Star Struck (20 page)

‘No.'

‘Then why are you … why choose now to tell me you want to come with me to the ball?'

‘What's wrong with now?'

We stared at each other again, until Erlon interrupted, clearing his throat. ‘'Um, maybe I could just do one or two of you first? Maybe, with Jack?' He waggled his camera under his non-existent chin. ‘While we wait.'

‘I'm not sure that's a good idea.' Jack spoke with his teeth clenched.

‘Aw, go on. Just be natural.' Erlon led me to the velvet couch, onto which the dress snagged like Velcro. ‘Look as if you're chatting.' Defeated, Jack slumped beside me, folded his arms and dropped his head down onto his chest. If we were chatting, it could only be about death and despondency. ‘Now, put your arm around Skye.' The world's most reluctant hug commenced as Jack slid one arm between my neck and the couch, leaving his hand flopping onto my shoulder. ‘Ah, that's great.'

Erlon's digital camera didn't have the decency to go ‘click' so we didn't know when it was safe to relax. Jack remained with one hand behind my back, the other loosely in his lap, as though covering up some furtive groinal activity, and both my arms lay lifelessly along the seams of the wine-dark dress. We looked like a mannequin and a mannequin fetishist.

‘Hey, Jack.' Gethryn wandered in, fully dressed in his uniform. He smelled very strongly of aftershave and his eyes were a bit unsettled, but apart from that he looked sober. ‘Erlon. So. Pictures then?'

I thought I heard Jack mutter, ‘Thank God,' but it might have been something else, as he made way for Gethryn to pose alongside me. Geth looked lip-lickingly tasty in the tight uniform, hair still curling damply down his neck but, when he sat beside me, there was a distinct whiff of sourness on his breath and his pupils were shrunken. Erlon took a few shots, then made us stand up, arms around one another, smiling into the lens. My smile was tight, I could feel tremors running up and down Gethryn's body and there was a faint alcohol-scented sweat breaking out on his neck.

To think, only a few weeks ago I would have eaten my own arm for the chance to stand this close to Gethryn Tudor-Morgan. I'd seen him
naked
for God's sake! And now … now that the glamour had broken and I'd seen Gethryn for who and what he truly was, I could still admire that sexy physique and that sculpted face, but I was glad that there were other people with us. Gethryn had clearly been in another room when the self-control was being handed out.

Jack was gazing at us both with a very odd expression on his face.

As soon as Erlon had the last picture satisfactorily in his camera, Jack hustled me out of the van. He almost manhandled me down the steps and around the side of the motel, not letting me stop to hitch up my skirt and I had to settle for letting most of it trail behind me in the dust, where it sent up little flurries of worried sand as I moved.

Finally we reached the yard near the dumpsters, and Jack let go of my arm. ‘Well?'

‘Well, what?' I reeled in as much of the skirt as I could and tried to brush the worst of the dirt off with my hands.

‘Gethryn didn't hurt you, did he?' Jack leaned back against the wall and managed to find a cigarette somewhere about his person. God knows where from, his jeans were skin-tight and the grey shirt had no pockets. ‘Just tell me. If he hurt you, I'll …'

I looked down at my velvet hem, slightly ragged and dusty. ‘No.'

‘Are you
sure
?'

‘What, you think I might not have noticed him trying to grope my boobs and shove his tongue down my throat? No, I shan't fall for that one again, Jack, whatever you might think, I'm not
that
desperate.'

‘Oh for God's sake.' Jack got the cigarette lit and the first puff visibly relaxed him. ‘I'm not saying anything like that. But you were very odd when Erlon and I got there. Like something had happened and you were covering it up. Although why you're not yelling sexual assault from the rooftops already I can't fathom.'

Jack smoking. Worried. Perhaps I should tell the truth. ‘He was … a bit pissed when I arrived.'

‘How pissed?'

‘How am I supposed to tell?'

‘How many bottles did he have?' Jack wasn't looking at me now; his eyes were following the smoke as it trailed lazily into the hot air.

‘Two. That I could see. But he could still walk and talk. And anyway, he's a grown man, what was I supposed to do?'

