‘Yes, you would. And yes, I’m really okay with it. I’d half-hoped for the dinner with Gethryn …’
‘I knew it! I fucking knew it!’ Felix jumped up, but didn’t look annoyed. ‘I said to Jack that I reckoned you’d try and throw it, just to get a date with your Welshman. I told him last night. Just the sort of thing you’d do.’
‘It’s okay, I’d changed my mind. Not even sure I’m going to go to the fancy dress ball, to be honest.’ I tried not to think about those searching fingers, the mouth that wouldn’t give me space to breathe, that insistence …
‘So, you’ve gone off the luscious Gethryn, have you? What, switched allegiance to Mr Dark and Mysterious? That was quick and, if I may say so, rather shallow of you.’
A quick pang of shame speared me. Eighteen months. For eighteen months I’d lusted after Gethryn, so yes, Felix was right, superficially I was being petty and two-faced. ‘It was …’ But I couldn’t do it. Couldn’t even bring myself to mention letting Gethryn kiss me and then chickening out because he got a bit forceful about it. ‘Gethryn is a star. There’s millions of women clustering around him, he doesn’t really want me and my scars, he was just being …’ What? Nice? ‘I don’t know about Jack. He’s not very forthcoming.’
‘Maybe he’s shy.’
‘Maybe I’m not his type. Maybe he’s not mine.’ I stared at Felix for a moment. ‘Was Michael my type?’
Felix turned his head away, running his hands through his hair until it spiked up in random peaks. His shoulders hunched forward. ‘You’ve seen the photos.’
‘Yes, but I want to know. Not just album loads of shots of faces I can’t remember, but to know about who I am, do you see, Fe? A year’s worth of memory loss is one hell of a lot of things just gone “poof”.’
‘Existential angst. It’s a bastard.’ Fe kept his head turned away but his tone was light. ‘You know who you are, Skye, you know what you’re like. Why does that year matter so much?’
I stared at his back. ‘Shouldn’t it?’
He turned around then and his face had changed. He looked older, that childish playfulness had gone and been replaced by a pulled-down, almost feral, expression and his yellow-diamond eyes were chilly. ‘Yeah. You could be right.’ Even his voice was different, deeper and hoarser. ‘Maybe we should talk about that.’
His intensity scared me. It meant there was something to know, something I didn’t suspect and had never seen, despite all those endless frames I’d scoured through, still desperately hoping that some memory had been left to me. ‘Is it … is it something I should tell Jack?’
There was a momentary wavering, as though Felix hovered between breaking down or running away, but his mood settled out at manic once again. ‘Hey, you’re very concerned about him all of a sudden! Just how far have you got with Mr Moody Stare Whitaker? How many bases have you collectively touched? And no lying to your uncle Felix, because he’ll know.’
‘He held my hand. Patted my back when I threw up.’
Felix affected disgusted disbelief. ‘And that’s all? Darling, the guy is burning for you, his loins throb in your direction, and you’re telling me that all you’ve done is a little maiden-aunting?’
I lifted the edge of my T-shirt to where the scars criss-crossing my body began. ‘How do you think he’d react to this, if we got any further?’
Fe raised his eyebrows. ‘But I reckon, if he really likes you, why should he worry? It’s only a bit of scarring, like your face. Doesn’t stop you doing the dirty, does it?’
‘It affects who I am.’ I dropped the shirt and stood up. ‘The accident made me into a different person, Fe.’
A pause. He cleared his throat and drew down his eyebrows until they nearly touched his lashes. I wondered what he was going to say. ‘Yeah, I know,’ he said softly. ‘I know.’
My heart slid and skidded in my chest. What was going on?
Chapter Seventeen
Jack forced himself to smile. It wasn’t natural, this level of hero-worship. He was just a writer. He had ideas and wrote them down; it wasn’t like he turned those words into actions, or directed the show or anything. He was just the ideas-man and this constant call for his attention felt wrong.
‘Jay! Jay, over here!’ Another girl, jumping up and down and waving an arm to catch his eye. ‘Will you sign this?’
