Page 60 of Star Struck

I moved my lips but no words would come out. ‘What about you?’ just about breathed out of my mouth.

A harsh smile. ‘Yeah, me too. A fabrication. A walking lie.’ A last deep drag that had all the finality of death about it, and he bent to grind the remains of the cigarette almost viciously into the earth. ‘Okay. Let’s see. Right, when they came over to England wanting to headhunt me for the writing team on Two Turns North . . . I was running scared. Shut up in a little office writing — oh yeah, the books were successful but I was half-dead. Came over here full of crap about broadening my writing CV, working in TV to get some serious cash behind me. All bollocks, of course.’ He was looking at his feet now, working them down into the desert dirt, digging to hell. ‘I was on the run from some nasty memories, that’s all. Running like a coward. And then I came up with Fallen Skies and they gave it to me. Me. A bloody drunk with no real TV experience — but they said they had “faith”. And I tried, tried to tell them that I wasn’t what they saw.’ He worked a small rock loose and bent to pick it up. ‘But they’d made me into something by then. I was their great British success and they thought everything I touched turned to sunshine and awards.’

‘That’s why the show nearly got cancelled after the first year?’

Jack nodded. ‘I was terrified. Drunk and terrified. Couldn’t handle the crew, couldn’t handle the writing team . . . God, it was a wonder we weren’t cancelled half-way through . . .’ He gave a small outbreath of a laugh. ‘Shows what happens when you trust people like me. Even the guy who made the fucking coffee had the drop on me.’ Long fingers closed around the pebble, tossing it from hand to hand.

‘But they carried on giving you the money.’

A shrug and fierce concentration on the rock. ‘They liked what I was turning out, sometimes, somehow, some reason it just worked. And the fans got behind it, campaigned to keep us on air — that’s part of the reason we have these conventions, it’s our chance to say “thank you” for keeping us in work.’

‘But the fans didn’t do it out of selflessness. They did it because they loved the show. Because you’re good at what you do.’

For that I got a sudden, amazing smile which softened his eyes. ‘Thank you.’ His hands were still for a moment. ‘Thank you,’ he said again, ‘for reminding me what I could be.’ Then he was back to fidgeting again, staring up out towards the sky while his fingers restlessly twitched over the surface of that stone as though reading Braille. ‘But I’m still a fraud. I let myself get sucked in, let the whole of my past define who I was. Let the memories have the run of my head. And things . . . things went wrong.’

‘But you got yourself sorted out.’

A small inclination of the head. ‘I chose to change myself. Again. You see what I mean? I stopped drinking so that I could keep the show on the air. Not because I wanted to give up, not for my health or my relationship or anything, but simply so that I could keep my characters on screen. So you see, Skye, I know how it is to be changed by circumstances.’

He drew his arm back and suddenly sent the little stone flying with a flick of his wrist, the loose sleeves of his T-shirt flipping down with the movement and flapping like crows’ wings. ‘But you still gave up drinking,’ I said.

‘Yes. Got a hold of myself, pulled it all back from the brink.’ He made a self-deprecating face. ‘There you go. That’s me.’

‘So why are you so . . . ?’

‘So, what?’ He gazed upwards as though the sky had spoken.

‘So . . . cold. As though you’d break if anyone touched you.’

‘Only way I can cope, Skye. By never, never letting anything touch me enough to cause trouble. It doesn’t always work, of course.’ His voice broke, rolling over the name, ‘Liss and I . . . Lissa isn’t . . . She and I were . . . and then Geth . . .’ He stopped talking, bit his lip until his mouth twisted. ‘I wanted him on Skies.’ A little laugh and a shake of his head and he seemed to pull it all back in, any sign that he felt anything other than a mild annoyance. ‘He had a bit part in North and he was the best bloody action-actor I’d seen, so I recruited him. Oh, just about everyone warned me, but I thought, second chances, you know the kind of thing. What we are both living, Skye. A second chance.’

Now his hands went into his pockets, his shoulders came up in a prolonged shrug. ‘I fired Geth from the show, and I hate myself for the fact that only part of the reason was because he’s so often drunk that he’s completely unreliable.’

My breathing hurt again. ‘You fired him.’

‘Yeah. He didn’t “quit his contract”, we just let that out to save face. His, ours, I’m not sure even now.’

‘What’s the other part?’

‘Sorry?’

‘If his drinking is only part of it?’

Jack raised his shoulders again. ‘He uses women. I saw it and I hated it, but it’s not exactly a sacking offence, is it, being a womaniser? If it were, I don’t think there’d be an actor left on screen, but I used the drinking as my excuse and I shouldn’t have done it.’

‘Are you a womaniser, too? Is that why they call you the Iceman? Love ’em and leave ’em, is that you, Jack?’

The shoulders rose a little more. ‘Liss got as close as anyone to getting under the wire but . . . even her, when she left me . . . I felt nothing. Like I don’t know how to feel anything real any more. My heart, as they say, remains unengaged.’ He trailed a finger over his stubbled chin, scratching thoughtfully. ‘Until now.’

‘Jack . . .’

‘Look . . .’ His shoulders relaxed and he touched my face now, ‘we’re allowed to make mistakes. Life is one great big learning curve, there’s no manual, no instructions. We do the best we can and learn from the things that turn out to have been a steaming pile of shit. Okay?’ His fingers pinned a wayward strand of my hair back from my eyes. ‘What you were doesn’t matter. It’s what you are, what I see, that counts.’

‘And what do you see?’ I looked into his eyes, held his gaze. It was so dark it stopped my breath in my throat.

‘I see someone I desperately want.’ His breathing changed, turned ragged around the edges. ‘Sorry. Inappropriate thoughts there. Try to pretend you haven’t noticed.’

‘Maybe I don’t want to.’

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