‘My God, you’re bolshy, aren’t you? Don’t know how Felix puts up with it.’ Jack half-smiled at me. ‘All right. If you’re sure. But take it easy.’
The car juddered as I tried to pull away in ‘Park’. I’d never driven an automatic before and I kept pulling at the non-existent gears when we started moving. Jack remained manfully silent while I swore and raged and used the anger to stopper the fear and prevent its escape. The car was too small for terror and the two of us. Finally I got the measure of it, practicalities meaning that I had to focus on driving, not my fear of driving, and we headed up the highway, cutting slowly through the dust and the heat. For some reason having Jack next to me calmed some of my more immediate nerves; his quiet presence had a reassuring air about it, despite his occasional muttered swearing. The little air-conditioning unit groaned and emitted high-pitched squeals at heart-stopping moments – it was like driving a television studio audience.
‘There.’ Jack suddenly grabbed my arm and I nearly drove off the road. ‘They just turned down that track.’
‘Are you sure?’ Everything was dust-coloured, even the sky, occasional little scrubby bushes beside the road, and one lone cow who watched us zigzag slowly past her, with sad, dust-coloured eyes.
‘Well, there could be more than one pink convertible out here but somehow I doubt it. Turn left, here.’
He reached across me and pulled the wheel so that the car swung out across the non-existent oncoming traffic and bumped onto the rutted side-road which led, apparently, nowhere. We jolted along it for about a quarter of a mile and then, in a dip, we found them.
I couldn’t go near. Couldn’t even drive past. I pulled up a hundred yards back and sat with the window down in case I was sick, watching Jack cautiously approaching the other car, which stood, with the roof up, at an angle to the roadway. Felix. Felix could be dead in there. Don’t be stupid, the car hasn’t hit anything, hasn’t rolled. It’s just standing there. No-one can be dead in a car that’s just parked …
A couple of minutes later Jack was back. He climbed back into the passenger seat without a word, slumped down with his head in his hands and gave a huge sigh.
‘Well? Is she okay? And Fe?’
‘Skye.’ Jack didn’t look up. ‘They are in that car, banging like rabbits. You want to go and ask him how he is, you be my guest, because I am not going to interrupt.’
We sat silently for a moment. ‘Are you all right?’ I asked eventually, when my eyes had grown tired of fixating on the slowly rocking pink car in front of us. ‘I know you said you and she weren’t … well, you know … any more but you did seem really worried about her.’
He stopped rubbing his hands through his hair and stared out too. ‘She’s my agent, she does all my paperwork and besides I … ah, never mind. So, yeah, I worry about her. Especially if she’s going to go off on one with the best part of a bottle of vodka inside her.’
We sat a while longer, watching the pink car, waves of heat coming off it in all directions. The rocking subsided, returned and then stopped.
‘We’d better wait, follow them back. Make sure nothing happens.’
‘Jack, there’s absolutely nothing on these roads apart from squashed … whatever those grey things are. She’s not going to hit anything bigger than a pebble.’
He gave me a hard stare. ‘But if she does? It’s not just Liss and Felix on the line here, Skye, it’s the whole reputation of the show. My show. Something I’ve pulled back from the brink, and there are journos out there all agog for the details, all wanting to poke around and find things out and pull us all down into their own particular version of hell, and it’s all I’ve fucking got, right now, so please don’t start telling me that everything will be fine, that it’s all okay, all right?’ A shaky hand pushed his hair away from his face and he looked down at the floor. ‘Sorry. I’m sorry, none of this is your fault; you’ve done nothing but try to help. I shouldn’t be such a miserable bastard to you.’ Then he surprised me by giving me a small, sheepish grin. ‘Should I?’
‘They’re moving,’ was all the response I could come up with. His shamefaced vulnerability gave me a curious, achy feeling.
We waited until Lissa and Felix had driven a large loop around us and regained the main road before we followed. They were driving at about fifteen miles an hour, we had to match speed, and so the slowest car-chase in the world began.
