Chapter Seven

Felix was irritably awake when I got back to our room, squatting against the small bedside cupboard, doing tricep dips.

‘Bloody jet lag,’ he puffed. ‘It’s the middle of the night as far as my brain is concerned. Been anywhere exciting?’

‘Outside,’ I muttered. I didn’t mention the man with the scars. There had been something in our brief communion under the bronze sky that had gone beyond mere comparison of physical hurts. Something raw. I couldn’t talk about it to Felix. ‘It’s already warm out there.’

‘Hey.’ He sat on the bed and wiped his face with a towel. ‘Sounds like this trip was just what you needed to make you realise there’s more to life than supermarkets and bookshops.’ I watched him dab under his arms and then pull a pure white T-shirt over his head. Felix had an almost perfect body, about which he was horribly vain, and he was already working hard at beating a middle age which wouldn’t come knocking for at least twenty years. ‘So, shall we go look for breakfast, or are you just going to stand there staring at the back of your eyeballs?’

‘I was looking at you. Actually.’

‘Hey!’ He struck a pose. ‘Still got it. Damn, I’m hot.’ A momentary pause. ‘Hotter with sausages, though. You reckon the Americans know about sausages? And bacon?’

‘I think they might have a few ideas. Where do we go for food?’

There was a diner built onto the back of the motel. One wall was made of a series of huge glass doors which looked out over the unimpressive view whilst the rest of it looked as though it had been formed by tunnelling away part of the original building. Doors from the main motel led into it at either end, making it more of a giant corridor than an aesthetic addition; it looked as though someone had seen a picture of a conservatory and tried to recreate one on an industrial scale. ‘Architectural design really passed Nevada by, didn’t it?’ Felix, arbiter of all things tasteful, remarked as we stood in the doorway, watching the movement of people within. Smells wafted from the kitchen, which looked like an afterthought, tucked away behind double doors.

‘It’s busy. Let’s come back later.’ I pressed myself against the wall.

‘Aw, come on Skye, don’t bottle on me now. I want to know whether they serve grits. Always wondered what the hell they are, I mean, come on, who names food after stuff you shovel?’ Felix grabbed my elbow but I pulled back.

‘You go. I’m not really hungry; I’ll just go back to the room and …’

But my words were cut off by a commotion at the far end of the diner, where a door gave entry to the other end of the motel. What could only be described as an entourage came sweeping through, two girls with such smooth hair that I could only imagine that they never slept on it, followed by a burly man carrying a clipboard, followed by –

I gave a small moan.

‘That’s Gethryn Tudor-Morgan over there,’ Felix hissed unnecessarily in my ear. ‘Just coming in! He’s up early, maybe they have to hose him down before they put him in front of us.’

‘He doesn’t need anything doing to him from where I’m standing.’ I moaned. ‘Oh God.’

In the middle of his thrusting crowd, Gethryn looked smaller than he did in my head. I knew his height, of course I did, five foot nine, half an inch shorter than Felix, but there was something about real life which seemed to diminish him a touch and add a layer or two of flesh to his jaw and cheekbones. He’d grown his hair out of the ragged, streaked untidiness that he’d had in last year’s publicity photos into a tidy version of a surfer-cut, gained a Californian tan and stubble and glowed with stardom. And, oh, what a star! Even with all the pictures and the posters and the frame-grabs, I’d never managed to conjure the reality of the man, the full-on, slender-hipped, broad-chested reality. The reality which was standing by a table on the far side of the diner, looking slightly hung-over.

I found myself trying to tidy my hair with my fingers. ‘Great.’ I groaned in the back of my throat. ‘I could have put a skirt on.’ I pulled the tucked-in shirt from the waistband of my jeans so that I didn’t look so much like Disco Dad. ‘And maybe had some kind of hot-wax treatment.’ My frizz of hair sprang back from between my hands into its customary pubic bush impersonation.

‘Well, it’s hardly my fault you can’t dress yourself! Come on, I want to see what they do when I order gravel.’

‘Grits.’

Felix gave me a Look, but the proximity of Gethryn had wiped any trace of my sense of humour away. All I could see, all I could think, all I could feel, was sitting himself down only a score of tables away from me, propping his chin on his hands and gazing, dark-eyed, at the breeze-block walls. There was a brief scuffle as Felix and I fought to take the seat facing towards him and his party, but I won and Felix had to collapse gasping into the opposite chair.

