Page 51 of Star Struck

Jack closed his eyes in a long blink. ‘Okay, what then?’

Gary turned to me. ‘You’re Skye Threppel?’

‘Yes, I’m Skye.’

‘And you won our quiz.’ It wasn’t a question. He picked up my answers and flipped through the papers. ‘Mind telling me how you did that?’

My fingers found each other and twiddled in front of me, fingertips tracing scars. ‘I answered more questions right than anyone else.’

‘Smart lady, eh?’ Gary stood up and I was reassured to see that he was only a couple of inches taller than me. Brandon, the burly man with the tattoo who’d fetched me away from the party, wasn’t much taller. Neither of them was physically overwhelming, but I began to feel a little bit intimidated.

‘You asked.’

‘There’s one question here . . . “Name the pilot who fired the first shot in the Shadow War”.’ Again, not framed as a question, but it sounded as though he wanted an answer.

‘Jevan Klye.’ I couldn’t help myself. ‘Piloting the Shadow Ship D’Veen.’

‘That’s the answer you gave here.’

‘Because it’s the right answer.’

‘And how did you know that, Miss Threppel?’ He ran both hands over his streaked hair, looking tired.

I put my water bottle down on the table, very carefully. ‘Because I watched the episode.’ Lots of times, actually. It had been a very early episode in Series One, but hadn’t been released on DVD because of some kind of copyright issues. I’d burned it to DVD myself, via my laptop, but I wasn’t going to admit that in case it was against the law.

‘Look, Gary . . .’ Jack began, but was stopped with a raised hand.

‘Please, Jay, let her go on.’

‘Well, that’s it really. I knew the answer.’

‘How about here?’ Gary pointed at my changed answer. ‘How come you altered this?’

‘I . . .’

‘It wasn’t, how shall I say this, because Mr Whitaker here fed you the answers before you even sat down to the quiz and you didn’t want to arouse suspicion by getting too many right?’

Jack made a startled noise.

‘What? Jack? Why on earth would he do that?’ I looked across at him and Jack was looking back at me, his expression as baffled as I’m sure mine was.

‘You tell me, Miss Threppel. You tell me.’ Gary sat down again. There was a long pause, during which I ran through every conversation Jack and I had had in case he might have given me some clue as to what the quiz contained. ‘You see, we’ve had a lot of complaints.’

‘About what?’ I wasn’t sure whether to feel indignant or not, yet.

‘There have been concerns expressed about the fairness of allowing you to participate in what is a very important part of the Fallen Skies convention when you have had a . . . err . . . relationship with the main writer.’

‘Oh, come on!’ Jack was bristling. ‘Skye and I have had no kind of relationship.’

‘Okay, you deny that she’s been in your motel room on several occasions?’

‘Well, no.’

‘But that was all just . . . stuff!’ I protested. ‘Personal stuff.’

‘Yeah.’ Jack put a hand on my shoulder; I leaned into him for solidarity. ‘We’re friends. That’s all, Gary. We never met before Wednesday.’

‘Right. But even if that were true, we’ve got people saying . . .’ Gary consulted another piece of paper, ‘that Miss Threppel conducted a meeting with Mr Tudor-Morgan in the car park of this motel, where you sat, and I quote, “in physical proximity” for several minutes?’

---