Page 29 of Star Struck

We waited until Lissa and Felix had driven a large loop around us and regained the main road before we followed. They were driving at about fifteen miles an hour, we had to match speed, and so the slowest car-chase in the world began.

‘They’ll be sobering up around now.’ Jack had lit a cigarette and was puffing out of the window, letting the heat in but at least considerate enough not to force me to breathe his smoke. ‘Listen carefully and you might be able to hear the sounds of terrible embarrassment.’

‘Don’t tell me you’ve never had stupid drunken sex with someone you didn’t really fancy?’ I managed to tear my eyes away from the road for long enough to give him a thin grin. ‘You look like the type of guy . . .’

His eyes were sudden and black on me. ‘Do I?’ Smoke formed a veil between us. ‘Are you sure about that, Skye?’

It was suddenly hard to lift my eyes from the steering wheel. ‘I don’t know, do I? I know nothing about you at all, Jack. Even your Wiki page just has some sketchy stuff about you being born in Leeds and being a bit . . . reclusive.’

‘A bit reclusive. Yeah. You don’t get phrases like solipsistic intoxication psychosis on Wikipedia.’ Jack turned away and stared out of the window at the unfascinating landscape beyond. ‘And I have no idea why I’m talking to you about it.’

‘Because I’m here?’

He turned back, his eyes immense. His gaze moved over my face, slowly, not lingering on the scar as people usually did but travelling from my eyes to my mouth and back up again. ‘Yeah,’ he said, and his voice was a bit croaky. ‘Yeah, that’ll be it.’

Silence fell, broken only by my occasional swearing, as we inched along behind Felix and Lissa, with our engine complaining at the slow speed all the way. If Lissa’s tyres had had markers on they would have described a series of 33s, as the car covered almost the entire road’s surface in its attempts to go straight. At last we both reached the motel car park and the pink car slewed into two-and-a-half spaces, parked at an angle. The driver’s door flew open and Lissa stuck her head out to puke on the gravel.

‘She’s not much of an advert for recreational alcohol abuse, is she?’ Jack stayed sitting beside me, despite the fact that the little car was now as airless and hot as a bread oven. Felix clambered out and grabbed Lissa by the arm. He waited, like a prison warder, while she locked the car door — taking several stabs to hit the right button — and then half-dragged her towards the motel. Lissa had one hand over her eyes and vomit on her skirt but that was normal for Felix’s girlfriends.

‘Skye.’ Jack put a hand on my arm to prevent me from opening my door. ‘Can I just . . . you’re interested in Gethryn, aren’t you?’

I was so relieved that the driving was over I had a system throbbing with endorphins. ‘Well, I’m female, I’ve got a pulse.’ My eyes followed Felix and Lissa, hoping that he wasn’t going to take her to our room, as I was looking forward to a shower and a change of clothes, and a drunken Lissa wasn’t my first choice of bathroom accessories.

‘He looks like he’s got his eye on you.’

My heart did a little swipe around my chest. Gethryn fancied me! Me, little Skye Threppel from Nowhereville, with her scarred face and aborted acting career and her scuzzy hair. Me! ‘Does he?’ I asked, trying to sound cool but remembering the soft touch of Gethryn’s fingers on mine last night, the way his leonine eyes had held my stare. ‘Gosh. Did you put in a word for me?’

‘Me? Quite the reverse. Look, Skye, Gethryn’s got . . . problems. What you see on screen, it’s not him.’

‘It’s all right, Jack, I might have some brain damage but I can still separate fantasy from reality just like everyone else.’

‘And it’s Lucas James that you want, isn’t it? I mean, you don’t know Gethryn at all, would you normally contemplate . . . whatever it is that you’re contemplating, with a man you don’t know?’

Now I turned to look at him. He had very dark eyes, I noticed for the first time, almost black, and his hair snagged on the uneven stubble which peppered his cheeks. ‘You don’t know what I’m contemplating.’

‘Okay, tell me it’s a Scrabble match.’ Jack leaned in closer and put his hands on my shoulders. I could see my reflection in his eyes. ‘I just don’t think that someone like you should be anywhere near Gethryn at the moment, that’s all.’

I screwed my eyes up. Why the hell should he care? ‘“Someone like me”? What’s that supposed to mean? What do you think I’m like, then? And who died and made you Freud?’

‘I’m a writer. It kind of goes with the territory that we understand people, and I’m good at getting inside people’s heads, at least I think I am. And I think you’re too fragile for Gethryn.’

My eyes were dragged away from him, back to the accident-waiting-to-happen which was Lissa and Felix at the front of the motel. They appeared to be having a very shouty argument. ‘Are you calling me pathetic?’

‘No! Not at all. It’s more that you’ve been damaged so badly the last thing you need is some bloke with issues getting his hands on you.’

‘Look.’ This time he didn’t try to stop me opening the car door. ‘I might have been injured but I’m over it. I’m learning to cope with the memory loss, I’m even getting over the whole stress panic attack thing, and if Gethryn wants — well, anything with me, then I can use my own judgement about the situation. I’m twenty-nine, Jack, and I didn’t get to be twenty-nine by not having any critical faculties, you know.’

His head turned. Hell-black eyes moved over my face, lingering on the scar this time. ‘I’m sure you didn’t. I just think that they might be overridden sometimes.’ A slow, almost reluctant hand caught my chin and turned my face towards his. ‘It’s when you think you’re okay, when you think you’re doing well; that’s when life can rise up and shake you by the throat, you know that?’

I could see his eyelashes, the tiny fragments of green that lifted the colour of his eyes. I could smell the recent smoke on his skin, feel his fingers on my jawbone. I sat there, rigid, not knowing what was coming, or even what I wanted to come; there was something very powerful about Jack Whitaker in that second. As though his words were aimed at me but contained something of himself, something he wanted me to know.

‘Still. None of my business, eh?’ His voice was suddenly flat, the northern vowels dropping like stones and he released his grip on my face. ‘Guess I’ll see you at the Q and A tonight?’

‘What’s the Q and A about?’ My voice was slightly shaky as the sudden change of subject left me winded.

‘Everyone’s chance to ask anything they want about the making of the show. Strictly back-room stuff. I’m on the panel with make-up and costume people. Wouldn’t have done it, wouldn’t even be here, but the writer who likes to turn out for these things has just had a baby. She was booked to come but the baby was premature and the network bosses thought it was time I put my face out in front of people; therefore, well, here I am.’

‘Juliette Coles. She had a little boy three weeks ago.’ I couldn’t help myself. It was a kind of hangover from the quiz.

---