‘That, my darling, was below the belt.’ He rubbed himself under the table. ‘You didn’t need to pinch my nadgers quite so hard; a simple “please” would have done the job.’

A waitress approached to take our order, spotted Felix’s furtive sub-counter massaging and wheeled away smartly. I hid behind the menu and stared out from behind some mouth-watering waffle pictures. ‘Oh. My. God.’

‘Well, he’s all right I suppose, if you like that taut and rippling thing. Which, I have to admit, is growing on me. I wouldn’t mind some action backstage with him, if you get my drift.’

‘I think the natives of Alaska got your drift. Whisper, Fe, please.’

‘My parents didn’t send me to drama school to learn to whisper, lover. Projection, it’s what gets you noticed.’ Several of Gethryn’s collection of people were glancing our way, a forest of frowns springing up amid the ruthless busyness and chatter. ‘See?’ Felix projected at me. ‘They’re noticing us already.’

‘Through laser-sights, I should think.’

A different waitress, rather older, approached our table. Just as I was about to order toast and coffee, she spoke. ‘I’m afraid I’m gonna have to ask you to leave.’

‘But … breakfast …’ Felix began.

‘Yeah, well, y’see, we don’t allow lewd behaviour in this diner, and that’s how it is. If you can learn to keep your hands to yourself, then we might reconsider, but for today –’ She jerked her head at the door behind us.

‘But I …’

‘I don’t wanna have to call the boys.’

Dejectedly Felix stood up. ‘I was only rubbing my crotch,’ he said, compounding matters still further. ‘It’s Skye’s fault. She grabbed me.’

‘Sir. Ma’am.’

We found ourselves hustled over the threshold, but with the tiny advantage that Gethryn’s party had all stopped ordering to watch. A couple of walkie-talkie radios were laid upon the table looking like potential trouble.

‘And that was your fault.’ Felix marched crossly away towards the reception area. ‘If you hadn’t tweaked my underparts like that, we’d be stuffing our faces with egg and bacon right now. I’m bloody starving.’

‘Then why are we heading this way? There’s a vending machine on the corridor near our room, get some crisps or chips or whatever they call them.’ I stomped after him.

‘Checking on the programme for today. See if there’ve been any changes. Don’t suppose your ruthless studies of all things Fallen Skies told you anything about the timetable of events?’ Felix chewed the side of a thumbnail and then held his fingers away from him, examining his hands.

‘Well, sort of, but it did say that everything is subject to change. I guess they’re never quite sure exactly who is going to turn up, after all the actors can’t commit for definite and one of the writers had to cry off because she had a baby. So I know there’s all kinds of things going on but I never read a complete timetable. There’s all sorts of stuff …’ My voice fell away at the end of the sentence and I really hoped that Felix was adept enough to understand the dropping tone. Even until I’d got on the plane I’d been wavering. Could I do it? Really? Leave my safety nets, my carefully cultivated self-protection to step out into a world that had shown itself capable of turning and savaging me? I’d not truly believed that I’d ever get here, which had meant that my presence on the Fallen Skies forum had been nebulous and my convention studies had held a certain edge of ‘yeah, right. Great stuff, but not for you, Skye. Seriously, not for you.’ Yeah, Skye, you look away, you avoid the subject …

‘Never mind.’ There was a curious tone to his voice, one I didn’t recognise, but sounded as though it was almost relief. ‘It’ll all be here somewhere.’ And sure enough, there in the middle of the reception area stood a peg board. In white pegs against a black dotty background, and with an almost life-threatening disregard for punctuation, it announced:

‘THURSDAY.

AUTOGRAPH SIGNING IN MEETING ROOM, ONE ELEVEN AM.

SALES MEETING ROOM TWO FIGURE’S; PICTURE’S DVD’S.

TONIGHT DINNER – YOU’RE CHANCE TO RELAX WITH FALLEN SKY’S STARS’

‘I think I just fell into hell,’ I moaned. ‘A “Meet the Stars” dinner? In a place that now thinks you wank under tables and I’m some kind of flop-bodied drug taker?’

‘Well, you are.’

