Page 28 of Star Struck

Maybe he did know. Or guessed. ‘And have you driven lately?’

‘Not lately. As such. But I can.’

‘Skye, have you driven anywhere since the accident?’

‘I . . .’ You’re such a crap driver. Useless, Skye. Pathetic.

He gave me a long, dark look. ‘I can’t ask you to do this.’

‘But Felix is my friend. Let’s go.’ I picked up the keys and almost ran from the room. I didn’t want to give myself a chance to change my mind, to feel the terror that I knew was going to come flooding in somewhere. It was bad enough being a passenger, how much worse was it going to be getting behind the wheel?

I found out, when I sat in the hired Ford, with the seat burning through my trousers, my hand shaking so hard that I couldn’t start the bloody thing.

‘Skye. Look. Maybe I panicked too soon. I’m sure they’ll be fine.’ Jack was hunched up on the other side of the car, legs too long for the pathetic footwell.

‘No. I can do this.’ I gritted my teeth so hard I could hear grating inside my head. ‘I have to stop letting the accident rule my life. I drove before, there’s absolutely no reason why I shouldn’t drive now.’

‘It’s been a long time for you, hasn’t it?’

I thought back over all the things I couldn’t now do. Of all the things I didn’t do. ‘Yeah, but you don’t forget.’ The key shook, chiming against the keyhole as my nerveless fingers tried to turn it again. ‘You don’t forget,’ I repeated.

Jack gave a strange kind of laugh. ‘The roads are dead straight though. Boringly straight. Even smashed out of her tiny, Liss can drive these roads.’

The engine caught, and my shaky leg eased off the brake. ‘Do you want to do this or not?’ I had to push down on my knee to stop the shaking. ‘Because I’m going to find Felix. If you want to find Lissa, then stop whining and come with me.’

‘My God, you’re bolshy, aren’t you? Don’t know how Felix puts up with it.’ Jack half-smiled at me. ‘All right. If you’re sure. But take it easy.’

The car juddered as I tried to pull away in ‘Park’. I’d never driven an automatic before and I kept pulling at the non-existent gears when we started moving. Jack remained manfully silent while I swore and raged and used the anger to stopper the fear and prevent its escape. The car was too small for terror and the two of us. Finally I got the measure of it, practicalities meaning that I had to focus on driving, not my fear of driving, and we headed up the highway, cutting slowly through the dust and the heat. For some reason having Jack next to me calmed some of my more immediate nerves; his quiet presence had a reassuring air about it, despite his occasional muttered swearing. The little air-conditioning unit groaned and emitted high-pitched squeals at heart-stopping moments — it was like driving a television studio audience.

‘There.’ Jack suddenly grabbed my arm and I nearly drove off the road. ‘They just turned down that track.’

‘Are you sure?’ Everything was dust-coloured, even the sky, occasional little scrubby bushes beside the road, and one lone cow who watched us zigzag slowly past her, with sad, dust-coloured eyes.

‘Well, there could be more than one pink convertible out here but somehow I doubt it. Turn left, here.’

He reached across me and pulled the wheel so that the car swung out across the non-existent oncoming traffic and bumped onto the rutted side-road which led, apparently, nowhere. We jolted along it for about a quarter of a mile and then, in a dip, we found them.

I couldn’t go near. Couldn’t even drive past. I pulled up a hundred yards back and sat with the window down in case I was sick, watching Jack cautiously approaching the other car, which stood, with the roof up, at an angle to the roadway. Felix. Felix could be dead in there. Don’t be stupid, the car hasn’t hit anything, hasn’t rolled. It’s just standing there. No-one can be dead in a car that’s just parked . . .

A couple of minutes later Jack was back. He climbed back into the passenger seat without a word, slumped down with his head in his hands and gave a huge sigh.

‘Well? Is she okay? And Fe?’

‘Skye.’ Jack didn’t look up. ‘They are in that car, banging like rabbits. You want to go and ask him how he is, you be my guest, because I am not going to interrupt.’

We sat silently for a moment. ‘Are you all right?’ I asked eventually, when my eyes had grown tired of fixating on the slowly rocking pink car in front of us. ‘I know you said you and she weren’t . . . well, you know . . . any more but you did seem really worried about her.’

He stopped rubbing his hands through his hair and stared out too. ‘She’s my agent, she does all my paperwork and besides I . . . ah, never mind. So, yeah, I worry about her. Especially if she’s going to go off on one with the best part of a bottle of vodka inside her.’

We sat a while longer, watching the pink car, waves of heat coming off it in all directions. The rocking subsided, returned and then stopped.

‘We’d better wait, follow them back. Make sure nothing happens.’

‘Jack, there’s absolutely nothing on these roads apart from squashed . . . whatever those grey things are. She’s not going to hit anything bigger than a pebble.’

He gave me a hard stare. ‘But if she does? It’s not just Liss and Felix on the line here, Skye, it’s the whole reputation of the show. My show. Something I’ve pulled back from the brink, and there are journos out there all agog for the details, all wanting to poke around and find things out and pull us all down into their own particular version of hell, and it’s all I’ve fucking got, right now, so please don’t start telling me that everything will be fine, that it’s all okay, all right?’ A shaky hand pushed his hair away from his face and he looked down at the floor. ‘Sorry. I’m sorry, none of this is your fault; you’ve done nothing but try to help. I shouldn’t be such a miserable bastard to you.’ Then he surprised me by giving me a small, sheepish grin. ‘Should I?’

‘They’re moving,’ was all the response I could come up with. His shamefaced vulnerability gave me a curious, achy feeling.

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