‘Sure.’ Slipping into his writerly persona, approachable but withdrawn, he pushed the glasses up tight to his eyes like a mask. ‘Who to?’
‘Candy.’ Breasts jostled his arm as she bent low beside him. He tried to smile again.
‘Lovely name.’
‘Yeah. I’m gonna break into writing, y’know. Next year, when I finish college.’
Jack scribbled his name. ‘Good luck with that,’ he muttered, knowing he sounded sarcastic. Inside he was aching in a way he hadn’t for a decade, hating himself for the performance he was putting on. Hating who he was, what he was, just about everything about himself.
‘Yeah. Perhaps you could, y’know, give me some tips?’
He looked up at her face now. Tight pink lips in a knowing smile, perfect teeth, perfect skin. Perfect hair, loose and blonde across narrow shoulders, swinging aside now and again to show glimpses of a bustier top and hints of a bra strap. He should be turned on, he knew that. Should be wriggling in his seat, adjusting himself under the table, so as not to let his body’s eagerness show. But all he could think of was Skye and the look in her eyes when she’d asked if she could help him. Even without knowing what he’d done, what he might need help with, she’d cared enough to offer. More than Lissa ever had. More than anyone ever had, come to that. All they saw were the scars, the superficial damage to his body. Skye had been the first one to look underneath, to see that so much more had been ripped apart than skin and flesh; the first one to see how cut up his soul was. Maybe it was because she had suffered too, or maybe it was just an innate desire to reach out and heal, he didn’t know.
‘You going to the ball, Jay?’
It took him a second to pull back, to realise that the girl, Candy, was still talking to him. ‘Maybe.’
‘I’ll see you there then.’ A knowing wink. ‘I’m going as a Thulos. You can’t get a lot of underwear under that costume, know what I’m saying, Jay?’ The breast nudged his arm again and this time he was slightly relieved to feel himself stiffening. At least his autonomic nervous system was still on-line, whatever else might have packed up.
‘Maybe,’ he repeated, and watched Candy slither off into the crowd, giving him a tiny wave over her shoulder as she went. Well, if Skye doesn’t want me … he thought. At least I’ll get a dance.
Chapter Eighteen
The velvet clung to me like a removable pelt. Its dark crimson shone against my skin, making my features glow and my hair look a deep, untouchable colour. As I clasped the wristbands around my arms and the collar around my neck, I felt very alien.
‘Wow. No, really. Wow.’ Felix stood back to let me out of the bathroom. ‘That is incredible.’
The Dowager Queen of Skeldar, in all her glory. Or, at least, me in her clothes. Of all the outfits that Jack had sent up, this one revealed the least skin and also gave me a borrowed dignity. The headpiece pulled my hair back from my face, which had given me a few moments of uncertainty until Fe assured me that the scar was mostly covered by the dangling fake-jewels. I had to lace the bodice quite tightly to make the floor-length dress fit my body perfectly, although the shoes supplied with it were too high and slightly too big; the actress who wore it was a shoe size and a dress size larger than I was, but, on the plus side, the heels made me walk more regally.
‘Does make you look a bit like a Christmas tree, but apart from that …’
I aimed my Shadow rifle at him. ‘Shut up. Better a Christmas tree than a pimp.’ Felix had begged a costume,
and was, in consequence, wearing the get-up of a Shadow Planet refugee, mock-fur coat with big Ugg-type boots and Ray-Bans against the solar glare. ‘You look like you’re trying to break into rap music.’
‘I am going to boil.’ Fe waved his arms up and down to create a draught. ‘How does anyone manage to wear this on a film set?’
‘The wardrobe girl told me, when she brought the costumes up, that these are for publicity shots. On set they have to wear stuff they can actually walk in without sweating like carthorses.’
‘Figures.’ He reached inside his furs and flapped his T-shirt. ‘So, I guess dirty dancing is out?’
‘Dirty anything. We have to hand these back after the ball, undamaged and unstained. I promised. And, since it looks like anything involving you also involves stains …’
Felix looked at me, eyes shining. ‘I can’t believe I’m going to be doing this for real come next January,’ he whispered. ‘Fallen Skies. You are such a clever girl, Skye.’