‘Only when it’s necessary.’

‘Well, I only …’

‘No! Let’s keep some mystery. Look, I need some breakfast; shall we go get some disposable food from the machine?’

He huffed but followed me, and we took several packets of assorted convenience foods to our room. I lay on the bed while Felix ripped open unfamiliar packaging and spread the potato- and corn-related products over the table.

‘Okay. You want the greasy orange things or these flat white ones?’

I chose a fistful and munched as I lay. Felix sprawled himself at my feet and dipped idly between crisps. ‘Skye.’

‘Mmmm?’

‘You’re really into Fallen Skies, aren’t you?’

‘What do you mean?’ I’d found something that tasted exactly like Wotsits and was sucking the coating off.

‘I mean, you’ve been a fan since the beginning, but the series started just after the accident, right?’

‘Six weeks after I came out of hospital.’

‘Yeah. So, you know, with the surgery and all that … how much do you really remember about the early stuff? I mean, you had quite a bit of brain damage, didn’t you?’

‘That was the operation.’

‘Yeah, but how much memory did you really lose?’

I stared at him. ‘Fe, you know all this.’

I got a single raised-eyebrow comment. ‘Humour me.’

I found that I was rubbing my scar, feeling the warped skin on my fingertips against its puckered surface. ‘My childhood is more or less intact. Everything from my teens onward is … fuzzy. I can remember bits and pieces but nothing really clearly, and I’ve lost the whole of the year leading up to the accident completely.’ I shrugged. ‘Everything I remember about Michael, about us, comes from photographs.’

‘So when you say you remember the early Fallen Skies stuff, are you really remembering, or half-remembering what people have told you about it?’ By ‘people’ Felix meant him. No-one else had my obsessive interest, although one of the library assistants and I had exchanged some speculation on the new series, but even he had gone a bit glazed-over when I’d launched into my theories about the alien Skeel race and their motivations. Perhaps, on reflection, the queue at the counter should have been my clue that I’d gone on a bit.

I used a finger to knock oily crumbs from my top lip. ‘No. I remember.’ The programme had saved my sanity, how could I have forgotten a single episode? My life had changed beyond recognition; I’d lost Faith, Michael, all my hopes for the future, and along had come a science-fiction drama that had made me suspend everything, even the grieving, for the brief hour it lasted. Gethryn Tudor-Morgan had stormed into my Wednesday evenings and taken me over. ‘All of it. Everything.’

‘Okay. Just curious.’ Felix dipped a moistened finger into a nearly empty packet. ‘Would you … you know, if things had been different, would you have wanted to come over to the States and audition?’

I shook my head. ‘I dunno. Think my hair has always been a bit too much for American TV.’ I smiled, but inside my heart had clenched into a ball. I’d joke and I’d smile and Felix would never know how I felt about my new life. How, deep down in the core of myself, in the place where I allowed introspection, I hated myself for losing any skills I’d ever had, any looks, any confidence. ‘And I’d never get a part now, even if I wanted one.’

‘It’s really not that bad.’ Fe’s eyes ran over my scar. ‘Better than it was, anyway.’

‘Not televisual-friendly though, you have to admit. I could probably try out for War of the Killer Zombies, if anyone’s casting for that.’

‘Yeah. No make-up needed.’ Fe smirked, until I hit him with a pillow. ‘Right then, just for my own personal satisfaction, a little test. What was the name of the first ship that Lucas James flew?’

The answer was there, as soon as he’d finished speaking, as though my new post-operative recall system was all on some instant-access Rolodex. ‘Everyone thinks it was the Medusa, because that was the one he was flying across the Ice Nebula, but it was the B’Ha Virgin. It was only in the pilot episode, which never got commercially screened … think they showed it to advertisers to check the revenue-earning response … but it counts. Not many people know about it, but someone on the show once sneaked an illicit clip out – put it up on YouTube. Why?’

‘Just checking, darling, just checking.’

* * * * *

I’d swear I only closed my eyes for a couple of seconds. Just to allow my stomach to get to work on all that saturated fat. But when I opened them the room was empty and all the crisp wrappers had been balled up into the bin, from where they occasionally crackled and spat like plastic flames.

‘Fe?’

