‘You’re in your pyjamas.’
‘And you smell of boiled fruit, but we can still make an entrance, can’t we?’
It was, indeed, an entrance. I hadn’t realised, but most people were already in the diner and our arrival coincided with a pause between tracks that the band had been playing, accompanied by images from the show projected onto the long back wall. We walked in to chatting, which died away, to be replaced by a round of applause.
I was holding my breath.
‘You okay?’ Jack murmured to me, over the clapping. ‘Sure?’
I let my breath out in a little gasp and nodded. Jack’s hold on my arm increased, pulling me hard up against his body. He smelled clean, of ironed linen and coconut shampoo, not a trace of smoke about him, so he must, I reasoned, be fairly relaxed. Which was good, one nervous wreck per couple was quite enough. ‘Hey,’ he whispered in my ear, ‘let’s find out if I was lying, shall we?’
With one arm still around me he moved out onto the dance floor which was a posh name for the space surrounding the band, who were playing in a corner of the diner and consisted of two scruffy guitarists, a sweaty drummer and a keyboard player with only one arm. Jack stepped, faultlessly, into the rhythm of the music. He put both hands on my waist until we swayed in unison to the indie rock track, grinning at me as he did so. ‘You can dance,’ I said into his ear as the music drove us closer together. ‘You’re pretty good, for a miserable git.’
‘Yep.’ He stepped around me, sliding his body around mine, with maximum contact, until the velvet of my skirt wound across his skinny hips and drew us even closer. He moved like a snake and actually seemed to be enjoying himself, for once. ‘Love dancing. Always have.’
‘All right.’ The band took the tempo up, driving into a Green Day cover. ‘Let’s see how good you really are.’
I lost myself in the music, in the proximity of Jack’s whirling body, in the occasional close moments when he pressed his hot skin against mine and whispered, ‘Had enough yet?’
‘Not while you’re still standing, Whitaker,’ I whispered back, and he laughed and threw himself back into the beat.
At last the band took a break and, panting and giggling, Jack and I left the floor. His face had softened; without the lines of stress he usually carried he was more than just good-looking, he was quite breathtaking. Little shivers of enjoyment rippled the surface of my skin. ‘Hey, you go and sit over there. I’ll get us both a drink.’
I perched on a chair just inside the doors which were open to the yard, in the way of the cooling breeze, and admired the costumes on display. I couldn’t see Felix, but there were a lot of Shadow Planet refugees dotted around the room; in their furs and dark glasses they were interchangeable and any one of them could have been him, although I would have taken bets on him being the one weaving furiously closer to the bar which had been erected behind the usual food-counter. A number of beautiful girls wearing pilot costumes were clustering around a sober-looking Gethryn, who, to my relief, hadn’t even acknowledged my presence, the Thulos telepaths moved ethereally in character through the crowd and over near the door to the reception area I saw the two lads dressed as the alien Skeel race that I’d noticed before, weighted nearly double by the cylinders on their backs and I wondered how they’d managed to get those through the doors.
For a while I sat, legs stretched out, and watched the rise and fall of groupings. Everyone seemed automatically drawn to those wearing similar costumes, so the crowd rapidly clotted into sets of B’Ha, Shadow Planet residents, Thulos and pilots, with the alien races forming a separate sub-set on the other side of the room. Two token Klingons and a solitary person inside an inflatable Dalek suit free-floated for a while then latched onto each other and were drawn into the rest of the aliens. Everyone seemed happy, relaxed.
I could see Jack across the room, talking to Jared, who was wearing his full regalia as Prince of Skeldar. They saw me watching. Jared raised his glass and Jack winked, flicking back his sweat-dampened hair, and I smiled back, the smile dying a little when a young man approached me. He was cropped-headed and massively stubbled, as though his hair grew in a consistent ring around his whole skull, and was wearing a crew T-shirt, jeans and an earpiece. ‘Hi,’ he said in a business-like way. ‘You’re Skye Threppel, right?’ He came and stood in front of me, blocking my view of the diner. ‘We need to have a conversation.’
