Page 2 of Star Struck

‘You know about those people who suddenly turn on their best friends?’

A pause. ‘Yes?’

‘I was being subtle. I’m sort of waiting for you to take the hint. Look, just say what you came to say, Fe, then go, all right?’ I was beginning to regret giving him a key now. It was supposed to be on the understanding that he only used it if it was absolutely vital, but he’d developed a very loose interpretation of absolutely vital lately. It had apparently been absolutely vital that he came in last week while I was hanging out the washing; when I got in from the garden he’d been half-way through my toast and marmalade and had made me jump so hard I’d nearly wet myself.

‘Here goes then . . .’ I couldn’t see him past the shoulder of duvet, but the mattress wobbled as he breathed heavily in a useless attempt at suspense. ‘I’ve got tickets to the Fallen Skies convention.’

I’d been so sure he was going to tell me that he’d finally, finally got a long-term part in one of the soap operas he was continually auditioning for, that I’d got the words ‘That’s terrific’ already lined up on my tongue. ‘That’s terrific,’ I said, so as not to waste them, and then, ‘what?’ I sat up so suddenly that my head sang, and was confronted by Felix in a bright red velvet jacket and luminous green trousers. ‘Ow. Can you not have some sort of warning device for when you’re being trendy? You look like someone cut the middle out of a set of traffic lights.’

‘Is that all you can say?’ Felix huffed. He leaned forward and stared at me, his hazel eyes a bit wild in his boyish face. Combined with his punky haircut and unshaved cheeks he looked like a Botticelli angel after an all-night party and a lost hairdressing bet. ‘‘‘That’s terrific?” I’m telling you that I’ve got,’ and he pulled two cardboard oblongs from his overly tight pocket, ‘tickets to the convention for your favourite TV programme in the world, which features the deliciously bad Gethryn Tudor-Morgan and, by the way, this outfit is designer, totally on-trend, and you just tell me it’s terrific?’

My heart was pounding, not just from the exertion of disentangling myself from the bedcovers, and my lips were stuck to my teeth. Was he suggesting what I thought he was suggesting? But he knew, he of all people understood how it was for me . . . ‘You smell of perfume,’ was all I could come out with, nearly non-sequituring myself to death. ‘Into girls again, are we?’

Felix stood up, the dimness of the room making his skinny shape appear to loom over me. ‘Oh, come on.’ He tapped the tickets against one long leg. ‘Just think, if my metronome stuck at hetero fifty per cent of the gorgeous people out there would be disappointed.’

‘More relieved I’d have thought,’ I muttered. He was acting normally. Well, as normally as was normal for Felix, which wasn’t very. I must have misread his intentions. He was . . . boasting. Yes, just boasting. My eyes followed the tickets, which unfortunately meant staring at Felix’s thigh. I was afraid if I looked away the tickets might vanish, disappear back into his pocket never to be seen again. ‘Where did you get those from? I thought all convention tickets sold out the day after release? I know Fallen Skies isn’t exactly Doctor Who, but, even so Fe . . .’

Felix grinned a Machiavellian grin and tapped the side of his nose. ‘Aha. Ask no questions. Suffice it to say, I met a man who knows a man.’

‘You meet lots of men,’ I said sarcastically. Not really believing, I held out a hand. Slowly, obviously relishing the moment, Felix laid one of the tickets on my palm. ‘Bloody hell. Fe.’ The blue-tinted card bore the Fallen Skies logo of a single jagged peak and a low horizon and looked genuine. I rubbed my thumb over the embossing which didn’t, as had memorably once been the case with tickets Fe had ‘obtained’, smear off onto my skin.

‘It’s in October. Three months to prep yourself if you want to go?’

My heart skipped and then double-timed like an overwound clock. Did I? Well, of course I wanted to, but, you know, I wanted to win the lottery and paint the kitchen and maybe, finally, do something about my terrible hair but . . . ‘I can’t. You know I can’t. I mean, I would . . . if I could, but . . .’ Was he doing this to taunt me? To try to force some kind of reaction from a body only recently weaned off so many anti-depressants that it had been a wonder I could even cry at Bambi? I’d watched it with Fe last week, just to check. ‘Anyway, it’s a long way away, isn’t it?’

