Page 55 of Star Struck

Suddenly I could taste blood. ‘Felix?’

‘Hey, easy.’ Jack spoke as though Fe was a nervous animal. He carried on rubbing Fe’s back, small circular motions like a mother trying to bring up her baby’s wind. It smeared the dust and sweat into streaking mud but Felix was beyond caring.

He looked at me. There was nothing cherubic about his face now; in fact it was almost demonic. ‘You don’t get it, do you? It was never real, you and Mike. You weren’t engaged at all, it was just a story you told people. Oh, you told lots of stories, Skye, how you “only just” missed out on being cast in Being Human, you were offered Mamma Mia but had to turn it down, you were on the shortlist to be the new Doctor Who companion . . . all stories. All fucking fake. All to make you look better. Mike and Faith were dating, Skye. Seeing each other behind your back.’

Suddenly it was as though Jack didn’t exist. All I could see was Felix, head up, defiant. ‘How long?’ I whispered. ‘How long had they . . . ?’

‘All the fucking time.’ Felix’s voice was so cold the air almost vaporised around the words. ‘All the fucking time, Skye. And you know what? They had a good time. Not that destructive, screaming thing you had going on with him.’

‘Then why . . . ?’

Even as I said it, I felt the huge plummeting in my stomach. Like my internal organs were in a lift with a snapped cable, like freefall. And a new understanding slammed me between the eyes, like a cashmere-wrapped anvil; the force nearly knocked me to the floor. All those little whispers, that nasty, snidey voice in the back of my head, telling me how worthless I was all the time . . . I’d thought it was my subconscious. But they’d been memories . . . memories of Michael . . .

‘Now let me think . . .’ Fe was still in my face. ‘You dated him. He took you out, gave you a good time and suddenly — WHAM — you’re in love. You wouldn’t leave him alone, you stalked him, turned up at his flat all suspenders and high heels . . . he had to date Faith without you knowing because we were all afraid of what you might do. To him, to them, to yourself.’ Felix raked his eyes up and down me. ‘You were mental, Skye. Really mental.’

‘Easy.’ Jack repeated. He’d stopped rubbing Felix’s back now, but was still holding his hand.

Felix raised an eyebrow over a glacial stare. ‘I reckon you don’t want to know the truth about your girlfriend’s past life.’

‘We all have things to hide.’ Jack was even, but cool.

‘Mike was . . . he kind of liked it. He’d lead her on, pretend they still had a relationship, that Skye could save it if she tried hard enough.’ Felix shook his head. ‘But the night of the accident . . .’ Now he looked at me directly. ‘You caught them. Found them snogging in the bathroom at the party. I’m not surprised you don’t remember, even I tried to wipe that little image out of my head. We thought we’d have to call the police. But you passed out.’ He looked up at Jack now. ‘I put her in the back of the car, but on the way home she came round. Saw them sitting there in the front, with Faith’s hand on Mike’s cock.’ Felix gave me a look that nearly seared the flesh from my skeleton, a look so deep with cold that mammoths could have walked on it. ‘What did you think would happen, Skye?’

‘I didn’t know,’ I whispered. ‘I didn’t know.’ My skin was chilled but inside I felt a huge fire flame up. ‘I caused the accident?’

‘You tried to climb through. Just undid your seatbelt and started trying to get at Mike, going for him with your nails, all flailing and screaming . . . grabbing at the wheel . . . I got hold of you, tried to drag you off but then you went for my face . . . kicked Mike in the head. Your whole life was a fake, Skye. Even your grief is fake. You weren’t Mike’s real girlfriend, and you killed my sister.’

‘So all this . . . you used me to win you that part?’ Shock had made my voice shake a little. Jack looked at me and his eyes were huge.

‘I didn’t know what to do.’ Felix hid his face again and all the anger seemed to have drained away. ‘I liked you. Yeah, you were batshit crazy but you . . . you were always nice to me, you know? Before. And I’d got no-one. My parents, oh, they love me all right but all they really want is Faith back, they can’t see me any more. They used to be interested, involved, wanting to know how the auditions went, how my life was going . . . and now . . .’ He held up empty hands. ‘I’ve lost them too, you know? And you were all I had. So I . . . And then, last year, at the convention they had the quiz. And I got to thinking . . . maybe, if they held it again you would . . . I need that part, Skye. I’ve got nothing else.’

‘Skye,’ Jack’s voice was calm. ‘Take it easy. You’re shaking. And Felix, you need to calm down. Let’s go back to the diner, then I reckon you ought to head to bed.’ Those supernova eyes met mine, crawled inside my head. ‘You’d better come, too. We need to talk.’

‘I don’t know what to say to you.’

He got to his feet, pulling a reluctant Felix along with him, hands still joined. ‘Fuck, you smell good.’ Fe’s voice was stronger; he’d managed to work in a little bit of the old Felix’s flirty tone. ‘But I don’t know about these clothes.’

‘I’m a writer. I don’t have to look good.’ With barely a glance at me, Jack began helping Felix across the sand towards the lights of the motel and the noisy flickering that was the ball in full swing.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Skye’s face had gone beyond pale and into moonstruck. Jack kept his eyes forward, concentrating on Felix, whose body was shuddering with something like repressed sobs. ‘Take it easy,’ he muttered, but for a million pounds he couldn’t have told anyone which one of them he was saying it to, or was it to himself?

Her face. Her pain. Oh God, her pain. He could see it, feel it and his arms ached with something like the desire to touch her. Was it only minutes ago that he’d kissed her? He felt so much older now, millennia settling in his bones, the weight of experience dragging at his feet as the new implications pulled at the edges of Skye’s mouth and made her expression stretch.

‘I killed them,’ he heard her whisper above the scratch and scrape of sand. ‘I killed them. It was me.’

She stumbled and it was all he could do not to drop Felix there on the dirt and catch her, wrap his arms around those frail shoulders and pull her close. Whisper into her hair that the agony would pass. It would never leave her, but it would pass, and life would take on a new sharpness as she realised she was living it not just for herself but for Faith and Michael as well. But Felix leaned in more heavily and he had to let Skye find her own feet, balance herself.

‘Take it easy,’ he murmured again, for her this time. Was this why he felt the way he did? Had he seen it coming all this time?

‘They’re dead because of me.’

No, he wanted to say. You might have been instrumental in their deaths, but their careless brutality was their real undoing. Your best friend, seeing the man you were convinced you were in love with, and him, teasing you, torturing you with thoughts of a life you’d never have. What kind of people were they? What did they think would happen?

But he couldn’t say any of it. Felix was holding his hand as if it was his anchor to sanity and it would be callous to disregard his feelings, even if it made her feel better. She was grieving all over again, not for the deaths of her friend and lover but for the death of the life she’d thought she had had.

Jack let his gaze brush over her and the sudden scalding of memory made him drop his eyes. All that emotion, everything he had denied himself, he could see it all on display in Skye. And now he was beginning to realise just how much he’d pushed away all these years, how he’d kept himself isolated just so that he didn’t have to feel anything. It was no wonder they called him the Iceman. He’d always assumed it was some kind of compliment, that the name meant he was on top of it all, his head was cool enough to deal with life; not that they’d seen right through him to the lack of caring, that lack of connection with anyone, that he’d let run him for so long.

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