‘Why, are you trying to avoid someone?’ I looked up at him, unwilling to stand up and risk spiking him on the unfamiliar heels.
‘I mean, we need to talk with you.’
‘Who’s we?’
‘Just come with me please.’ He touched a walkie-talkie device at his belt and spoke into a headset. ‘Yeah, she’s with me. I’m bringing her in now.’
‘What? Bringing me in where?’
‘Please. Just come with me.’ He reached out a burly arm which, I was slightly comforted to see, bore a tattoo of a Shadow Ship, and hauled me to my feet, where I tottered for a second until I got my balance.
‘Brandon? What’s up?’ Jack arrived back at my side and pushed a bottle of chilled water into my hand. ‘What do you want with Skye?’
‘Hello, Mr Whitaker.’ Was it my imagination or did this official guy look a bit shame-faced? ‘Maybe you better come along too.’
‘Where?’ Jack took his glasses off and hooked them back into his shirt. His eyes had gone chilly. ‘What’s this about?’
‘I’ve been told to bring Miss Threppel to the office. They’ll explain there.’
The three of us walked from the diner. Jack led the way and I followed the security guy, who wove through the crowd as though no-one in the world existed apart from him. I saw a few glances thrown at us, a couple of conversations interrupted to watch us pass through the room, one pilot nudged another and one of the Skeel half-raised his tinted visor. It all made me very uncomfortable, and I was glad when we’d reached the reception area again.
‘This way.’
Again, with Jack leading, I was waved through, past the reception desk and into the back offices of the motel, through a small room with a telephone and a TV showing a Fawlty Towers episode, into a tiny square room with only one high window. It was a little bit like a cell, even down to the concrete floor, although it had several plastic chairs and a cast-off looking table sitting directly in the middle. On one of the chairs, elbows on the table, sat a man I’d seen around the place all week. He too wore a crew T-shirt but was older than most of the backstage guys. His hair was a cropped salt-and-pepper mix, but his jaw was square and his face uncompromisingly good-looking. He looked as though he’d walked out of Law and Order.
‘Hey, Jay.’ He stood up to shake Jack’s hand. Didn’t offer to shake mine.
‘Hi, Gary. What’s going on?’ Jack turned around and I shuffled up closer to him. Although Brandon had gone to stand over near the door, he was still too present for my liking. ‘This is all a bit formal, isn’t it?’
He looked over at the little fold-up table and I saw his eyebrows lift. On the table sat my quiz answer sheet. I recognised the crossed out answer to the name of Defries’s mother, where I’d scratched out the right answer and replaced it with Mary in order to throw first prize. Were they going to accuse me of that? But it hadn’t worked, had it?
‘Kinda has to be formal, I’m afraid.’ Gary had a gruff voice, again straight out of Central Casting. ‘Some serious accusations have been made.’
I made a little squeaky sound and Jack looked at me sharply. ‘Gethryn?’
Gary smiled. ‘No.’
Jack closed his eyes in a long blink. ‘Okay, what then?’
Gary turned to me. ‘You’re Skye Threppel?’
‘Yes, I’m Skye.’
‘And you won our quiz.’ It wasn’t a question. He picked up my answers and flipped through the papers. ‘Mind telling m
e how you did that?’
My fingers found each other and twiddled in front of me, fingertips tracing scars. ‘I answered more questions right than anyone else.’
‘Smart lady, eh?’ Gary stood up and I was reassured to see that he was only a couple of inches taller than me. Brandon, the burly man with the tattoo who’d fetched me away from the party, wasn’t much taller. Neither of them was physically overwhelming, but I began to feel a little bit intimidated.
‘You asked.’
‘There’s one question here … “Name the pilot who fired the first shot in the Shadow War”.’ Again, not framed as a question, but it sounded as though he wanted an answer.
‘Jevan Klye.’ I couldn’t help myself. ‘Piloting the Shadow Ship D’Veen.’
‘That’s the answer you gave here.’
‘Because it’s the right answer.’
‘And how did you know that, Miss Threppel?’ He ran both hands over his streaked hair, looking tired.
