Page 27 of Star Struck

‘I think, maybe, she didn’t know as much as she thought.’ A brief flurry of activity and Gethryn was leaving Meeting Room One, surrounded by a bevy of girls, all talking and swooping around him, urging him to this event and that, giving him schedules and itinerary run-downs until the poor guy must have felt dizzy with it all. Felix’s hand tightened on my arm.

‘I’m beginning to see your point about him,’ he said. ‘Totally amazing.’

‘I really don’t think Gethryn is into guys, Fe.’

‘You don’t know.’ Felix’s gaze followed Gethryn’s progress. ‘He might be bi-curious.’ He gave a quiet whistle. ‘Oh, now look at that arse. You can’t tell me that’s not a waste, an arse like that has definitely got to have leanings.’

‘Looks pretty straight-up to me.’

As if he’d heard, Gethryn turned a wide arc across the floor and approached us, preceded by his multi-coloured harem, like a crow chasing down a flock of parrots. ‘Skye! Hey there, you been taking part in the quiz?’ The expression on his face told me that he knew damn well I had. ‘And I hope you’ve not been taking too much notice of old disaster-knickers there, Mr Whitaker. Bit of an old woman, he is.’

‘No, I . . .’

For a second Gethryn pressed close. ‘Hope you get second prize, my lovely,’ he whispered, directly in my ear. ‘Think I’d rather have you as a dinner date than some of the things I saw in there.’ Then he dropped another one of his patent winks my way and was gone again, back into the middle of his flock, all still talking non-stop.

Felix fanned himself. ‘Oh, my Lord.’

‘Hey, Felix.’ We both jumped. It was Lissa, now wearing a tiny little skirt from which her legs protruded, shiny and brown. ‘Wanna go for a ride? I got the car out front, nowhere to go, nothing to do, so I thought you might be up for an adventure.’ Her eyes were suspiciously wide and she was weaving from foot to foot as though undergoing some kind of personal earthquake.

‘Sure. I’ll just . . .’ He made some kind of meaningless hand movement.

‘I’ll see you in ten. Little pink convertible, yeah?’

‘That’s no way to talk about you,’ I giggled as she sashayed outside, walking carefully and swinging car keys from one finger.

‘Hey, too right, no-one’s ever called me little. But I was hoping to hang around for the results of the quiz, find out if I . . . I mean, if you’ve done well.’

‘Oh, those won’t be released until later. Go off and make use of all that sexual energy you’ve got burning a hole in your underwear. After all, if you’ve even started to contemplate doing the lusty thing with Mr I’m-so-hetero-it-hurts Tudor-Morgan, you need to calm it all down or you are going to get into so much trouble.’

‘Well, yeah, but I kind of told Jared that I’m up for a rematch tonight, and that is a man you do not want to disappoint. You would not believe . . .’

‘Fe. Just go.’

‘Will you be okay here on your own?’

‘I’ll manage.’ I flicked a finger at him and headed away. It probably looked as though I was going towards Meeting Room Two, with its queue still snaking in an orderly way out through the doors and half-way across reception, but at the last minute I diverted and headed up the stairs back to our room. At the bottom of the staircase I peeped back. Felix was draining a furtive scotch at the bar as though fortifying himself for the afternoon and I really hoped Lissa knew what she was letting herself in for, hanging around with him.

Once alone in the room, I felt a brief burst of self-pity which I tried to squash down. After all, Gethryn seemed to like me, didn’t he? I lifted my shirt and looked down my body at the intricate web of scars and stitch marks left by the accident, marks like cracks in droughty earth, and wondered what he’d say if he could see these. There had been an episode late in Series Two, where Lucas James had rescued a badly burned woman from a downed Shadow craft. He’d spoken such words of consolation and acceptance that I’d watched the DVD over and over until it started sticking on that scene. He’d talked about how no-one should be defined by the way they looked, that it was who they truly were that defined them; their memories and their actions. She’d died, of course; all Lucas’ women had a tendency to keel over before the end of the series — it was a high-risk job being the chosen partner of a man who fought such battles for justice and understanding for other races.

I traced a finger over the scars. Nothing in life is truly perfect, and those who pretend to be are covering up something nastier than these. I could hear his voice as my lips mouthed the words that were etched on my brain, along with the image of Lucas James holding his lover, gazing down on her damaged body. Words I’d clutched for the comfort they brought when I was at my absolute lowest. No-one was perfect. No-one. You could see my imperfections, that was all. And they could be overlooked too, by the right man.

There was a bang on the door and I let the shirt fall. ‘What?’

‘Skye? You in there?’ It was Jack. ‘Have you seen Lissa?’ He was inside the room, panting and dishevelled, as soon as I opened the door, scanning the floor as though I’d got her hidden under the boards. ‘She’s been drinking, gone off with her car keys. We’ll be pulling her from the wreckage . . .’ My face must have gone rigid, because he added, more gently, ‘Metaphorically speaking, obviously.’

I told him about Lissa and Felix heading off to get the car and he swore inventively for a minute. You could tell he was a writer. ‘We could go after them.’

‘Can’t. I don’t drive.’ He paced up and down for a bit. ‘And I can’t call the cops, she’ll get done for drunk driving, and the last thing I need is more of that kind of thing hanging over the show.’ He paused. ‘Not that the show is the really important thing, obviously.’

‘We could take Felix’s car.’ The keys were sitting on the little bedside cupboard. ‘It’s not great but . . .’

‘I just want to find them, to know that she’s safe. Get her back. Everyone knows she’s my agent, I don’t want rumours flying around about her . . . about me, I mean, I know we need press coverage, we need them, pull in the advertisers, but . . .’ He stopped pacing and rubbed the back of his neck. ‘Oh God, I’m doing the talking thing again, just punch me in the mouth, Skye, for the good of us all.’ His hands came round and he hid his face in them. ‘I need sleep.’

‘Jack?’

A quick head shake. ‘No, nothing. Sorry, Skye. Don’t even know why I’m here to tell the truth, I just sort of panicked and . . .’ He shrugged and chewed a nail.

I made a huge, a monumental, decision. Jack would probably never know how big. ‘I can drive.’

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