Page 63 of Star Struck

Jack spun round. ‘Okay. This is really not the time. We’ve got a suicidal drunk on the roof over there, and if we don’t do something fast this is going to blow. There’ll already be stuff online, the national press can’t be far away, everyone over there—’ he pointed at the collection of shambling figures and makeshift tents beyond the car park — ‘will be Tweeting and Facebooking fit to bust, and if I can’t bring it all down . . .’ he gave a wide shrug, ‘then none of us might ever work again. Yes?’

I gave a half-snigger that owed more to shock than humour. ‘And you’re in your pyjamas.’

An answering smile. ‘Yep. So things really can’t get any worse, can they? Come on.’

As he led the way around the apocalyptic ruins of the motel I wondered about his switch. Down in that gulley he’d been kind and gentle. He’d touched my scars, kissed them and, okay, even given the fact that he’d been about to have sex with me, he hadn’t needed to do that. And now it was like he’d turned that part of his personality off and let the whole Iceman thing come to the fore.

There was something underneath all this. Something so bad that he’d turned this emotional block into his coping mechanism. It was how he dealt with his life; he’d simply switched everything off so that nothing could hurt him. And he didn’t know how to turn it back on. My heart squeezed itself tight around the realisation, and the sympathy I felt for this strong, gorgeous, complicated man became something solid and real.

I watched his back view as he strode ahead of me, his feet kicking up little demons in the sand, his shoulders hunched as though his memories were a solid weight upon him. As I followed, I wondered what those memories were, what he was carrying that made denying all emotion the best option, and felt a sudden chill prick between my shoulder blades.

Gethryn was sitting on the edge of the roof around the far side of the main building. It was four storeys high and it made me feel sick just looking up.

When he saw Jack he stood unsteadily and waved the bottle he was drinking from. ‘Well, hello there, Mr Show-Runner! And Skye — whatcha doin’ with him, Skye? He’s a bastard.’

Even given that he was clearly drunk, and the precarious position he was in, he still looked wonderful. The desert breeze lifted his hair from his shoulders and tossed it carelessly, his unshaven and slightly sunken cheeks were made-up with a dusting of sand and a highlight of sun, and even his torn shirt looked artful and designed.

‘We’ve got to get up there,’ Jack hissed to me. ‘If you go up the staircase, I’ll go round the back and up the fire escape. Try and get round behind him. Maybe if there’s two of us we can distract him for long enough to persuade him down.’

‘I’ll try.’ I hitched up my skirts again and made for the inside of the motel, hearing Geth’s shout of, ‘Oh, you leavin’, girl? Doncha want to hear what he’s done?’

I’d have cried, if I’d had enough moisture in me. The beautiful, golden Gethryn was threatening to kill himself, the sexy, intense Jack was cold-shouldering me, I’d been up for what felt like forever with no sleep, unless unconsciousness counted, and Felix hated me. Maybe I’d have done better staying locked in my little house on the York ring road and ogling my next-door neighbour. It might lack the whole sleeping-with-a-famous-man thing, but it also lacked the glass-cut feet and suicide scenario.

Inside, the motel was blackened from the fire that had swept through from the diner. The outer walls looked sturdy enough, and no-one would have let me go in if the place was in danger of falling down, would they? Would they? Maybe Jack just saw it as a good way of getting rid of me, having fifty tonnes of motel land on my head. And why did I get the feeling that there was more to this than Gethryn being fired from the show and wanting revenge?

I found the stairs, and kept going up until, on the topmost corridor, I found the Fire Exit door standing open to a flight of rickety steps which led, when I followed them, to the roof. I arrived about fifty feet behind Gethryn, terrified to speak in case I startled him. He was still perched on the slightly raised edge of the flat roof, still holding a bottle, and still wearing most of Lucas James’s dress-uniform from last night’s ball.

‘Geth?’ I whispered. ‘What’s going on?’

He heard and turned his head. ‘Whoa, party time, bach.’ He stood up and spun round, giving me a few giddy moments when he swayed close to the edge, then came over and handed me the bottle. ‘Have a drink. Celebrate.’

‘Celebrate what?’

But he ignored me and pulled another bottle from behind what looked like a cooling duct. ‘So, has he told you?’

I was so thirsty I took a swig from the bottle he’d put in my hand. It was warm, but liquid was liquid. ‘What about?’

‘But why would he?’ Gethryn appeared to be conducting a one-man conversation and my input was being disregarded. ‘I mean, what are you to him, bach? Some tidy piece of skirt, ready to part your legs for the Iceman? What, hoping that you’re going to be the one to save him, to make him realise that he feels something for you?’ The bottle waved again, recklessly. ‘Dream on, girlie. You wouldn’t be the first one to go that way. Or the hundredth either. That man puts it into anything that’ll wriggle for him. Don’t you, Ice? What, you thought I wouldn’t see you? Told your little girlie to keep me talking, chat chat chat, give you a chance to creep around and come poppin’ up at me from nowhere, like some fucking Jack-in-a-box? Yeah, in a box, boy, where you belong.’

His voice raised in a sudden shout and I turned to see Jack up on the roof behind us. I was filled with sudden anger. How dare Gethryn assume how I felt about Jack?

‘Before you get carried away, Geth, Jack’s already told me about the drinking. And, so what? Plenty of people drink too much! He’s given up now,’ I indicated the bottle in Geth’s hand, ‘and maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if you followed his example.’

Gethryn started to laugh, blond eyebrows raised in comic surprise. ‘Wow, this one’s got it bad for you, man.’ He took a couple of steps back, away from me, towards the edge. ‘Better watch it. Don’t want another one on the pills after you dump her ass.’ Suddenly his accent sounded less Welsh, the vowels were flattening and the whole intonation had changed, as though he were mirroring Jack’s own speech to taunt him.

Jack stood rigid. He was still breathing hard from the four-storey ascent and his hands were so tightly fisted that his knuckles were blue. His whole body was rigid. ‘Don’t go there, Geth.’ Even his voice was tight, as though he was squeezing each word out of a constricted throat. ‘Just don’t.’

‘Oh, I dunno. Quite fancy picking up the pieces of this one when she finds out what you’re really like.’

There must have been a tiny bit of my old personality still lurking underneath the new me, because normally I would never have thought of behaving the way I suddenly did. I stalked across to Gethryn, slapped him hard across the face and said, ‘And don’t you assume that I’m some weak, pathetic little thing who’s going to collapse if a man doesn’t want to fall in love with her. I might have scars, but, you know something? When scars heal, what’s underneath is stronger.’

Gethryn started to laugh. He swayed backwards across the roof away from me and raised the bottle to me in a toast as he went. ‘Oh, so you’ve not told her about Suicide Sophie then?’ Lowering his voice in pretend confidentiality to me, ‘He had a girl, Skye. Bloody adored him, she did, but our Jack, our Iceman, oh, he can’t possibly love her can he? Not with him bein’ all cool and unemotional now, be letting the side down, wouldn’t it, Ice? So she ups and tries to top herself.’ Another huge swig. ‘And our Jack? Hardly even fucking blinks. That’s him, that’s the man you’ve got yourself all hot an’ bothered over.’

A quick glance showed me Jack had squeezed his eyes shut.

‘I don’t care.’ I surprised myself by having such a level tone. ‘Everyone has the chance to start again, Gethryn. Everyone.’

Geth laughed into the neck of the bottle. ‘Playing this one different, are you, writer-man?’

---