I put my water bottle down on the table, very carefully. ‘Because I watched the episode.’ Lots of times, actually. It had been a very early episode in Series One, but hadn’t been released on DVD because of some kind of copyright issues. I’d burned it to DVD myself, via my laptop, but I wasn’t going to admit that in case it was against the law.
‘Look, Gary …’ Jack began, but was stopped with a raised hand.
‘Please, Jay, let her go on.’
‘Well, that’s it really. I knew the answer.’
‘How about here?’ Gary pointed at my changed answer. ‘How come you altered this?’
‘I …’
‘It wasn’t, how shall I say this, because Mr Whitaker here fed you the answers before you even sat down to the quiz and you didn’t want to arouse suspicion by getting too many right?’
Jack made a startled noise.
‘What? Jack? Why on earth would he do that?’ I looked across at him and Jack was looking back at me, his expression as baffled as I’m sure mine was.
‘You tell me, Miss Threppel. You tell me.’ Gary sat down again. There was a long pause, during which I ran through every conversation Jack and I had had in case he might have given me some clue as to what the quiz contained. ‘You see, we’ve had a lot of complaints.’
‘About what?’ I wasn’t sure whether to feel indignant or not, yet.
‘There have been concerns expressed about the fairness of allowing you to participate in what is a very important part of the Fallen Skies convention when you have had a … err … relationship with the main writer.’
‘Oh, come on!’ Jack was bristling. ‘Skye and I have had no kind of relationship.’
‘Okay, you deny that she’s been in your motel room on several occasions?’
‘Well, no.’
‘But that was all just … stuff!’ I protested. ‘Personal stuff.’
‘Yeah.’ Jack put a hand on my shoulder; I leaned into him for solidarity. ‘We’re friends. That’s all, Gary. We never met before Wednesday.’
‘Right. But even if that were true, we’ve got people saying …’ Gary consulted another piece of paper, ‘that Miss Threppel conducted a meeting with Mr Tudor-Morgan in the car park of this motel, where you sat, and I quote, “in physical proximity” for several minutes?’
‘But that was after the quiz!’
‘So you don’t deny that. What about an unauthorised attempt to access Fallen Skies material from Jay’s laptop? You know anything about that?’
I opened my mouth and closed it again. Bloody Felix and his trying to look for information! There was a sick feeling starting at the base of my throat.
‘All right. Do you deny that you went to Mr Tudor-Morgan’s accommodation yesterday, that you let yourself in, and that some minutes later you were alone with him in the bathroom?’
‘He was in the shower. I wasn’t.’ I sounded sulky but really it was just me trying to avoid hyperventilating. This was a set up.
‘Have you, or have you not, ever been – now how shall I put this so as not to cause offence? – naked, or partly naked with Mr Tudor-Morgan or Mr Whitaker and have you ever kissed, touched intimately or had sexual congress with Mr Tudor-Morgan or Mr Whitaker, delete where applicable.’
I frowned. ‘No! Delete where applicable?’
‘Sorry. It’s a standard lawyers’ form.’ Gary rubbed his eyes and the man leaning on the wall with his arms folded, shifted position, as though both of them were embarrassed by this. ‘Y’see Skye,’ he leaned forward and the table rocked, ‘it’s not about what you’ve done, or haven’t done. It’s the fact that you could have. There’s a lot of young people out there who wanted that part in the series. And, if I might say it, you do look awful close with Jay.’
‘Gethryn kissed me. That’s all that happened,’ I muttered. Behind me, Jack swore.
Gary moved his eyes slowly over my face. They lingered on the scar, moved off and came back to it. Twice. ‘Yeah. But d’you see it from the organisers’ point of view? There’s an element of doubt in your winning. I’m real sorry, Skye, but that’s how it is.’
‘Fuck it.’ Jack moved forward to lean on the table. ‘She won fair and square, Gary, and you know it. Even if we had been sleeping together, you know me well enough to say that I’d never give information out like that.’