I already knew he wasn’t there; it wasn’t in Felix’s nature to sit quietly in a corner – he’d have been banging around the bathroom swearing and covering himself in expensive sprays or trying his hand with the dubious fake tanning lotion he’d bought at the airport. Instead the room was full of muffled sounds from outside and a smell of elderly fried food filtering up from the dumpsters through the slightly open window. It was twenty past eleven.

I shuffled myself back up against the pillows. The room felt secure, promoted from too small to cosy, particularly when compared to the boom and thump of all those voices travelling up the stairwells. I could stay here. It was safe.

But.

Autographs. The signing began at eleven. Gethryn would be there, in Meeting Room One, wherever that was. I could be there too, a mere table away. I could speak to him!

Even as I thought it, my heart sped up and the sweat burst onto the palms of my hands. Yes, Gethryn would be there, but so would just about everyone else who’d come to the convention – that was kind of the point, wasn’t it? To mingle. After all, this godforsaken little motel in the middle of the Nevada desert wasn’t exactly offering any alternative entertainment, was it? You came to see and be seen. To mix with other like-minded folks, to chat and compare and pull apart episodes until your lips bled. To talk about characters who were as fixed in your mind as your own family. To have strangers stare …

Breathe.

Or. I could stay in my room. Safe. After all, Gethryn was here, wasn’t he? I’d probably got closer to him during our aborted attempt at breakfast than I would heading downstairs any time soon, where I’d have to queue and compete and I’d still be no more than a face across a table, shoving his own picture in front of him and probably too shy to even tell him my name. I’d wait. Go down later. Yes. Later. And, in the meantime, I’d pop a Valium. That way, it would have time to work, to blunt the impact of the looks, the nudges, the comments made behind raised hands, as though I’d been struck deaf rather than scarred. With a little chemical help I could pretend I didn’t care, pretend that the whispers didn’t touch me.

I swallowed one capsule with half a glass of water, listened briefly to the continued sounds of activity from downstairs and then swilled down another capsule to keep the first one company. Pulled a pillow to myself and cuddled it against me, exploring the cheesy soreness of my mouth cautiously with my tongue. Pined, briefly, for my laptop and tried to ignore my stomach’s cries for solid food, whilst I listened to the tidal noises travelling along the corridors.

There was a large TV in the corner, its standby light an alluring red wink, but I couldn’t find the remote. My search did turn up a Gideon Bible in a bedside cupboard and two sachets of instant coffee, although the kettle was long gone. I remade the bed, pulling the nylon sheets taut and then spent ten minutes staring out of the window at the people in the yard.

It wasn’t what I’d imagined conventions to be like. In my head any collection of sci-fi people was a mass of bespectacled, T-shirted, skinny guys who communicated in quotes and in-jokes and took one another’s picture posing with hardware and props. Which wasn’t me, of course, but I was different. I wasn’t just a fan, I was a FAN, and not for the space ships and the shiny rifles but for the stories, the characters, the knowledge that good would always win. The sometimes painfully beautiful speeches that Gethryn delivered, some of which had made me cry, while others had made me think hard about the nature of my life.

But here, outside my window there were few stereotypes in evidence. Instead, large motherly women chatted to model-gorgeous girls, two guys wearing Skeel costumes from the series – enormous cylinders strapped to their backs, full-face helmets and full-body Lycra suits – posed for pictures alongside a trio of small children playing tag in the dust. The air was loud with greetings and sharp with promise. I could almost cut myself on my own potential, and yet here I was, hanging onto the window frame like a child waiting for Mummy. I hated myself for my weakness, ground my teeth with the desire to walk downstairs but somehow I couldn’t persuade my fingers to let go.

A door opened. I could hear distinct voices from a room further up the corridor, arguing their way to their open doorway, then a pause. It gave me just long enough to scoot across to my own door and open it the crack necessary to peep out.

‘All you ever give a fuck about is your work,’ a roundly American voice was scolding. It had the Californian intonation that I recognised from TV, a voice with the carrying power and destructiveness of a razor-edged Frisbee. ‘Do you really not care about anything else at all? Like, say, meeting your adoring public?’

Out came a slim tanned arm. It hooked itself around the doorframe and dug its nails into the plasterwork, as if anchoring itself against the unpleasantness inside the room. I watched, fascinated. A true American domestic! Like Jerry Springer!

