Star Struck (16 page)

I let the apple I'd picked up drop back onto the duvet. ‘What, you mean like … a date?'

‘Well, I suppose … kind of.'

‘But you … this isn't … that's just
weird
.'

Jack sat down and stared at me over an orange he was peeling with his teeth. ‘What's weird? Asking you to the ball?' He tipped his head on one side. ‘I like you. And I know that I'm a miserable old bastard who smokes under stress and has a variable sense of humour, and sometimes I don't know when I'm talking to real people and when I'm talking to the people in my head, but I can be fun, too. I think we could have a good time together. Now tell me, in what way is that weird?'

‘Is this just to stop me from seeing Gethryn?' I felt the strangest urge to giggle like a schoolgirl.

‘No.' Jack cupped the orange in his hand, pulled a segment away and looked at it closely. ‘I'm crediting you with some good sense on that one.' His expression was dark. ‘I'm just a writer, a nobody and he's the star.' Shadowed eyes met mine and he let the orange fall onto his lap. ‘Gethryn will go with Martha,' he said, quietly. ‘They're both part of the cast and we like them to appear at these things together. Come with me.' Long fingers elegantly excised a pip from the flesh and flicked it accurately into an ashtray on the table.

‘Can you dance?' Stupid question.

‘Only one way to find out.'

‘Can I think about it?' I could see the individual lashes of his eyes, the unconscious twitch of his lips, and all of a sudden I knew if he kissed my mouth it would be gentle, and I found myself wondering how he would taste; what he looked like, naked.

He stood up abruptly and went to the fridge. Took a can out, popped it open and drank. ‘I guess so. Although I'm already disappointed that you need to.'

‘You fancy yourself a bit, don't you?'

A quick smile and his saturnine looks lifted as his eyes gleamed. ‘I've already had offers. Ruth, girl who was sitting next you to at the quiz, she cornered me in the bar and asked me to go with her.'

‘The cow!'

‘She said she wanted to dance with me at the ball, and if I played my cards right she'd show me a few tricks later on in her room.' Jack went back to concentrating hard on segmenting the orange.

‘You're making it up.'

Another smile. ‘Maybe. Maybe not.'

‘You bastard.'

‘Now, eat something. There's some bread. Or there's some chocolate, if you're going to come over all female on me.'

Listlessly I picked up the apple I'd dropped. Jack licked his fingers clean of orange juice and wiped them down his jeans, then poked his laptop into life and tapped away at a few keys, sucking orange segments in a way that made the juice spurt into his hair and down over his chin in an unwarrantedly lascivious way; I suspected on purpose. I refused to comment, kept my eyes down and bit the apple down to the core. A sudden flashback to earlier that evening caught me in the throat,
Gethryn, fingers eager. Would he have stopped if I'd asked?

A loud bang at the door made me gasp in shock. An apple pip shot into my windpipe and I began to cough and choke. Jack opened the door and then came over and started slapping me between the shoulder blades. Lissa stomped into the room, took one look at me and rolled her eyes.

‘Is she doing it again?'

‘Choking.' Jack banged me hard again on my spine, and with one loud cough the pip flew from my mouth and curled away across the room.

‘You really are quite accident-prone, aren't you?' Lissa sat beside me on the bed. ‘Perhaps you should stick to soft foods.'

‘Perhaps
you
should stop drink-driving.' Jack stopped thumping me and looked at her.

‘Hey, cut me a little slack, Jackie-boy.' Lissa glanced at my face and wrinkled her nose. ‘Sheesh. You Brits.' Unexpectedly she reached into her bag and handed me a large tissue. ‘Here. Mop. And scrape, you might wanna scrape a little.'

‘Thanks.' I mopped and, furtively, scraped.

My streaming eyes showed me a misty image of Jack looking sideways at Lissa. ‘What is it you want, Liss?'

She perched herself on the edge of the small table under the window, tiny buttocks barely causing it to tip forward. ‘Wanted to talk to you about this crazy idea you've got in your head about cutting out. Running for the border.' She opened her bag and fussed with lipstick and a mirror. ‘You mentioned it, but are you serious about it? It's not one of your, like, abstract concepts?'

He slumped, leaning his whole body against the wall. ‘Sorry, yeah, you're right. We should have talked it through, Liss. Will you get onto the network guys? They should be fine with Scotty taking over, let's face it, he was doing all the practical stuff during the first series anyway, and you can tell them I'll turn in the scripts I'm contracted for …'

I could only stare.

