetry books. Annie liked it, too; she was thrilled to see he liked the same poets.

One day when her mother was out shopping Annie lay down on his bed, her long blonde hair brushed down over her shoulders, and read Tennyson aloud.

She was so engrossed that she didn’t hear him let himself into the house or come quietly upstairs.

When he pushed open the door of his room she almost fainted. She dropped the book and jumped off the bed, her face dark red, trembling violently.

‘Don’t stop,’ he said, staring at her. ‘You read beautifully. You’re going to be an actress, aren’t you? Your mother told me. You’ve got a wonderful voice. Do you like Tennyson? He’s my favourite poet and that’s one of my favourite poems.’ He murmured some of the words she had just read aloud. ‘O, for the touch of a vanished hand and the sound of a voice that is still.’

His voice was so sad Annie’s eyes stung with tears. Had he been in love with someone who died? He sounded as if he really meant the words.

He sat down on the bed, patted the place next to him. ‘Read me some more. Please.’

That was how it began.

She started at drama school mid-September, a windy, bright, chilly day with leaves chasing down the gutters and wet cobwebs glittering like diamond windows in the hedges as she walked to the station.

She was tense and shaking as she joined the little crowd of other students pushing in through the open doors of the school. All the time, Annie was looking out for Roger Keats, but he wasn’t in sight. She checked her name on the lists hanging in the hall, and went off to the room indicated. That first morning was spent in having the daily routine explained, being shown which rooms to go to for fencing, dancing, singing lessons, after which they went to see the well-equipped gymnasium, the music rehearsal rooms, which were full of pianos and other musical instruments, and had padded doors with goldfish-bowl windows in them, double-glazing, and sound-proofing in the walls.

The new students soon began to recognise each other’s faces, got to know some of their tutors, and saw a lot of their year tutor, a short, ferocious man with a droopy moustache.

It was a long morning. Everyone was starving by the time they broke for lunch in the gloomy, narrow dining-room. It was self-service. They queued up with their plates to get salad and cold meat.

‘And I hoped I’d got away from school dinners!’ a girl behind Annie said glumly as they sat down again at one of the long, scratched tables. She had introduced herself earlier; Scott Western was her name, she claimed, but Annie suspected she’d made it up. A redhead, sylphlike and blue-eyed, she had . . .