‘It’s only in America, Skye. They won’t let them hold it on Mars. Health and Safety or something. It’s five days of Fallen Skies — just think about that. Five days. Total immersion.’

I thought about it. About leaving my lovely little Edwardian terraced house, with its view over the ridged mound of grassy earth which led to the base of York’s city wall. Where, from my bedroom window, I could see all the various strata of building, starting with the Roman and passing through the Anglo-Saxon and fourteenth century to a block of Victorian repair work squidged on the top like a bit of incompetent icing. Comforting. Permanent.

And then I thought about Gethryn Tudor-Morgan. Captain Lucas James of the Galactic Fleet, the best pilot in the B’Ha sector, hero of the recent Shadow War, and wearer of the least number of clothes in any given episode. Tall, golden-blond, rangy and sinfully good-looking. I’d fallen for him before the first ad break of the series, and had remained faithful ever since. But. Even so . . .

I looked over at the poster on my bedroom wall where Captain Lucas James stood, one hand shading his eyes from the glare of a CGI double sun, the other hand clasped around the grip of a blaster rifle. His hair rippled behind him in the wake of a fixed-wing jet blasting up into the star-strewn sky, his mouth half-curved into a grin of happy anarchy and all visible muscles bulging. My insides, as ever, liquidised.

Felix watched me with his eyes narrowed. This made his cheeks even pudgier; now he looked like a choirboy having impure thoughts. ‘He is gorgeous,’ he said, as if noticing the poster for the first time.

‘Yeah, well.’ I swung my legs over the edge of the bed and stood up, my oversized nightshirt flapping around me. ‘I know my limitations, Fe.’ Ugly, ugly Skye . . .

‘Ah, Skye.’ Felix put his hands on my shoulders. ‘You’re not that bad, y’know. I’d do you. If you weren’t my friend, obviously,’ he added quickly, as I glared.

‘Fe, you’d do toads if they didn’t keep getting away.’ I raked a hand through my hair. It too was suffering this morning, scrubby and tousled at the back and lank at the front and yet it was the least of my appearance-related worries. ‘Oh. And you’re still here. I’m going to call the UN. Have you crated up and locked away.’ The smell of drugged sleep hung heavy around me, sweet and fuggy. I rubbed at my face with numb fingers and felt the creases and folds of my skin. ‘I might even make that NATO, if you’re not gone in ten seconds.’

‘Mmmm, men in uniform.’

‘Bugger off.’

‘Okay, well, I’m not hanging around to be insulted, not at,’ Felix glanced at the luminous bedside clock, ‘eight o’clock on a Wednesday morning.’ He looked around at the walls of my little room, where they could be seen between my grandmother’s amateur watercolours of bluebell woods and strained-looking kittens. ‘Suppose you’re going to need room for another poster, once the new guy starts. Where are you going to put it? Or, you could take down some of those godawful paintings, although, knowing your grandmother, she probably glued them to the walls.’

I looked around as well. None of my late relative’s paintings were that terrible, but I had to confess that I’d stopped noticing them years ago. ‘What do you mean, the new guy?’ I stretched and made to lift my nightshirt over my head in the hope that my imminent nakedness would scare Felix from the room.

‘When the T-M leaves. They’re replacing him with some Yank, used to be in one of those American soaps where everyone’s banging their sister.’

My head went suddenly fuzzy. ‘What?’ I let the hem drop and sat suddenly on the bed. The brass frame creaked in sympathy. ‘Why? How? I mean . . . the whole show revolves around him.’ And what would I do without my weekly glimpse of the man who’d helped save my sanity?

‘Yeah, he’s quitting his contract at the end of the current series. So I guess they’ll be writing him out.’

Carefully I breathed. In, out. Remember what they told you, manage the panic, don’t let it get away from you. ‘How do you know?’

‘Read it online. You’ve really got to get that Internet connection sorted, you know. You’re missing all kinds of interesting gossip, the Beckhams have . . . oh, never mind, guess you’re not interested enough.’

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