Inside the room, a dull, inaudible tone answered her and she snapped back.

‘Yeah, well, that’s just great. I’m your agent, it’s kinda in the job description for you to need to hang around with me! Unless, you know, you never want to work again, and that’s just fucking ungrateful, Jack, you know that? It’s okay, you being some big-shot writer-guy in the UK, but the network brought you over here to write TV and in the good old US of A they like to see your face, know what I’m saying here? Hermits is for crabs!’

I had to close the door right up to a little sliver to avoid being seen when the arm was joined by the rest of the body outside the room. This gave me the narrowest of views of my welcome distraction, but it was enough to ascertain that she was very thin, wore a tiny white vest over powder-pink jeans and had hair which obeyed the laws of physics that mine broke on a regular basis. Her face matched her arms by being brown, thin and angular. Pretty in the same way that a Wheaten Terrier is; soft and silky but with a mouth capable of inflicting great damage.

I watched the slice of corridor as she swept along past me, then I opened the door a little further as her slender back disappeared towards the lift. I only just managed to withdraw into the room in time to avoid being seen when she stopped and turned. She was so beautifully framed by the window at the head of the stairs that it had to be deliberate, the hard Nevada light giving her a golden aura. ‘I’m tired of it,’ she directed back along the landing. ‘How can I sell an emotionally frigid pig?’

I had to squint through the hinges in order to eyeball the pig in question. Felt a short stab of surprise at realising it was the dark-haired man I’d already run into twice and then a sense of inevitability that if he actually had a girlfriend she would be gorgeous and feisty. I could see how her blonde fragile beauty would complement his saturnine looks, and she’d need to be feisty to put up with his moody self-contemplation for very long. In fact, sod feisty, she’d have to have passed sainthood and been heading towards deification if this morning was anything to go by.

‘Hey, I’m sorry, Lissa. But you’ve always known what I’m like! You of all people … But you didn’t have to come, I did. And, yeah, I know I owe them, the fans … I know it’s important to them. I know I have to show that I’m grateful for what they’ve done for Fallen Skies but … it’s hard for me.’ He lowered his voice to a still-audible-if-I-put-my-ear-to-the-crack mumble. ‘And I know what you’re going through, Liss, honestly. I appreciate it, I really do, but … You and him, what happened, it’s history now.’

‘Huh! History for you, maybe,’ came from the direction of the lift. It was annoying, I could only look in one direction once I’d established my position by the door, and the hinges only showed me the man – Jack, she’d called him – standing half-outside the room in pyjama bottoms and a different top from the one he’d worn earlier; this was a faded T-shirt. His hair was wild as though he’d been running his hands through it. Or she had.

‘I can’t help the way I am.’

‘And how come this fucking lift is broken again?’

‘Ah, whatever else you’re pinning on me, that is not my fault.’

There was another ‘huh’, and the expression on his face changed, indicating that the woman had moved to the staircase next to the lifts and started a picturesque descent. It relaxed, further and further, until, by the time she must have reached ground level, he was almost smiling.

I stayed totally still. Watched him walk leisurely along the corridor towards the stairs, bare feet sticky on the functional grey flooring, until he was opposite me, when he turned round and stared directly at the point where I was standing, peering between the door and the wall.

‘Hey.’ And the single, flat syllable sounded like home. ‘One little tip I picked up here from one of the camera guys, if you want to stay invisible, watch your shadow. By the way, nice work this morning. Takes something to get chucked out of a diner the calibre of the Broken Hill Motel. What happened, they find crack in your luggage?’

I was so astonished at being addressed through a hole in the wall that I answered. ‘They thought Felix was … y’know, well, under the table.’

A broken stutter of a laugh. I could only see half his face but it looked genuine. ‘Genius. I presume he wasn’t?’

‘Oh, no. Misunderstanding, that’s all.’ A pause. ‘Why aren’t you downstairs?’

Another laugh. ‘No-one wants my autograph. I’m not one of the pretty boys in front of camera. What’s your excuse?’

I could just feel the very faint Valium-induced haze pulling down across my mind. Nothing much, a whisper of net-curtain between me and the prurient world. ‘I was … tired. Early morning, y’see, oh, of course, you were there. Fell asleep and Felix went down without me.’