‘They’ll be sobering up around now.’ Jack had lit a cigarette and was puffing out of the window, letting the heat in but at least considerate enough not to force me to breathe his smoke. ‘Listen carefully and you might be able to hear the sounds of terrible embarrassment.’
‘Don’t tell me you’ve never had stupid drunken sex with someone you didn’t really fancy?’ I managed to tear my eyes away from the road for long enough to give him a thin grin. ‘You look like the type of guy …’
His eyes were sudden and black on me. ‘Do I?’ Smoke formed a veil between us. ‘Are you sure about that, Skye?’
It was suddenly hard to lift my eyes from the steering wheel. ‘I don’t know, do I? I know nothing about you at all, Jack. Even your Wiki page just has some sketchy stuff about you being born in Leeds and being a bit … reclusive.’
‘A bit reclusive. Yeah. You don’t get phrases like solipsistic intoxication psychosis on Wikipedia.’ Jack turned away and stared out of the window at the unfascinating landscape beyond. ‘And I have no idea why I’m talking to you about it.’
‘Because I’m here?’
He turned back, his eyes immense. His gaze moved over my face, slowly, not lingering on the scar as people usually did but travelling from my eyes to my mouth and back up again. ‘Yeah,’ he said, and his voice was a bit croaky. ‘Yeah, that’ll be it.’
Silence fell, broken only by my occasional swearing, as we inched along behind Felix and Lissa, with our engine complaining at the slow speed all the way. If Lissa’s tyres had had markers on they would have described a series of 33s, as the car covered almost the entire road’s surface in its attempts to go straight. At last we both reached the motel car park and the pink car slewed into two-and-a-half spaces, parked at an angle. The driver’s door flew open and Lissa stuck her head out to puke on the gravel.
‘She’s not much of an advert for recreational alcohol abuse, is she?’ Jack stayed sitting beside me, despite the fact that the little car was now as airless and hot as a bread oven. Felix clambered out and grabbed Lissa by the arm. He waited, like a prison warder, while she locked the car door – taking several stabs to hit the right button – and then half-dragged her towards the motel. Lissa had one hand over her eyes and vomit on her skirt but that was normal for Felix’s girlfriends.
‘Skye.’ Jack put a hand on my arm to prevent me from opening my door. ‘Can I just … you’re interested in Gethryn, aren’t you?’
I was so relieved that the driving was over I had a system throbbing with endorphins. ‘Well, I’m female, I’ve got a pulse.’ My eyes followed Felix and Lissa, hoping that he wasn’t going to take her to our room, as I was looking forward to a shower and a change of clothes, and a drunken Lissa wasn’t my first choice of bathroom accessories.
‘He looks like he’s got his eye on you.’
My heart did a little swipe around my chest. Gethryn fancied me! Me, little Skye Threppel from Nowhereville, with her scarred face and aborted acting career and her scuzzy hair. Me! ‘Does he?’ I asked, trying to sound cool but remembering the soft touch of Gethryn’s fingers on mine last night, the way his leonine eyes had held my stare. ‘Gosh. Did you put in a word for me?’
‘Me? Quite the reverse. Look, Skye, Gethryn’s got … problems. What you see on screen, it’s not him.’
‘It’s all right, Jack, I might have some brain damage but I can still separate fantasy from reality just like everyone else.’
‘And it’s Luc
as James that you want, isn’t it? I mean, you don’t know Gethryn at all, would you normally contemplate … whatever it is that you’re contemplating, with a man you don’t know?’
Now I turned to look at him. He had very dark eyes, I noticed for the first time, almost black, and his hair snagged on the uneven stubble which peppered his cheeks. ‘You don’t know what I’m contemplating.’
‘Okay, tell me it’s a Scrabble match.’ Jack leaned in closer and put his hands on my shoulders. I could see my reflection in his eyes. ‘I just don’t think that someone like you should be anywhere near Gethryn at the moment, that’s all.’
I screwed my eyes up. Why the hell should he care? ‘“Someone like me”? What’s that supposed to mean? What do you think I’m like, then? And who died and made you Freud?’