‘Mmmmm.' She carefully outlined her mouth in scarlet and began filling in her lips. ‘I'll do it, but – why?'

Jack shrugged and gave me a quick look that I didn't think I was supposed to see. ‘I need a new life. This was fun when we started out; yeah, it all got a bit lairy when we thought we were being cancelled, but I
liked
all that, the uncertainty and everything, it kept me wired. The big bosses who hired me were loving the stories, the other writers were great and let me muck about with their scripts – it was all
new
, all exciting.' He folded his arms and let his body slide a little lower down the wall. ‘Now it's …' He shrugged again. ‘It's personalities. It's the needs of the few outweighing the needs of the many; it's people using their power and position and their name to get access to things they shouldn't have. It's all crapped up, basically, Liss, and I want out. I want
home
.' His voice lowered, became so quiet I wasn't sure either of us were supposed to hear. ‘I want
peace
.'

She snapped shut the mirror and twisted the lipstick away. ‘Gethryn,' was all she said.

‘Partly.'

‘Even though you've done what you could? Won't be a problem next series.'

‘No, but he can still do damage.' He gave me a tiny, sideways glance. ‘Look, I've got an editor in Britain hassling me to pick up the novels again. It's a whole different ballgame, writing the books, doing the signings, and it's something I love. I mean, that's how I made my name, after all. Don't get me wrong, I was flattered when the network guys hauled me over here. It was a chance to do something new, and it's been brilliant, the whole thing. Fantastic. But it was only ever going to be temporary, which is why I didn't sell Beck Farm when I came over; this was just another move in the Fame Game, getting my face, my name out there. When it comes down to it, I'm a novelist, Liss, and Yorkshire is my home.'

Lissa turned abruptly to me. ‘What's the story with Felix? He brings you over here but you're not a couple. You share a room, a bed, but you're not –' she made little hooks in the air with her fingers – ‘
sleeping together
. He's heading for destruction-city and you seem to want to drive him there in your own little suicide-wagon … what
is
it with you two?'

I finished mopping my face. ‘He's my best friend. That's all.'

‘Uh huh.' Lissa shot a quick glance at Jack. ‘Wow. Don't envy you this one.'

He and Lissa exchanged a look that went on rather longer than I was comfortable with.

‘I think I'll go to bed,' I said, not sure that they'd hear me. ‘What's happening tomorrow?'

Jack pushed away from the wall. ‘They're …
we
are announcing the quiz results in the morning. Afternoon is all the practical stuff, setting up the prizes, then in the evening there's another signing session – apparently I'm giving away signed copies of some scripts. And then everyone's getting geared up for the fancy dress ball. Highlight of the event. People like to get together on the evening before it all to discuss costumes and stuff.' He made a face. ‘Really it's just an excuse for everyone to get lathered.'

‘Do you know who's won the quiz?' I asked quietly.

‘Nah. They get some kids trying to boost their college funds to the tune of a couple of dollars an hour to do the marking.' He gave me a stern look. ‘And I wouldn't tell you, even if I knew.'

‘No. Right.'

Lissa cleared her throat. ‘Think we've got some paperwork to cover, Jackie-boy. If you're heading back to good old Blighty, that's the end of my representation, you know that? It's over.'

He nodded. ‘I know. And I'm sorry. I know we talked about it, but I never made it clear that I wasn't just chucking ideas about, that it was something I really wanted to do. Should have told you earlier, but … I've really only just made up my mind definitely.'

I headed out of the door while they stood looking at each other, but I didn't immediately head for my own room, because just as I pulled the door closed behind me, I heard Lissa say quietly, ‘So, Iceman. You really gonna throw this all over, huh?'

I instantly pretended an almost terminal case of untied shoelaces, ear pressed to the slim crack in the doorframe.

‘Come on, Liss, you know it's for the best.'

‘Networks love you. Ratings love you. Hell, the fucking viewers all want to have your babies.' There was a pause. ‘Sorry, Ice. That was cruel of me. Didn't mean …'

‘I know you didn't. It's okay.'

Heart pounding and holding my breath so that I could hear, I slid my body along the wall to the next doorway, flattened myself against it and tried the handle, to be pitched backwards into a cleaning cupboard just as the door to Jack's room opened. I crouched in the bleach-scented darkness with my face against the door panel and wondered if I was falling into some kind of pattern of listening at half-open doors.