He moved, shifting his weight, but suddenly I couldn’t see his face any more. ‘You could go down now, you won’t have missed much.’

I shrugged, hoping it made me look as though I wasn’t really bothered, rather than vulnerable and pathetic, which was what I felt. ‘Maybe in a bit.’

His face creased into something that wasn’t a smile. ‘Look. This morning. You took off so suddenly … listen, I didn’t mean to upset you, I only – I could see something had happened; when you said it was an RTA I thought, hey, point of contact. Guess it hit you badly, yes?’

‘No, I was in the back of the car.’

‘I meant, my asking. Stirred you up. The way you shot inside, I thought I’d said something stupid, something that made you think things that you’d rather forget. I’m always doing that, talk first, think later. It’s because most of the people I talk to don’t really exist.’

I stared for a moment. What kind of person talks to people who don’t exist? And then I remembered my late-night ‘conversations’ with Captain Lucas James. ‘No. It’s all right. I’m all right.’

‘Well. Sorry anyway.’ The door swung slowly open as he pushed it until I was forced out from the narrowing angle between it and the wall and faced him across the threshold. He tugged at the hem of his T-shirt, easing out the creases, and rubbed one hand around the back of his neck, mouth beginning an uncertain grin. ‘Since we both seem to be at a loose end, do you fancy popping along the landing?’ He jerked his head in the direction of his room, then had to scrape untidy hair away from his face in order to look at me again. ‘As the only two Brits left sober, I reckon we should stick together.’

The double-bass beat which was my heart was steady. ‘I’m not sure.’

‘Come on, this is a convention! You’re contractually obliged to relax and enjoy yourself and to mingle with the fan-boys. Besides, I need a fag to calm me down after that little episode.’ He inclined his head towards the stairs. ‘Bloody Lissa.’

‘Smoking is bad for you.’

I got an arch look for that. ‘Right. I’ll bear it in mind. So, you up for it?’

How come I could contemplate going to a strange man’s hotel room without a qualm when the mere thought of walking downstairs into a group of people who were fans of the same programme that I revered made the Valium work overtime? I turned the question over in my head. But the thought of spending the rest of the day alone in a room had nothing to recommend it. And there was something ineptly appealing about this shaggy-haired stranger.

‘Okay. But I’ll have to be quick, in case Felix comes back and misses me.’

Another head-jerk. ‘Is he likely to? I mean, I don’t know what you two are to each other, but he did imply you weren’t lovers, and when I saw him earlier he looked like a man on a mission.’

‘He’s my friend.’

‘Just “a friend”?’

‘Oh, yes. That’s as close as it’s wise to get to a man who thinks monogamy is something you make tables out of.’

For that I got a proper grin. ‘Great line. Might nick that one. Anyway, you coming, ’cos I’m about to gnaw off the last of my fingernails.’

I pulled the door closed behind me and followed his barefoot and pyjama’d shape up past two doors, to the room I’d seen his girlfriend erupt from.

He swiped his key-card. ‘You’ve not got your key?’

‘Think Felix took it. He wouldn’t want to disturb me by knocking to come in and, anyway, where on earth would I ever want to go?’

‘He’s in for a shock then.’ He held the door wide. ‘It’s a bit messy, but you don’t look like you’d mind that,’ he said, standing aside to let me pass. ‘Liss has done her usual trick of making the place look like she’s exploded in it. Came in to talk work, next thing I know she’s using my shower ’cos hers isn’t working properly or something. It’s eighty degrees out there in the daytime and she wants a hot shower? I told her to go down and ask housekeeping to fix the one in her room, but apparently it’s just easier for her to come prancing over here to use mine. And why couldn’t she take the clothes away afterwards, or at least carry them downstairs with her – some kind of hold-all might be in order, but that’s a bit too much like forward planning for Lissa – what is it with you women and clothes that you have to change every five minutes? Always with the showering and the changing … I’m talking too much, aren’t I?’

‘A bit.’

‘Sorry.’ An unabashed grin. ‘Spent too long at the keyboard again, always makes me a bit … I forget real people need gaps to reply.’

‘Real people?’

A one-shoulder shrug. ‘I’m a writer. Which, weirdly, doesn’t make for great communication skills. Obviously. Words on paper, yep, that’s my forte, I can do that, no problems, oh God, shut up Jack.’