He sighed. ‘Nothing. I was worried, that's all. When you opened that door, I was scared that he might have … he takes advantage of who he is sometimes. Well, you know that already, I guess. It's okay, Skye, it's not you I'm angry at, it's Geth. He's behaving like a total pillock …' A long exhale. ‘It'll be the end of him. Professionally, I mean, he'll never work over here again. In fact, given the way reputations travel, he'll be lucky to get a job filming public information videos in Uzbekistan.'

‘He said he was going to Hollywood.' I brushed the skirt down once more.

‘Yeah. I bet he did.' Jack sounded tired. ‘Did I tell you yet that the dress looks fantastic on you? Very
sumptuous
.'

Distracted and pleased I pulled some imaginary fluff from the bodice. ‘Thanks.'

‘You're welcome.' A sudden turn and he bent to stub out the cigarette, grinding it into the floor beside his feet as though he had a personal grudge against that particular bit of dirt. ‘Okay. Better get back to work. I've scripts to deliver, so –'

‘What's the rush?'

He stopped and turned around, looking baffled and switching back hair from his face as though it annoyed him. ‘What? I just said, two scripts to finish.'

‘I mean, why are you wanting to quit the show and go back to Britain?'

Jack stared at me. He really did have beautiful eyes, I thought, and there was something about the way he stood, the way he
was
, that was inherently attractive. ‘What makes you ask that?' He had to clear his throat to speak and his fingers were fiddling, searching for another cigarette.

‘Just wondering. If you needed to get home for anything specific.'

A sudden smile, and he'd turned away. ‘Nah. Need a change, new challenge. I've done the TV thing now, I'm not a novelty to them any more. And, like I told Liss, my editor wants more novels.' His voice dropped a tone. ‘And I miss Yorkshire. You get a bit sick of relentless sunshine and OJ. I'm pining for drizzle and curd tarts.' And then he was walking away, slamming the heavy door that led to the stairs without looking back.

I found my fingers were picking at each other again; Jack wasn't the only one with a habit he indulged when he was stressed. But this time I wasn't thinking about the past, or fretting over the loss of Michael, or Faith. I was thinking about Jack Whitaker. About the weight of longing in his voice when he spoke about Yorkshire, about how looking at him made me think of the dark infinity of the whole of space. Of how I wanted to give myself up to him but didn't know how or whether he even wanted that from me. Of how I could hardly offer him anything when I didn't even know what I had to offer.

******

He walked to the base of the stairs and punched the motel wall hard enough to make his fist sting.
Buggerbuggerbugger!
‘Sumptuous'! He'd told Skye she looked like a fucking
sofa
! And then she'd caught him out, cut right through to what was at the heart of everything right now, and there'd been nothing he could say or do without telling her she'd hit it spot on.
Home.
He wanted to go home. And, yes, it was specific.

I want to go home with you, Skye. I want to show you where I live, that lovely little white house set on its own in the dale. I want to walk in the air with you, sit and write in the office while you … I dunno, do whatever it is that you do. I want to feel that you're close by …

He raised his head and stared a challenge at the ceiling. Yeah, he wanted it. But he'd wanted an awful lot of things over the years. Starting with death and working his way up to success, which, now he had it, didn't look like such a great deal any more. Success came with debts to the life he'd had before.

Without thinking, he rolled the leather lace through his fingers and knew he didn't deserve the life he'd got. Didn't deserve Skye. Couldn't have her.
Push it away, Jack. Keep the feelings down. If you don't feel, you don't hurt … And definitely don't let Geth see
. If Gethryn knew Jack cared … if he knew Jack could hurt, then he'd hurt him.