‘You really don't have any emotion at all, do you, Jack? All this “Iceman” thing, you really got it down, man.' There was a hint, just the merest whisper, of pain in her voice.

I heard him sigh, and it was a sound that pulled at something instinctive inside me. I wanted to touch him, to hold him, to reassure him that all the pain contained within that single outbreath could be forgotten. But I didn't dare move.

‘Yeah.' His voice faded. He'd probably gone back to stand by the window.

‘How long have I known you, Iceman, hey? And now – come on, this is me, I
know
you. You've never had any kinda feeling in all this time, even when … and now suddenly you're overcome with wanting to go back the UK? Smells of fish, boy. How much of this is down to Geth? I could shoot myself over that one, I never thought …'

A sigh. ‘It doesn't matter. It wasn't you, Liss, it was … I don't know. Me. It's all me. My head is … I promise I'll tell you when I get it sorted.'

‘Yeah. So. You want me to fetch over the paperwork or not?

‘I guess.' I heard him sigh deeply, then a scratchy sort of noise as though he was running his hands over his stubbled face. ‘I guess.'

Abandoning the cleaning cupboard as soon as Jack's door closed, I dashed back to my room to hug a pillow and wonder exactly what secrets were being kept by the reticent Mr Whitaker.

Chapter Sixteen

The crowd were waiting in the diner to hear the quiz results. The makeshift stage had been reassembled at one end, much to the chagrin of the waitresses, who were stomping about behind the counter with coffee pots, and there were so many people that the big glass doors had been opened to allow the overspill to sit outside on the steps. I could hear Spanish arguments and dog yapping coming from the kitchen, which was almost enough to distract me from the fact that they were announcing in reverse order, and had got to number five. Felix was holding my hand, bobbing like a tethered balloon.

‘You must have got
something
,' he kept whispering. ‘I mean, you're not
that
crap.'

‘Thanks.'

‘Ssssshhh.' A small woman wearing jeans far too long for her and a Status Quo T-shirt hissed at us and I cringed, ducking down behind Fe's shoulder.

‘Third prize, the pilot's uniform … is …'

Jared paused for dramatic effect, and Felix breathed in my ear, ‘That guy is just the most fantastic man it has ever been my privilege to date,' which put me off and I didn't catch the winner's name. A small group in the corner nearest the doors cheered and whooped, and a lot of shoulder-slapping went on.

‘Second prize.' My whole body stopped, even my heart seemed not to beat. I was suspended in the moment, held up by hope.

‘Skye?'

Now it was my turn to ssssshhh, craning my head forward.

‘A dinner date with Gethryn Tudor-Morgan,' Jared said slowly, as if it was necessary. Behind me, a girl who had her fingers crossed so tightly that her hands were white, was muttering ‘please God, please,' and the lady in the Quo shirt crossed herself furtively.

Jared opened an envelope, someone in the crowd shouted, ‘Oscar for Best Picture goes to –' and everyone laughed, diffusing some of the tension that had built around us. It was like waiting for a thunderstorm to break. My hands were sweating.

‘Jennifer-Lee Warner!'

To my left a girl with long, blonde hair gave a scream. ‘That's
me
. Oh, thankyouthankyou …' and began spinning around to receive the congratulations coming from everyone standing near. I was ashamed of my sudden relief and managed a ‘well done', accompanied by a smile which probably looked quite scary from the other side of my face.

‘Hey, Skye.' Felix squeezed my fingers until I turned to face him. ‘First prize now.' His eyes were very wide, firmly fixed on the slender figure in the tight jeans on the stage. I wasn't sure if it was lust or ambition burning behind them.

‘Yeah. First prize. Hooray.'

But he didn't hear, or chose not to.

Jared looked at the crowd from lowered lashes and Felix gave a small moan. ‘First prize,' Jared repeated. ‘A part in the new series. I've seen the scripts for the two-parter, and, man, is it going to be
exciting
. I think Jay gave some hints yesterday as to what we can expect.' He held out a hand and I noticed Jack for the first time, standing behind some of the other crew members at the edge of the stage. He gave a half-smile and a shrug. ‘Whoever wins this prize is gonna get some
huge
surprises, not only a part but the entire series' scripts autographed by the whole cast, a day on set, you name it.'