Gosh. I’m here with one of the writers. Even the Valium couldn’t quite stop my eyes widening with a flash of hero-worship, quickly stilled in the face of those tatty pyjamas and unbrushed hair.

The room smelled of her perfume. Sweet and pink, like overblown roses. The bed was rumpled and I had to work hard not to imagine this dark man and his preciously blonde Lissa busy rumpling it. ‘Won’t your girlfriend mind you having me in here?’

The click and flare of a lighter. ‘I’m not intending to have you.’

A horribly disfiguring blush rose up my cheeks and neck. I knew from experience that this would make my scar stand out even more, a jagged white against the dull red skin. Fortunately he wasn’t looking at me, but was desperately trying to get a bent remnant of cigarette into conjunction with the flame of the lighter, sucking at it until it squeaked.

‘Besides, Lissa isn’t my girlfriend. She was, once upon a time, and that’s not any kind of fairy-tale you’d want to hear. But, yeah, I guess you’re right, she probably wouldn’t like it all that much, so, would you mind standing out in the corridor?’

I balanced awkwardly on one leg, not sure whether he was being serious or not. ‘It’s just, you know, I don’t want to upset anyone.’

‘Lissa is a big girl. She can cope with a few upsets.’ He smiled, and it was a nice smile, a proper smile. His eyes creased under the weight of it and it took away some of that look he wore that said the world had disappointed him in some way. ‘Stop worrying. Hey, what about a drink?’ He crouched down to look under the bed and I tried really hard not to stare at his pyjama bottoms, which were baggy and striped and almost cartoonishly loose, held up with a piece of frayed cord. ‘I’m not supposed to smoke in here, but sometimes … ah. White do you?’

‘Do I what?’

He straightened up and I had to drag my eyes from their natural resting place which happened to be directly level with his flappy crotch. ‘Would you like a glass of white wine?’

‘It’s a bit early.’

‘Convention, remember? They’ll all be on the Southern Comfort downstairs and no-one will be sober until Monday. What are we now, Thursday? Can you really stand the idea of being the only person sober for five days? Might as well join them.’ A pause and his eyes looked inward for a moment, fingertips flicked in a kind of low-level mini shrug. ‘At least …’ He spun away, leaving a smoke trail like a low-flying aircraft and now I was free to stare at his back view, a crumpled picture of Mighty Boosh and a sagging pair of pyjama bottoms which managed not to make his backside look wrinkly and enormous by some fluke of tailoring. The T-shirt did nothing to cover his scarred arm but he didn’t seem to care. ‘Right. Not especially well-chilled, but still better than downstairs’ Tequila Slammers.’ He leaned forward, glass in hand. ‘Oh. My name’s Jack, by the way. And you’re …?’

‘Skye. Skye Threppel.’

‘Well, Skye. Here’s to hiding from the world.’ Jack picked up another glass from next to the laptop and raised it, seeming to toast the screensaver picture of purple-heathered moorland, as though he was blocking out the Nevada desert with a picture of home. Then he plonked himself on the floor, knees drawn up. The only chair in the room was in front of the laptop and covered in papers, so for want of anywhere else available, I sat on the bed.

‘Are you? Hiding from the world?’ I asked, jiggling my wine between my fingers.

‘Ah, now there’s the question.’

‘I know. That’s why my voice did that going up at the end thing,’ I replied a little sharply. I was nervous and being nervous made me edgy these days, and defensive. ‘Maybe I should write the conversation down for you.’ Jack seemed nice, a little tense perhaps, but the raw feeling of connection that we’d shared earlier had ebbed and I was concerned that maybe I’d imagined it. I couldn’t always trust the way I felt, when those feelings were built on memories or associations I could no longer recall. It was as though my body reacted in certain situations without my mind having any kind of control and I was very conscious that this made me easy to take advantage of.

He made an appeasing gesture, holding his hands out and spilling some of his drink on the T-shirt. ‘Point to you. I’m struggling with the lack of dramatic convention.’ He sipped and looked at me over the rim of the glass.

I felt the blush start again and the edgy sensation that my nerves had all been driven to the surface.

‘Maybe I should go. Rather than sit here and force you to make conversation.’