He'd been totally blasted; even Skye's best efforts hadn't totally sobered him up – what was he playing at? He must know his career was on the line here. Had he stopped caring?
If Geth ever even suspects I feel anything, anything at all for Skye …
Jack bit a fingernail, chewed it down to the quick as he stood, using the pain to distract himself from the horrible inevitability of Skye finding out what a bastard he was. Not just a bastard either, he could have dealt with that … A sharp jab of adrenaline hit him in the gut, as though he was looking down from a great height, preparing to fall. If this wasn't just a day off's unwinding then …

Shit. Everything is blowing up in my face.
And Jack remembered the compassion in Skye's eyes when she'd asked him if he needed help, wondered how far that compassion would stretch. Would she have been there for him, if she'd known him in the old days? Would she have talked him down, held him when the demons came calling with their vicious, insinuating claws digging deeper and deeper every day?

He chewed at his forefinger in the absence of another cigarette and contemplated the newly rising emotion that beat away inside him as though he'd swallowed a seagull.
Skye.
She made him feel … different.
She makes me feel.
All that passion, all that nerve-scraping stuff that had once made him so alive, all that stuff that he'd locked down so tight that nothing really got through any more. She drew it all to the surface, like the poison in an abscess.
Like all the stuff worth living for.

Jack shook his head hard, still mouthing around his knuckle. He was letting her get to him, that was all. Skye was like a cat which had been kept indoors all its life suddenly allowed out into the big world, creeping around, almost afraid of each new discovery.
Be afraid, Skye, be very afraid. Most of those things you discover have the potential to turn septic underneath you. Like me. You should stay away from me …

Okay, Jack. Now say it like you mean it …

Chapter Nineteen

When I came out of the bathroom Felix was sprawled on the bed shirtless with his jeans slightly undone, like a suggestive pin-up. ‘Heard you'd been summoned. So, how'd the photo shoot go?' He raised a knee and lounged provocatively, but his words had a strange edge.

‘It was, uh, interesting.'

He jumped up and began walking around the room, not meeting my eyes as he talked. ‘You vanish off the face of the earth, turn up
covered
in dust, you've got Whitaker slamming doors looking for you, online is alive with speculation about you and Gethryn – I've been checking on my phone and they are
all
talking about you. A girl I had to
drug
just to get across the Atlantic!'

I couldn't tell if he was joking or not. He was talking fast, breathily and using his fingertips to spike up his hair at the same time. ‘Fe?'

‘I am presuming, because you've got all this going on, you've managed to stage some kind of miraculous recovery? What happened there?'

‘Have you been doing coke?' It was the only reason I could think of for this fast, inflectionless delivery. ‘You're being really weird, Fe.'

‘Is that a yes?'

I looked at him, at those wide apple-juice eyes and cherubic cheeks. ‘I don't know,' I said, honestly. ‘I feel like … the past, that year … maybe I've been concentrating on that too much. Maybe I should think about the memories I
do
have and worry less about what's gone before …'

Felix sat on the bed and rested his arms on his thighs, raising an innocent face to look at me. ‘So, all it took was a bit of male attention? That's rather shallow, lover, don't you think?'

‘I told you, it was like a depression. Maybe my brain chemistry sorted itself out, maybe the change of scenery has shown me that I don't need to let the lack of a bit of memory weigh me down so much. And anyway, do you
want
me to stay home pining?' I met his eyes. His stare was wide, schoolboyish, but there was a sharp set to his lips which tinged his whole expression with cruelty.

‘You're right.' Felix swept his legs up onto the bed again, his knees jiggling. ‘You really have changed since the accident. You wouldn't have been like this two years ago, you know that?'

I shook my head. ‘I don't remember.'

He was picking at the seam of his jeans, twisting a thread. ‘And you don't remember the accident itself.'

Was this it? Did he finally want to talk about it all? ‘We went off the road, they told me at the hospital. It's not amnesia, Fe, not like memories that are going to come back with time, it's the brain damage from the operation.'

‘Y'see, I'm never really sure with you, Skye. Whether it's real, this memory loss thing, or whether you're just pretending, or whether you've blanked out stuff you don't want to remember.'

‘Why wouldn't I want to remember? I can't remember meeting Michael, or any of the fun we had together, I can't remember getting engaged or planning the wedding … it's all memories I
should
have and I don't. I feel … cheated, that's it really. Cheated of my happiness. When I came round from the anaesthetic it was all gone, and it's not
fair!
'

‘Ain't that the truth,' Felix muttered, then gave me a direct look. His eyes were hooded. ‘You really, honest-to-God don't remember? No pissing me about here, Skye, this is important. You don't even have a flicker?'