‘Yeah.’ I didn’t feel clever. But then, neither did I feel the sense of dread at attending a gathering of fans which had so paralysed me only a couple of days ago. I wasn’t going to be the life and soul of the party, but I could face walking into a room full of people, and the thought of going home to my little terrace in York now filled me with warmth, not the urge to board the next plane back. ‘You were pretty clever too, Fe, getting me out here. Forcing me to face up to things.’
Felix had his back to me. ‘You think you’ve faced up to things?’ His voice sounded odd. A bit choked.
‘Not so much faced-up to, but more … I dunno, worked through, perhaps. I was thinking, all those panic attacks that they kept telling me were “stress related”, maybe they weren’t. Perhaps the doctors got it wrong. I’m starting to think that they were all symptoms of depression.’ Yeah, Skye, you miserable cow.
‘You think you were depressed.’ Not a question, I noticed, and an odd stress on the words.
‘Maybe not, not proper clinical depression but … I wasn’t very well. So maybe you forcing me to come here kind of kicked me out of a destructive sort of slump. Made me realise that there is more to life.’
‘And, play your cards right, you could get to take home the biggest trophy of all. Mr Whitaker clearly can’t wait to have you back on home soil, and I use the term having you in all its possible contexts.’
‘Jack … I like Jack.’ I adjusted the lie of the skirt. It raked across my hips to fall behind me in a heavy train, body-tight in the front and yet fluidly generous behind. ‘I just don’t think he’s interested in me like that. And, anyway, I don’t want to jump in and replace Michael.’
‘Don’t you?’ Felix’s voice was oddly high-pitched.
‘Michael was my fiancé. We were going to get married. I can’t just up and start … well, anything with someone else after only eighteen months, it’s not right.’
Felix turned and the expression on his face looked misplaced, as though he’d stuck it on the front of his head to cover his real feelings. ‘There’s always Gethryn.’ He gave a grin which also looked out of place.
‘That was more of a crush than anything real.’
I waited for Felix to disagree but, disappointingly, he didn’t. Instead he sighed and began to strip, until he’d pulled off the coat and boots and was left in his T-shirt and jeans. He poked his feet back into his shoes but kept on the glasses. ‘Right. Now I’m going downstairs, get stuck into the Jack Daniels. I’ll see you there.’
‘Glasses?’
He paused a moment. ‘Reckon they make me look mysterious, don’t you think, darling? I’ll keep them on.’
I sat on the edge of the bed, appreciating the costume. The weight of it hung from my shoulders and stiffened my spine; it swept along the floor with a delicious sound and, as a bonus feature, it made my boobs look pertly luscious. For the first time I knew why so many women have a Cinderella complex. ‘See you later, Fe.’
The door closed on his smug expression. Tonight I was going to relax. Gear myself up for tomorrow. Decide whether to take Jack up on his offer of an escort to the ball.
And what was stopping me? Was it really loyalty to Michael? According to Fe my relationship with Michael had been high-octane and frantic. He could never have been accused of intensity or moodiness, only of a desire to live life as fast and as frenetically as possible, dragging me along with him in his rocket-fuelled search for the bigger, the better, the most superlative.
Or was it Jack himself? He was so self-contained, there was something very shut-in about him. He laughed and smiled but all the time I felt there was something else going on behind it all, something he kept tightly confined. Some emotion that he didn’t want spotted. And, to be honest with myself, I was afraid. That year of memory loss and the fuzzing-out of preceding years had affected me more deeply than I’d ever thought it could. If I couldn’t remember even my own fiancé, could I even remember who I was? And if I couldn’t remember that, then how did I know how to be with someone else? How did I know who to be? And what was it that Felix knew?
Even so. It was a ball, a fancy dress ball, not an arranged marriage. And I’d look such a dork walking in on my own in this frock-of-frocks. And Jack was undeniably attractive …
The phone rang and made me jump. Horribly cautiously – who knew where I was? – I picked it up. ‘Skye Threppel, right?’ said the voice on the other end. ‘Do you have a costume picked out for tomorrow?’