‘I’m a writer. It kind of goes with the territory that we understand people, and I’m good at getting inside people’s heads, at least I think I am. And I think you’re too fragile for Gethryn.’
My eyes were dragged away from him, back to the accident-waiting-to-happen which was Lissa and Felix at the front of the motel. They appeared to be having a very shouty argument. ‘Are you calling me pathetic?’
‘No! Not at all. It’s more that you’ve been damaged so badly the last thing you need is some bloke with issues getting his hands on you.’
‘Look.’ This time he didn’t try to stop me opening the car door. ‘I might have been injured but I’m over it. I’m learning to cope with the memory loss, I’m even getting over the whole stress panic attack thing, and if Gethryn wants – well, anything with me, then I can use my own judgement about the situation. I’m twenty-nine, Jack, and I didn’t get to be twenty-nine by not having any critical faculties, you know.’
His head turned. Hell-black eyes moved over my face, lingering on the scar this time. ‘I’m sure you didn’t. I just think that they might be overridden sometimes.’ A slow, almost reluctant hand caught my chin and turned my face towards his. ‘It’s when you think you’re okay, when you think you’re doing well; that’s when life can rise up and shake you by the throat, you know that?’
I could see his eyelashes, the tiny fragments of green that lifted the colour of his eyes. I could smell the recent smoke on his skin, feel his fingers on my jawbone. I sat there, rigid, not knowing what was coming, or even what I wanted to come; there was something very powerful about Jack Whitaker in that second. As though his words were aimed at me but contained something of himself, something he wanted me to know.
‘Still. None of my business, eh?’ His voice was suddenly flat, the northern vowels dropping like stones and he released his grip on my face. ‘Guess I’ll see you at the Q and A tonight?’
‘What’s the Q and A about?’ My voice was slightly shaky as the sudden change of subject left me winded.
‘Everyone’s chance to ask anything they want about the making of the show. Strictly back-room stuff. I’m on the panel with make-up and costume people. Wouldn’t have done it, wouldn’t even be here, but the writer who likes to turn out for these things has just had a baby. She was booked to come but the baby was premature and the network bosses thought it was time I put my face out in front of people; therefore, well, here I am.’
‘Juliette Coles. She had a little boy three weeks ago.’ I couldn’t help myself. It was a kind of hangover from the quiz.
‘Yeah. Sorry, forgot that I was talking to the Fallen Skies Brain of Britain.’ He flipped the door open and unfolded himself into the air, then bent to look at me through the window. ‘Want to take bets on how many times I get asked where I get my ideas from?’ He leaned a little closer. ‘Want to take bets on how many people ask me what Gethryn’s really like?’ A stretch of his lanky body as though his back was hurting him. ‘Want to take bets on what I say?’
The silence went on for a few seconds longer than was comfortable. I didn’t want to get out of the car with him standing there. The hugeness of the world, the indefinite boundaries, the uncontainedness of it, all were suddenly nothing compared to the scary closeness of the man leaning against the car. I found my fingers were moving without my permission, picking and twisting around each other, snakelike. Scar to scar.
Without another word Jack walked off, heading not towards the motel but out into the grilling heat. His head was bent and his shoulders forward, hands deep into the back pockets of his jeans, drawing attention to the perfect nature of his backside. I didn’t know whether he knew I was looking or not.
I let out a breath, then another. There was relief in feeling the air flood out of me, taking a little more tension with it every time. Sweat was rolling between my shoulder blades and pooling in the small of my back; I felt itchy and hot. And annoyed with Jack, and the annoyance managed to push me out of the car when the heat couldn’t; into the motel and up to the room with the lure of a cool shower.
Chapter Fourteen
Jack ignored the sun burning a tattoo on the top of his head through his hair. Ignored the heat eating up through the soles of his tatty trainers, ignored everything physical. Walked and let his mind run free, let the ideas and scenarios play themselves out on the screen behind his eyes. Not for the first time he found himself thinking about home, not the apartment in LA but real home. The farm on the moors, the acres of rain, the sound of water racing. His head spun with the urge to go back. Go home. Is it really that simple? Just … leave here and go back? Leave all this fame and fortune shit way behind and go back to the quiet life? And why do I even want to? But he knew why. It was all because of Skye. Skye who reminded him that life could be simple and calm, that it didn’t have to contain these high-octane, high maintenance lifestyles. A scarred girl with a gentle smile, who hated the manic and the overblown – everything that his life had become.