Felix's lips were moving as though he was praying.

‘And the winner.' A rip of paper. ‘Skye Threppel!'

Felix sagged. ‘You did it,' he whispered. ‘You actually
did it
.'

The crowd looked around. I hadn't made a sound, suddenly empty of all feeling, and my fingers crept up to my scar. I'd won a prize I couldn't even use. A mutter rose as everyone wondered where the winner was.

‘Here!' Felix held up our joined hands. ‘Skye is here!'

And then I was surrounded, hands reaching out to touch me, pat me, as though my luck was a communicable disease, a solid push of bodies crowding me. I began to gasp.

‘You did it.' Felix was still whispering. ‘I'm on the show. This is
it
, Skye, this is my break.'

My skin prickled with sweat and I felt suddenly sick. My lungs wouldn't work, there was more air going out than getting in, too warm, no oxygen … and then the dark, rushing over me, pouring like water behind my eyes, and I was dropping …

*****

When I opened my eyes again, I was lying on a bed. The light was muted and soft and the air con was turned down low, so that the temperature was cool but not unpleasantly so.

Jack was standing at the window with his back to me. I half-raised my head, took in my surroundings, and flopped down again. ‘I don't know why I don't just move in,' I said. ‘All my most embarrassing moments seem to have happened in here.' My mind jumped away to the overheard conversation of the night before, Lissa's quiet sadness at his intransigence. She'd sounded as though she'd expected nothing else from him, as though a lack of concern, a lack of
caring
was normal for him and yet, here he was, rescuing me yet again from an awkward situation. Which was the real Jack Whitaker? The intense writer with the wicked grin, or the man they called the Iceman – emotionally arid? And – my mind held the question up in front of me but didn't dare even to put it into words – where did Gethryn feature in all this?

He turned round and smiled at me. He certainly didn't look like a man without feelings. ‘You passed out.'

‘I kind of gathered that.'

‘I carried you up. Told them I'd do the publicity stuff later, said I was feeling a bit ill myself. They're all down there now drawing up the paperwork in case it means that there's something contagious going around; I think that they're two minutes from putting out a Legionnaire's alert.' He gave a grin that lightened his eyes and sat on the edge of the bed. ‘Felix says you'd agreed to give the part to him if you won?'

‘Yes, sort of.'

‘Sort of.' Jack repeated, shaking his head.

‘It was for Faith.' I felt ashamed for some reason, as though I should be explaining myself.

‘You think you
owe
Felix something because his sister died?'

‘No, I don't owe him. But I can't take the part anyway, Jack. The scars …'

He leaned forward and ran a finger over my face. ‘There's always something. You could be a Thulos telepath.'

‘Yeah. Silent, under fourteen layers of latex. What's that, your perfect woman?'

He smiled again. ‘Yowza.' Then the smile faded. ‘You went along with it for second prize though, didn't you? I saw your face, waiting for the announcement.'

‘I can't act any more, Jack. I can't even remember what it was that made me want to stand up in front of people. I get nervous now just ordering off Amazon. If I ever had any confidence it's gone. I'm useless, hopeless, I'm even bloody
pointless
now, an actress who's so stressed out in crowds that she passes out … Felix can have the part. I don't want it.'

Now his expression was very serious, almost grave. ‘What's happened to you, Skye? What's made you feel so worthless?'

‘
This
.' I pointed at my scar. ‘And this.' I parted the hair which had grown back after the operation as an even more unmanageable wiry fuzz of curls than it had been before, to show the fine line of scarring where my skull had been opened up. ‘Losing your memory doesn't just mean that you can't remember things. It's not as simple as that. It means you lose all the things that define you – every decision I made in that year before the accident, every conclusion I reached, gone. Anything. Everything. Whatever made me
me
is gone. Okay, yes, I'm glad I'm not dead, on the whole. Glad that, instead of going through the windscreen face first, by sheer fluke I went through backwards, so my face got gashed instead of crushed. I've got a lot to be grateful for. But all that gratitude doesn't help when I can't even remember meeting my own fiancé! Do you see? And then there was
Fallen Skies
, about people setting up a new world, being allowed to forget what had happened before, in the Shadow War. New lives. And Gethryn … Lucas James … He'd done terrible things, awful things, but he was allowed to forget and start again, and I loved that, loved the new beginnings, the redemption. The idea that just because the past was gone didn't mean that the future couldn't be great.'