I shook my head. ‘Nothing. I can't even remember Michael's face, only from the photos. What is it, Fe, what are you trying to tell me here?'

‘You and Mike, it wasn't quite the relationship you thought, you know.'

I felt something cold trickle through my blood. ‘How do you mean?'

‘Just what you were saying before, about not wanting to bounce straight to another man? It wouldn't really be the betrayal of Mike's memory that you think, that's all.' Felix got up and went to the mirror, began examining his face as he talked, checking for stubble and stray hairs. ‘You fought a lot. He … it even made
me
uncomfortable, and you know I'm the Queen of Confrontation.' He stroked his cheeks, cocking each eyebrow in turn at his reflection. ‘I guess a New Year's party was the worst place to be that night.'

‘Oh come on, all couples fight now and again, it doesn't mean we didn't love one another, does it?'

Felix turned his back on the mirror. ‘Look, I'm going downstairs for a drink with Lissa. Do you want to come? Oh, maybe best not, not if you've got the hots for her ex.'

‘I haven't. He's just …'

‘I am
so
not hanging around for the end of that sentence, darling. See you later.' And he flipped out of the door with an anticipatory grin already spreading across his face.

I lay on the recently vacated bed, with the new knowledge. Michael and I had been fighting. Why had no-one ever told me that earlier, right at the beginning? Everyone who had been at the party had gone to his funeral. Fe had taken my place at the crematorium, limping in his ankle cast, while I'd still been in hospital, weighed down with drips and bandages and sadness. They'd all come in afterwards, offered their condolences, and had behaved as though Michael and I had been the Couple of the Year; no-one had even mentioned that we'd fought.

And then, a week later, Faith's funeral. That stood out clearer in my mind. I'd been on the road to recovery by then and Fe had come to my bedside to describe the whole scene to me. Their parents sobbing in each other's arms. Our drama school friends at their second funeral in as many weeks, all playing the part of friends of the bereaved in their smart black suits and pale make-up.

They'd all known Michael and I had been fighting. And no-one had said anything.

I fell asleep, and woke when Felix blundered in, waving the key card randomly. ‘Hey, darling.'

‘Fe? It's late …'

‘Yep. Just came to wash and brush up, then head over to Jared's.' He went into the bathroom and ran water, then began shaving, wandering around the bathroom and bedroom, unable to settle.

‘Can't you stay here for a bit? I want … I think I really need to talk to you.'

He paused. His eyes were crystalline, as though the irises had turned into pebbles. ‘I don't think there's anything to say.'

‘All that stuff earlier, me and Mike, Fe … I need to know. All this –' I waved my hands around my head in an attempt to show my mental confusion, – ‘it's like new information for me. Please, try to understand, it's like everything you tell me is one tiny part of that year coming back, little bits kind of slot into place, as though I'm some kind of jigsaw that's got all broken up and now I'm putting the pieces back in order.' I followed him into the bathroom, standing behind him as he sprayed his face with water. ‘And I need you; you're the only one who can help. You're like my picture on the box lid.'

He looked at me, half his face covered in lather. ‘Sometimes,' he said slowly, his mouth moving under the foam like an animation, ‘sometimes it's better to leave the puzzle undone, Skye.'

‘But it's my
past
.'

He smiled, but there were too many teeth on show. ‘The present is what matters, darling, trust me on that. Hey, by the way, can I take the Valium with me?'

‘Why?'

I got an old-fashioned look. ‘Because sometimes the present includes a little recreational pharmaceutical abuse and the Valium will help me calm down afterwards. Or I might just fancy a really good night's sleep.'

‘Help yourself.' I threw him the bottle and he poked it down into the pocket of his jeans. ‘Just be careful.'

He waved a reckless hand. ‘I'm always careful. I'll get changed over there and see you at the ball.'

‘But that's not until tomorrow night! Are you not coming back between times?'