‘For the record, I don’t think you cheated. But it isn’t what I think that matters here.’ Gary lowered his voice. ‘And while you would never give anything away, there’s Geth in this equation, and can you truly say that he’d never fix the quiz?’ The two men stared at one another for a few seconds.
‘He never had access to the answers,’ Jack almost breathed. ‘I made sure.’
‘It’s not about what happened, Jay. It’s about what could have happened. We have to be seen to be doing it right, or next year our viewing figures get blown outta the water by some Stargate shit.’
Jack straightened up and replaced his glasses. ‘Okay,’ he said tiredly. ‘Okay. Yes, you’re right. We have to be seen to be doing it right. Course.’ He ran both hands through his hair, raking them down to his shoulders, which he raised in a quick shrug. ‘Sorry, Skye.’
‘You’re taking the prize away from me?’ Oh my God, Felix! He was already planning his future LA career; knowing him he’d already picked out his Oscars’ outfit. And written the acceptance speech.
Gary shrugged. ‘We’ll move every winner up a prize category. And don’t worry, Jay, we’ll say that there was a mistake with the marking system, you won’t be implicated.’
Jack gave him a dark look. ‘That,’ he said tightly, ‘is very kind of you, but the least of my worries.’
I thought of Jennifer, second-prize winner, and her face when she learned she’d won the date with Gethryn. I didn’t think she would regard being bumped up to being an extra as an improvement, particularly when Gethryn wasn’t even going to be in the series any more. And third-prize winner, now Gethryn’s date, was a bloke. Probably safer.
I only realised that I was crying when Jack held out a handkerchief. ‘Go on. It’s clean.’
I blubbed into it for a second, then looked at him. ‘Where did you have it? There’s no pockets in that.’
‘Trouser leg.’
‘Oh. Ewwww.’
‘Go back to the ball. We won’t announce this until tomorrow, give you a chance to get clear, okay?’ Gary looked at Jack. ‘Best I can do.’ Then his eyes rested on me, almost kindly. ‘I’m real sorry, Skye. But, you gotta see it from our point of view, and you and him seem real tight, y’know?’
‘Yes,’ I sniffed. ‘But I didn’t even know who Jack was when I first met him.’
Gary grinned. ‘How’s your ego, Iceman?’
‘It’s good, thanks. Come on, Skye, let’s go back. We can try and enjoy ourselves.’
I just shook my head and let Jack lead the way back, squeezing past an eyebrow-raising Antonio on the reception desk to the entry to the diner. Through the doors I could see that some of the Thulos had cast off their restrictive all-enveloping muslin wraps to dance to the band, a Klingon was smoking outside, smoke straining through his pasty forehead looking very peculiar, and the inflatable Dalek was attempting to snog a pilot. I had to find Felix and tell him what had happened, before one of the organisers did.
‘Skye.’ Jack steered me into a dark corner near the stairs in the reception area. ‘I am truly sorry about this.’
‘Not your fault.’ I blew my nose again.
‘Well, it is. I should have known, should have stayed away from you. But I …’ He stopped talking suddenly, and his hands began fidgeting. The arm of his glasses made its way back between his teeth.
‘Cigarette?’ I asked, sympathetically.
‘Kill for one,’ he agreed. ‘But not important. Not now. Come here.’ Shoving his glasses resolutely into the neck of his shirt he manoeuvred us further back until we were hidden by the shadows under the deep staircase. ‘You’ve heard the phrase “might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb”?’
‘Well, of course I have. I’m British.’
‘Good. Here’s my sheep then.’ With his eyes boring their way through to my brain, he tilted my chin with a finger and, when my mouth reached the requisite angle, lowered his lips to mine and kissed me.
My mouth opened under his gentle onslaught. Lips parted, I kissed him back, and suddenly we were in a tight clinch; my hands wound into his hair, his fingers ran up my arms and down over my back, making my skin burn where he touched it, and sing with the pressure of the velvet where he stroked the dress.
He was one hot kisser, no doubt about it. He ran his tongue along the underside of my upper lip, sending pulses of warmth through my bloodstream, bit gently on my lower lip until it swelled, grazed his fingertips along my collarbone until I almost fell off my high heels.
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