Page 6 of Star Struck

Drugged as I was, I registered this. ‘One room?’

Felix’s face swung into sharp focus. ‘By the time I’d got the tickets, this was all that was left. Don’t sweat it, we can always take it in turns to use the bed. And—’ he looked around and then lowered his voice — ‘hopes are that I’m going to get part-shares on a few other rooms, if you get my drift.’ His voice went down another notch. ‘Seriously tasty. Bloody hell, Skye, why did we never come to the States sooner?’

‘Have you seen Gethryn?’ Despite the brain-numbing, I was still conscious of why we’d come. Of why I’d left my comfort-zone so far behind that it wasn’t even visible with binoculars. ‘Is he here?’

‘That’s most likely his Winnebago out front there. But it doesn’t look like he’s hanging round the check-in, no.’

‘Oh.’ I slumped further into the chair and my eyes closed. ‘Pro’ly should sleep.’

Felix sighed. ‘All right.’ He jerked me upright and bundled me physically into a lift. After several goes the doors managed to close, everything jolted and jangled for a few moments and then the doors opened onto a grey-floored corridor, along which Felix half-dragged me by my elbows with my heels kicking little static sparks off the floor covering as I shuffled along beside him. We must have looked like room service for a shy serial killer. There was a moment of juggling as Felix tried to cope with my drooping form and the room key, which involved my being propped against the wall by my forehead like a roll of unwanted carpet, then we were in. As we entered I thought I heard Fe mutter quietly, ‘Got to get you fit for Friday.’

Fit? For what? But I hardly even had enough wakefulness for curiosity, and the feel of pliancy beneath my back as I dropped onto the bed drove any questions out of my head altogether.

Chapter Five

Wakefulness came suddenly. The room was awash with garish daylight, which streamed through the too-thin curtains and bounced off every surface like a toddler full of additives. The place seemed to be made of mirrors and edges. Judging by the silence and the immobility of the blanket-wrapped floor-blob that was Felix, it was early in the morning, but I’d even slept off the jet lag and was now spread out under the remaining covers in the vast bed, wide awake. Not just awake either; there was an almost unrecognised tingling in my middle, a vague tugging sensation near my heart. I was actually excited. I lay still for a moment, realising how much I’d missed these everyday feelings then, careful not to wake Fe, I padded over to the window and threw open the flimsy curtains, alert for my first real view of Nevada desert beyond the windows.

Alas, this last available room in the motel had still been available for a reason. The view from our first-floor window was a small yard, bounded on three sides by off-shoots of the motel and partially haunted by a rangy yellow dog which wandered in and out of vision, nosing the dusty ground. Tucked behind what was obviously the kitchen wing I could see the tops of a couple of dumpsters, and the slumped landscape I’d noticed the night before was reduced by the buildings to a taupe hillside. Even so I felt the fizz of anticipation rise. I was here, I’d done it — this was America! Somewhere, out there, beyond those bins and dog turds, was Gethryn Tudor-Morgan, and beyond that . . . I gave a little shudder. Since the accident I’d lost my love for boundless horizons; those things that had once seemed full of promise and exhilaration now held the unknown and unfamiliar and the possibility of sudden screaming.

Cautiously I opened the window and pushed my head out. The air smelled strange. Not badly strange, just different. At home the air smelled of diesel fumes from the ring road, the zippy scent of pine from the trees opposite the window and sometimes, when the wind was coming from the north, of heather and wildness from the moors. Here the air smelled dry, spicy. And slightly ‘off’, but that was probably the dumpsters.

Two Hispanic boys came arguing out from a doorway, aprons tied around slim waists. I watched eagerly. It made a change from ogling Mr Harrison next-door-but-one coming home from his teaching job with his jacket off. These two were shouting Spanish obscenities, all waving fists and sleek hair, until they’d fought their way into the shade of the wall under my window, where they made up with a deep kiss and went back inside, arm-in-arm and laughing. I pushed down the inevitable needle of pain that wormed its way under my ribs. Michael and I had been like that, once. Fighting and making up, loving and laughing. Michael . . . A sudden image flowed into my head, a man, tall and blond standing in a doorway. It was so much like a memory that, for a second, I almost thought . . . but then I realised I was thinking of a photograph that Felix had shown me. A second-hand memory. All there was. All that was left of our love.

Tears kissed against my cheek and I swiped them away angrily. Except for the brain damage and stress-related panic attacks, I’d got over the whole thing marvellously. Everyone said so. Even as their eyes traced the scars, they agreed that I’d done amazingly well . . .

‘Leave your fingers alone.’ The sleepy voice rose from the middle of the rolled-up bedcover.

‘Sorry.’