I didn’t recognise the voice. Pure American, pure business. ‘I’m just trying it on.’
‘Great. My name’s Erlon, I run The Shadow Planet.’
‘Oh,’ I said, disconcerted. ‘That had better be the online fanzine, because otherwise you ought to get help.’ In the series the Shadow Planet was run by the Skeel, and Erlon was most definitely not a Skeel name.
A laugh. ‘Yeah. I wonder if I could get a couple shots of you and Gethryn in your outfits? No use trying to do it tomorrow, when everyone will be getting in on the act, so I figured, tonight’s my chance. I spoke with Geth earlier, he says to meet him in his trailer at twenty after seven, then I’ll get some pictures of the two of you. Post ’em on the ’zine.’
‘I suppose so.’ I fingered the skirt, feeling the softness. ‘Yes. Okay.’ Erlon would be there, I wouldn’t be left alone with Gethryn and it would be nice to be able to talk to him, to indulge my crush without alcohol intruding and blurring his actions into borderline harassment. To establish that he was a decent human being, and that what had happened out in that car park had been the result of overexcitement and unwise come-ons on my part. Besides, he was hardly going to tear all my clothes off in front of other people, was he?
It was already ten past seven, so I decided to leave immediately. For one thing, in these heels it would probably take me ages to get down to Gethryn’s Winnebago, and for another, I didn’t dare do anything whilst wearing the dress in case I ended up in another embarrassing situation from which Mr Whitaker had to rescue me. In fact I’d ruled out doing anything at all, apart from standing very still and never going to the toilet.
I adjusted my cleavage, hitched up the train and set off down the back stairs. Part way down I had to stop and haul the skirts up over my arm until it looked as though I was carrying a very heavy set of curtains. This outfit was definitely made to be seen, which was ego-boostingly reassuring, and was surprisingly comfortable to walk in, but it did spend a lot of time trying to escape off me. The weight of the velvet train almost pulled it from my shoulders, and it was only the laced-up bodice which kept my boobs from being further uncovered with every step. The whole dress swayed sensuously and rhythmically whilst trying to reveal my body a little bit at a time, as though it was a kind of mobile strip-club. I tottered down the last few stairs and arrived at the side door leading directly out onto the yard, fabric cascading around me but at least managing to prevent pub
lic indecency. A couple headed past me into the motel and did a double-take but I kept on walking, head straight, eyes forward. No-one else was about. Everyone was still too busy getting things signed, putting the final touches to their costumes, or mixing it in the bar, at least, that was what I was banking on.
I wafted around the outside of the motel until I reached the Winnebago, whirling through the dust in my draperies like a soft furnishings removal business. About a hundred yards away from the van two men in Security vests were sitting in collapsible chairs under a sunshade, watching a small TV screen. They both looked pretty fed up, arms folded, wearing Day-Glo jackets and sullen expressions, despite the hearty laughter track from the TV. I wondered about saying something to them, giving some kind of excuse for being there, but since neither of them acknowledged my passing, and neither looked as if they were up for taking a bullet for Gethryn, I didn’t bother. However, outside the van a harassed-looking girl wearing a headpiece on top of punishingly short hair and carrying a clipboard stopped me.
‘Is Mr Tudor-Morgan expecting you?’
But then she had a call on the mobile clipped to her belt and headed off away from me to answer it. I was really not about to stand around sweating in velvet, so I tiptoed up the steps and tapped on the metal door. ‘Gethryn? It’s Skye.’
There was no answer. I knocked again, harder. Then I tried the handle and the door swung outwards, nearly knocking me down. There was no outraged shout so I walked in.
The door led into an enormous living area with sofas and a central table, which gave onto a kitchen bigger than the one in my house. It contained a vast refrigerator, a microwave you could have stabled a horse in and enough leather seating for about fifty people, but no visible sink or way of preparing anything more than TV dinners. There was no-one else about.
‘Hello,’ I called as I stared. ‘I’ve come for the photoshoot.’
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