Jack tipped his head forward so I couldn't see his face. ‘Skye, Gethryn's just an actor, he does what he's told, says the words he's given. The new beginnings, wanting a new life … that was
me
.' Then his head came back and I could see the stress lines around his mouth, deeper now. ‘That's some kind of irony, that is. You fancy the guy because he's talking about recovery and rebirth, and it's all
my
words.' A hollow kind of laugh. ‘Bit of a Cyrano de Bergerac moment here, I think.'

‘What about your whole “Iceman” thing?' I couldn't stop myself, the words just had to come out.

‘What? What do you mean?'

‘Last night. I overheard you and Lissa … she was saying about you being called the Iceman? I thought it was just because you were …' I felt myself blushing, but drove on regardless, ‘because you were cool. But Lissa said it was something to do with having no emotion?'

‘Ha!' Jack let out a long breath, like a sigh, and jumped up from his seat on the bed. ‘Shit.' He began a rather fevered rummage through pockets and drawers as though he'd forgotten I was there, finally finding a battered packet unopened behind his laptop. There was a shaky and sweary couple of moments while he tried to find a lighter that worked, but he finally brought it all into conjunction and blew a long string of smoke into the air. ‘It's nothing.'

‘Right. So that's why it drives you to smoke, because it's nothing.'

He stared at his fingers for a second, turning his hand over to examine the filter tip. ‘Yep.'

‘Jack, you only smoke when you're wound up. And you're smoking now.' I watched his back view as he placed himself in front of the window again, staring out at the desert and blowing smoke which stuttered across the room before vanishing like lost ghosts.

‘Hoist by my own habit,' he muttered, not turning round. ‘Skye, when I said it was nothing, I meant it was nothing to you. None of your business. Okay?'

I stared at him, from the tousled dark fall of hair which hung to his shoulders, his defensively straight back, down past his, admittedly tasty, tightly jeaned backside to where his bare feet dug into the carpet as though he was anchoring himself to something. He was intense, like no man I'd seen. I half-hoped that he was about to confess that his accident had destroyed his ability to feel, as mine had stopped me remembering; a moment of wanting that kind of connection with him. ‘Is there anything I can do to help?'

‘Yeah. Come to the ball with me.' A sudden grinding out of the cigarette in a cup, and he'd turned to face me again, a con-trail of smoke following his movement. He stretched out his arms as though the muscles were sore, and flexed his fingers. ‘Please.'

I closed my eyes, pretended a moment of faintness. ‘I don't have a costume or anything.'

‘Hey, I was just on a panel with our wardrobe girl, I'm sure I can persuade her to release a couple of costumes. What do you fancy, B'Ha? Pilot?' He grinned at me round a tightness in his eyes. ‘I can see you as a pilot, in one of those uniforms.' He leered and I had to laugh; his face wasn't meant for anything as insalubrious as letching.

‘I'm not sure.'

‘I'll get someone to bring some stuff to your room. You can choose what you want to wear and send the rest back to wardrobe. Come on, I'm prepared to do all this, least you can do is agree to come. You must have been to a fancy dress ball before, surely?'

‘I don't know.'

‘But … how bad is this memory loss thing? Presumably you remember your parents, your childhood?'

I let my thoughts go. ‘Yes, of course. Only child, doting parents who emigrated when I started drama school. It's all in there, just … they're all … furry.'

He gave me a half-grin. ‘Furry?'

‘Well, fuzzy then. When I look back it's like looking through – oh, I don't know, a sheet of tracing paper. Something like that. Not quite opaque but not clear either. I do have one or two vivid memories of those years between teenage and twenty-seven, but not that many. Not enough to be able to pin down, to say “this is what I thought”. Everything from the year leading up to the accident, though, is stuff I've been told, memories I've fabricated.' I shrugged. ‘But I've remembered every day since I woke up in hospital, with Michael and Faith dead. How about you? Did your accident leave you with any problems, or just the scars?'

I stopped, saw his expression and felt embarrassed. He'd gone goosebumped; I could see the little hairs on his arms standing up as his fingers closed over the leather thong around his neck, even though the room was warm. He fiddled with the necklace under his T-shirt, twisting it back and forth and, although he seemed to be watching me, his eyes were far, far away. Watching something else, something that made his skin chill.