Another shaky stroke of the razor and Fe patted his face with a towel. ‘Skye, darling, I'm hoping that there aren't going to
be
any “between times”. This is the last time I'm going to be able to spend with Jared so I want to make the most of it.' Another sparkling stare. ‘Why don't you get Jack to come keep you company?'

I watched him, moving quickly, restlessly around the room, picking things up and putting them down, shoving things into an overnight bag and then unpacking them back onto the bed. ‘Are you ever going to come down on one side or the other?' I asked.

‘What? You mean boys or girls? Why should I? They both have things to recommend them, and I don't see that changing any time soon, unless there's some kind of gender-specific mutation in the works. You should try it, lover. Spread your wings a bit, get some experience.'

‘But don't you ever want to settle down? Have a family?'

He froze. ‘No.'

‘Why not?'

‘Jesus, Skye, what is it with you? Before the accident you were all short skirts and sharp heels, now you've gone
Good Housekeeping
on me.'

‘I just thought …'

‘I'll tell you, shall I? Why I don't want kids? Ever? Because – and you won't know this, because you dropped out of their lives as soon as you came out of hospital – my parents were
destroyed
when Faith died. Dad had to give up work, and Mum … she's never been well since. Her heart, you know.'

‘I didn't …'

‘
Fuck
, Skye, they took you in when your parents did their “we want our freedom” act, Mum cooked you Sunday lunch every week for six months while you were waiting to get a break! They were the ones all agog for news when you auditioned, they were the ones breaking out the champagne when you got a part! Then you take to locking yourself in your house and not seeing anyone, and they're left with broken hearts, and a son who spends every spare minute running around with trash of both genders. How do you think they feel, Skye? And I'll tell you something, I
never
want to feel like that. So, no. I don't want kids. I've seen what they do to you.'

We stared at each other. He dropped his eyes first and went back to trying to stuff his fake-fur into a holdall. ‘I'm sorry,' I said at last.

‘Yeah.'

‘I couldn't go and see them. I was so scared.'

‘You were like a second daughter to them, they would have understood, Skye, it would have been enough for them just to have seen you. And now … what? You start shaking the boys up again, make a full recovery, go live a life with a guy rich enough to keep you? Well, good luck with that, darling; I'll just head back to missing my sister, shall I?'

I'd never heard Felix sound so bitter. His words were diamond-edged and he'd got feelings on display that I'd never seen before

‘I'll go and see them. Your parents. You're right, I've been selfish.'

‘You do that.' A moment stationary, then he was back to leaping around. ‘Catch you later.'

‘Have a good evening.'

I watched him dance out and when the door closed, I gave into the urge to cry.
That
hadn't been the Felix I knew, it had been someone else in his skin, someone brittle and cold. The things he'd said, the pain in his eyes, none of it was my Felix. My Felix was impervious, break proof, a body full of fun and lax morals, a smile, a blown kiss and a slow dance away from who he'd been tonight.

But he had been right. At first I hadn't been able to face seeing his parents because I was afraid of the look that I'd see on their faces. That look that said I reminded them of everything they'd lost; their slow, sad, pitiful acceptance that I had lived while their daughter had died. The look that would have told me they wished it had been the other way around.
Yeah, Skye. You're a waste of space …

And a tiny voice that hid right in the back of my mind whispered guilt to me. The guilt that poked at me whenever I wondered why I'd given up my seat to slump in the back with Felix … well, after his outburst I guess I knew now. Michael and I had fought. That was all, some stupid argument about our engagement probably, something so pathetic and disposable had meant that my best friend had taken my passenger seat and died because of it.

The tears dried stiff on my cheeks. Goose pimples rose on my arms and the back of my neck, and I remembered Jack earlier, standing with his arms clamped around himself, obviously fighting his own memory.

Jack. Jack who was giving me only half a story. Felix, who was changing in front of my eyes. I couldn't sit here with my brain spinning, I needed to do … something. I opened the door and saw Lissa going into Jack's room down the corridor. She had her hair on sideways and was carrying her shoes, both clear marks of someone who's been in the vicinity of Felix for a while.