Page 45 of Star Struck

Okay, Jack. Now say it like you mean it . . .

Chapter Nineteen

When I came out of the bathroom Felix was sprawled on the bed shirtless with his jeans slightly undone, like a suggestive pin-up. ‘Heard you’d been summoned. So, how’d the photo shoot go?’ He raised a knee and lounged provocatively, but his words had a strange edge.

‘It was, uh, interesting.’

He jumped up and began walking around the room, not meeting my eyes as he talked. ‘You vanish off the face of the earth, turn up covered in dust, you’ve got Whitaker slamming doors looking for you, online is alive with speculation about you and Gethryn — I’ve been checking on my phone and they are all talking about you. A girl I had to drug just to get across the Atlantic!’

I couldn’t tell if he was joking or not. He was talking fast, breathily and using his fingertips to spike up his hair at the same time. ‘Fe?’

‘I am presuming, because you’ve got all this going on, you’ve managed to stage some kind of miraculous recovery? What happened there?’

‘Have you been doing coke?’ It was the only reason I could think of for this fast, inflectionless delivery. ‘You’re being really weird, Fe.’

‘Is that a yes?’

I looked at him, at those wide apple-juice eyes and cherubic cheeks. ‘I don’t know,’ I said, honestly. ‘I feel like . . . the past, that year . . . maybe I’ve been concentrating on that too much. Maybe I should think about the memories I do have and worry less about what’s gone before . . .’

Felix sat on the bed and rested his arms on his thighs, raising an innocent face to look at me. ‘So, all it took was a bit of male attention? That’s rather shallow, lover, don’t you think?’

‘I told you, it was like a depression. Maybe my brain chemistry sorted itself out, maybe the change of scenery has shown me that I don’t need to let the lack of a bit of memory weigh me down so much. And anyway, do you want me to stay home pining?’ I met his eyes. His stare was wide, schoolboyish, but there was a sharp set to his lips which tinged his whole expression with cruelty.

‘You’re right.’ Felix swept his legs up onto the bed again, his knees jiggling. ‘You really have changed since the accident. You wouldn’t have been like this two years ago, you know that?’

I shook my head. ‘I don’t remember.’

He was picking at the seam of his jeans, twisting a thread. ‘And you don’t remember the accident itself.’

Was this it? Did he finally want to talk about it all? ‘We went off the road, they told me at the hospital. It’s not amnesia, Fe, not like memories that are going to come back with time, it’s the brain damage from the operation.’

‘Y’see, I’m never really sure with you, Skye. Whether it’s real, this memory loss thing, or whether you’re just pretending, or whether you’ve blanked out stuff you don’t want to remember.’

‘Why wouldn’t I want to remember? I can’t remember meeting Michael, or any of the fun we had together, I can’t remember getting engaged or planning the wedding . . . it’s all memories I should have and I don’t. I feel . . . cheated, that’s it really. Cheated of my happiness. When I came round from the anaesthetic it was all gone, and it’s not fair!’

‘Ain’t that the truth,’ Felix muttered, then gave me a direct look. His eyes were hooded. ‘You really, honest-to-God don’t remember? No pissing me about here, Skye, this is important. You don’t even have a flicker?’

I shook my head. ‘Nothing. I can’t even remember Michael’s face, only from the photos. What is it, Fe, what are you trying to tell me here?’

‘You and Mike, it wasn’t quite the relationship you thought, you know.’

I felt something cold trickle through my blood. ‘How do you mean?’

‘Just what you were saying before, about not wanting to bounce straight to another man? It wouldn’t really be the betrayal of Mike’s memory that you think, that’s all.’ Felix got up and went to the mirror, began examining his face as he talked, checking for stubble and stray hairs. ‘You fought a lot. He . . . it even made me uncomfortable, and you know I’m the Queen of Confrontation.’ He stroked his cheeks, cocking each eyebrow in turn at his reflection. ‘I guess a New Year’s party was the worst place to be that night.’

‘Oh come on, all couples fight now and again, it doesn’t mean we didn’t love one another, does it?’

Felix turned his back on the mirror. ‘Look, I’m going downstairs for a drink with Lissa. Do you want to come? Oh, maybe best not, not if you’ve got the hots for her ex.’

‘I haven’t. He’s just . . .’

‘I am so not hanging around for the end of that sentence, darling. See you later.’ And he flipped out of the door with an anticipatory grin already spreading across his face.

I lay on the recently vacated bed, with the new knowledge. Michael and I had been fighting. Why had no-one ever told me that earlier, right at the beginning? Everyone who had been at the party had gone to his funeral. Fe had taken my place at the crematorium, limping in his ankle cast, while I’d still been in hospital, weighed down with drips and bandages and sadness. They’d all come in afterwards, offered their condolences, and had behaved as though Michael and I had been the Couple of the Year; no-one had even mentioned that we’d fought.

And then, a week later, Faith’s funeral. That stood out clearer in my mind. I’d been on the road to recovery by then and Fe had come to my bedside to describe the whole scene to me. Their parents sobbing in each other’s arms. Our drama school friends at their second funeral in as many weeks, all playing the part of friends of the bereaved in their smart black suits and pale make-up.

They’d all known Michael and I had been fighting. And no-one had said anything.

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