Page 40 of Star Struck

The Dowager Queen of Skeldar, in all her glory. Or, at least, me in her clothes. Of all the outfits that Jack had sent up, this one revealed the least skin and also gave me a borrowed dignity. The headpiece pulled my hair back from my face, which had given me a few moments of uncertainty until Fe assured me that the scar was mostly covered by the dangling fake jewels. I had to lace the bodice quite tightly to make the floor-length dress fit my body perfectly, although the shoes supplied with it were too high and slightly too big; the actress who wore it was a shoe size and a dress size larger than I was, but, on the plus side, the heels made me walk more regally.

‘Does make you look a bit like a Christmas tree, but apart from that . . .’

I aimed my Shadow rifle at him. ‘Shut up. Better a Christmas tree than a pimp.’ Felix had begged a costume, and was, in consequence, wearing the get-up of a Shadow Planet refugee, mock-fur coat with big Ugg-type boots and Ray-Bans against the solar glare. ‘You look like you’re trying to break into rap music.’

‘I am going to boil.’ Fe waved his arms up and down to create a draught. ‘How does anyone manage to wear this on a film set?’

‘The wardrobe girl told me, when she brought the costumes up, that these are for publicity shots. On set they have to wear stuff they can actually walk in without sweating like carthorses.’

‘Figures.’ He reached inside his furs and flapped his T-shirt. ‘So, I guess dirty dancing is out?’

‘Dirty anything. We have to hand these back after the ball, undamaged and unstained. I promised. And, since it looks like anything involving you also involves stains . . .’

Felix looked at me, eyes shining. ‘I can’t believe I’m going to be doing this for real come next January,’ he whispered. ‘Fallen Skies. You are such a clever girl, Skye.’

‘Yeah.’ I didn’t feel clever. But then, neither did I feel the sense of dread at attending a gathering of fans which had so paralysed me only a couple of days ago. I wasn’t going to be the life and soul of the party, but I could face walking into a room full of people, and the thought of going home to my little terrace in York now filled me with warmth, not the urge to board the next plane back. ‘You were pretty clever too, Fe, getting me out here. Forcing me to face up to things.’

Felix had his back to me. ‘You think you’ve faced up to things?’ His voice sounded odd. A bit choked.

‘Not so much faced-up to, but more . . . I dunno, worked through, perhaps. I was thinking, all those panic attacks that they kept telling me were “stress related”, maybe they weren’t. Perhaps the doctors got it wrong. I’m starting to think that they were all symptoms of depression.’ Yeah, Skye, you miserable cow.

‘You think you were depressed.’ Not a question, I noticed, and an odd stress on the words.

‘Maybe not, not proper clinical depression but . . . I wasn’t very well. So maybe you forcing me to come here kind of kicked me out of a destructive sort of slump. Made me realise that there is more to life.’

‘And, play your cards right, you could get to take home the biggest trophy of all. Mr Whitaker clearly can’t wait to have you back on home soil, and I use the term having you in all its possible contexts.’

‘Jack . . . I like Jack.’ I adjusted the lie of the skirt. It raked across my hips to fall behind me in a heavy train, body-tight in the front and yet fluidly generous behind. ‘I just don’t think he’s interested in me like that. And, anyway, I don’t want to jump in and replace Michael.’

‘Don’t you?’ Felix’s voice was oddly high-pitched.

‘Michael was my fiancé. We were going to get married. I can’t just up and start . . . well, anything with someone else after only eighteen months, it’s not right.’

Felix turned and the expression on his face looked misplaced, as though he’d stuck it on the front of his head to cover his real feelings. ‘There’s always Gethryn.’ He gave a grin which also looked out of place.

‘That was more of a crush than anything real.’

I waited for Felix to disagree but, disappointingly, he didn’t. Instead he sighed and began to strip, until he’d pulled off the coat and boots and was left in his T-shirt and jeans. He poked his feet back into his shoes but kept on the glasses. ‘Right. Now I’m going downstairs, get stuck into the Jack Daniels. I’ll see you there.’

‘Glasses?’

He paused a moment. ‘Reckon they make me look mysterious, don’t you think, darling? I’ll keep them on.’

I sat on the edge of the bed, appreciating the costume. The weight of it hung from my shoulders and stiffened my spine; it swept along the floor with a delicious sound and, as a bonus feature, it made my boobs look pertly luscious. For the first time I knew why so many women have a Cinderella complex. ‘See you later, Fe.’

The door closed on his smug expression. Tonight I was going to relax. Gear myself up for tomorrow. Decide whether to take Jack up on his offer of an escort to the ball.

And what was stopping me? Was it really loyalty to Michael? According to Fe my relationship with Michael had been high-octane and frantic. He could never have been accused of intensity or moodiness, only of a desire to live life as fast and as frenetically as possible, dragging me along with him in his rocket-fuelled search for the bigger, the better, the most superlative.

Or was it Jack himself? He was so self-contained, there was something very shut-in about him. He laughed and smiled but all the time I felt there was something else going on behind it all, something he kept tightly confined. Some emotion that he didn’t want spotted. And, to be honest with myself, I was afraid. That year of memory loss and the fuzzing-out of preceding years had affected me more deeply than I’d ever thought it could. If I couldn’t remember even my own fiancé, could I even remember who I was? And if I couldn’t remember that, then how did I know how to be with someone else? How did I know who to be? And what was it that Felix knew?

Even so. It was a ball, a fancy dress ball, not an arranged marriage. And I’d look such a dork walking in on my own in this frock-of-frocks. And Jack was undeniably attractive . . .

The phone rang and made me jump. Horribly cautiously — who knew where I was? — I picked it up. ‘Skye Threppel, right?’ said the voice on the other end. ‘Do you have a costume picked out for tomorrow?’

I didn’t recognise the voice. Pure American, pure business. ‘I’m just trying it on.’

‘Great. My name’s Erlon, I run The Shadow Planet.’

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