But Skye wanted Gethryn. She believed she knew him, understood him, although all she really knew were the words that Jack had given him. Which meant all she really wanted was the body. Which, Jack had to admit, was pretty spectacular. He’d seen Geth striding about in the buff more times than he cared to remember and he knew it was the kind of muscular, toned thing that the girls went for. A butt like two footballs and a six-pack you could have got a tune out of if you’d hit it with a stick.
Not like me. For the first time in a very long while Jack wished he’d inherited his da’s ability to talk to women, not just his spare frame and a way with words. Really talk, about the things that meant something, the things that hurt and the things that healed. The ability to have a relationship that didn’t just skate along the icy surface, but smashed it and explored the depths beneath. Or even to have that twinkle that had so enthralled his mum, kept her giggly and girlish until the day she died. He’d got none of it. And now, for the first time, it mattered.
He’ll ruin her. He’ll take that lovely naivety and strip it back until she’s chilly and hard. He’ll play on her insecurities, make her feel worthless and unlovable, he’ll take her to bed and … Jack stopped suddenly. Am I jealous? Is that it? He played the thought of Skye touching Gethryn, stopped and rewound it, let it play out again, but every time it got as far as her taking her clothes off Gethryn would disappear and be replaced by a shadowy figure and the POV would switch until he was watching her strip through his own eyes. So. It’s not that I want to save her. I want her to want me.
He pushed his hands into his pockets to distract himself from the loop, which now had Skye tugging off the last of her clothes with an inviting smile, and shook his head. Knowing now that it wasn’t saving Skye that was really on his mind, that keeping her from Geth wasn’t about preventing a tragedy. This was all about saving himself. Jack Whitaker, the heartless, the emotionally invincible, was actually beginning to feel something. And it hurt.
Chapter Fifteen
Doused and damp, I lay on the bed, thinking about Jack.
Well, less thinking and more wonderin
g. Why was he so … so … cut off? I’d always expected the crew of Fallen Skies to be a rollicking bunch, full of in-jokes and private feuds, a tight-knit group who worked hard together for months on end. And, the others were. Felix had told me they crowded into the bar at night with the punters, joking and punching shoulders and telling elaborate stories about set-ups and on-screen mistakes.
But not Jack. I’d hardly seen him speak to a soul, apart from Gethryn and Lissa. Except for this Q and A panel he didn’t seem to mix with the others, neither actors nor crew; he just sat in his room and typed on his laptop rather than carouse and party the night away. All the magazine articles I’d read about Fallen Skies had the show-runner down as a loner; lured away from writing his best-selling sci-fi series of novels by the network’s head honcho to work on the now-defunct Two Turns North, then going on to mastermind his own show. So why did he come across as someone who kept himself a deliberate outsider? Why not enjoy his position, even exploit it a little? Why did he behave as though he was somehow ashamed of being successful? And why, in the name of all that was fashionable, did he go practically everywhere barefoot and put anything which even slightly resembled a cigarette into his mouth?
But he’s more than just a little bit cute, too, eh Skye? All those moody looks, those eyes like something out of a Poe novel … come on, admit it to yourself, you quite fancy that serious thing he’s got going on, don’t you?
Michael had been reckless, apparently. Hell bent on success, on living life fast and long. Never sleeping while there was mischief to be made. That was my type of man, the fun-grabbing madcap sort, not the shy, retiring type. Previous boyfriends had all verged on the illegally wild side, or at least the ones I could remember had. Maybe my tastes had changed? Or maybe I had … I rubbed the rough edges of my fingertips over my scar again and shook my head, troubled by the feeling that my life had become one huge stammer, disconnected ends that never met, a dotted line. Those gaps, they contained all the things that made me me, and I couldn’t get them to join up, as hard as I tried.
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