‘What are you doing anyway, hanging out of the window and thinking about the past?’ Fe snuffled his way forward to grab his phone. ‘Jesus Christ, it’s six a.m., Skye! Get some more sleep.’ There was a waft of fusty sleep-warmed air as he turned over. ‘Things’ll kick off soon enough.’

‘Mm, maybe.’ But I had no intention of sleeping. The curiously gold sky beyond the window enthralled me, the warm scents in the air were shouting to me of exotic life going on where I couldn’t see it. There was a weird unreality about this pebble-dashed dawn. Like this whole trip was a vision or a play, that the world outside was just a stage set. Nevada, with its completely fantastical landscape, beckoned to me like a carnival stallholder and, for the first time since the accident, I actually wanted to see what was happening outside.

I dressed in the little bathroom. Felix must have brought the cases up after undressing me last night, which I knew I hadn’t done myself because I wouldn’t have left my bra on. Thank heavens he still had some sense of decency left. Then, cautiously aware that it had been a long time since I’d ventured anywhere strange alone, I took a deep breath and tiptoed out of the room. I found my way down a flight of stairs and out of an unlocked side door into the emptiness of the day.

The air hit me like a missile. All my pride at my new confidence evaporated and I crouched as the hugeness of the outdoors crashed against me, raging and worrying its way inside my head, making my heart knock against my ribs and my breath sting inside my mouth. This wasn’t home. Everything was new, and the newness threw itself against me, filled with unpredictability, like a dog that appeared friendly but might at any time turn and bite, and I knew I couldn’t do it. Couldn’t face this new strangeness; I’d been stupid even to think that I might. Stupid, stupid Skye . . . As I began backing my way towards the safety of the building, the door behind me swung open again, catching me with its leading edge and sending me flying down into the gravelly dust of the pathway.

‘Oh, bollocks!’ The voice of the person who had so carelessly flung open the door sounded annoyed rather than apologetic. ‘What the hell is anyone doing out here at this time in the morning?’

The shock and indignation counteracted the panic, drove back the stress-demons and shrank the world to a manageable size. The sky stopped its assault and I could breathe properly, so I made the most of it and scrambled to my feet, brushing my knees with my hands ostentatiously. ‘Don’t mention it,’ I said, wheezing slightly as the panic abated. ‘No, really, I’m fine. Hardly any arteries severed.’

I was unsurprised, given the English accent, to find myself grinding my teeth at yesterday’s rescuer, a man who had had a closer view of my knickers than any man I wasn’t sleeping with. Now I was finally getting a proper look at him, I suspected that my knickers were the closest he’d ever come to female underwear, unless he was a secret transvestite. He didn’t, to put it plainly, look like a man who got on with women.

He didn’t look like a man who got on with people.

It wasn’t as though he was ugly. Oh no. Not ugly at all. In fact, on first glance you might even call him obliquely handsome. Hair slightly too long, eyes very dark in a lean, frowning face, shoulders which stooped as though his nose was somehow invisibly connected to the floor; he looked like a beautiful man that someone had rubbed with worry until his edges blurred. It was his expression that made him look so disagreeable. As well as pyjama bottoms and a long shirt, he wore a scowl that instantly made the infinity of outdoors seem not enough space to get away from him in. He was scowling so hard that his eyes were down to slits and his mouth was twisted and pursed in a feat of gurning I’d never seen bettered.

He surprised me by muttering ‘yeah, sorry’, but then went right back to reinforcing my prejudice against him by flopping down onto a raised planter and extending his scowl to include it. The bed contained a desiccated-looking bush and some brittle earth, and his expression was so irritable that I was slightly surprised nothing burst into flames. He stretched out his legs in front of him, revealing a grubby pair of bare feet, and fumbled in a pocket, relaxing his mouth enough to clamp the resultant cigarette between his lips and then swearing around it until he found a lighter.

The presence of another body helped me feel less like the scenery was on some personal attack mission. My muscles began to slacken and my breathing eased into a regular rhythm as I took a large lungful of the desert air. It smelled primarily of tarmac from the road that ran about fifty yards from us, occupied only by the occasional sticky swish of overheated rubber as a car passed or turned into one of the parking spaces that were ranged along the white painted sides of the hotel. Great. All the way to Nevada and it smelled like a warm afternoon on the York by-pass. I sneaked a sidelong look at the man lounging against the planter and found that he was looking at me.

‘What’s the story?’ He blew a ribbon of smoke from the corner of his mouth and chewed at his lip. ‘You part of this circus?’ A filter tip waved to indicate the banner stretched taut across the front entrance ‘Broken Hill Motel welcomes Fallen Skis Fans!!’

I stared. ‘Spelling mistake and dodgy punctuation?’

A grudging inclination of the head. ‘Guess we’d better watch out for those fallen skis. Could be bloody dangerous.’

The first hint of a sense of humour encouraged me. ‘I came because . . . well, Felix made me.’

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