‘Maybe.’ Jack rested his glass on his knees and looked up at me. It might have been my imagination but I was fairly certain that what was in his glass wasn’t wine. It was too clear, too transparent. ‘But I’d quite like it if you didn’t.’

Despite the Valium I could feel my skin growing clammy and my hands had moistened as though beads of blood were seeping through the palms. ‘I ought …’ My voice sounded croaky and about a hundred years old. I cleared my throat but it didn’t help, just made the air thicken around me so that I had to concentrate on breathing.

‘What is it you’re frightened of, Skye? You look terrified right now, and no-one’s ever found me that scary before – arrogant and self-righteous, yes, scary, no.’ His head tilted to one side. ‘Panic attacks worse when there’re lots of people about, yes? And yet being alone, closed in, scares you, too. Am I getting warm?’

Suddenly uneasy at the intensity with which he was looking at me, I drained my glass in one gulp. ‘I’m not scared. It’s stress related. I get … when I’m a bit … when things are different, when I don’t know what’s going to happen next, sometimes I get panicky. But it’s not that, I’m just worried that Felix will wonder where I am.’

Jack stood up and refilled my glass. ‘Do you want me to leave the door open? Will that help?’ He was looking at me with an expression that seemed partly compassion and partly curiosity and I hated myself suddenly, which surprised me. Hated this pathetic, helpless Skye with her inabilities and her carefully modified behaviour. He tilted his head to one side, stubbing out his nearly completely smoked cigarette without taking his eyes off me. ‘You might feel better if you know you can run whenever you want. A bit more in control of the situation. And if Felix comes back, you’ll be able to hear him.’

I gave a short, tight nod and he snicked the door off its latch, propping it open with a lone trainer. ‘Thank you.’ I could feel my airways relaxing. ‘It isn’t you, I’m sorry, they think it’s something to do with the accident, the head injury, it’s been over a year-and-a-half and I still can’t …’

‘Oh, and there was me feeling special.’ Jack grinned and his face was suddenly attractive. ‘Okay then, let’s talk neutral subjects, shall we? So, what’s so great about Fallen Skies?’

I wanted to sound erudite and literary, as though I analysed the metaphorical allegories of today’s political situation and enjoyed the complex interplay of meta-media. ‘I like all of it,’ was what I found my mouth going ahead with. ‘Really.’

Jack nodded over his glass. ‘Gethryn. Am I right?’

My blush answered for me.

‘Is that why you came? Chance to meet him?’

This time I just shrugged and managed to mutter, ‘I like the storylines too.’

‘Glad to hear it.’ He sounded a bit terse, and I didn’t miss the sidelong glance at the open laptop, now displaying a screensaver picture of random swirls of colour. ‘Glad we’re doing something right.’

‘Sorry, yes, you said you’re one of the writers, didn’t you? Because, what I meant to say was, you know, it’s the scripting, isn’t it, that makes the whole show. And the character arcs, and the way that the Shadow War has implications for all the planets across the galaxy.’

‘Too late, Skye, far too late. But, nice recovery.’ Jack stood up to top up my glass. ‘Don’t worry about fancying Gethryn, you’re not the only one.’

‘I didn’t mean …’

But he cut me off by turning away. ‘Doesn’t matter.’

I drained my second glass of wine out of embarrassment. Jack was rummaging through the pockets of a jacket hanging on the back of a chair, triumphantly pulling forth an unopened packet of cigarettes and dragging off the cellophane like an addict. When he finally turned back to me he was blowing smoke like a dragon and the air had turned chilly. ‘Do you want another?’ He gestured towards my glass. ‘Or had you better be going?’

Feeling dismissed I went to stand up, at which point two things happened. Drunkenness fell, breaking over my head like an enormous egg, and I lurched, staggered and grabbed out for any solid object, the nearest of which happened to be Jack. My wavering hand secured a fistful of his T-shirt, pulling him with me as I toppled back onto the bed.

And there was the sound of someone pushing the door open from outside.

‘Oh, bloody hell.’ Jack managed not to suffocate me by propping himself clear of my prone body, which caused the T-shirt to stretch obscenely. ‘This is really not my day.’

And into the room, bouncing on the balls of her feet, walked the skinny girl in the pink jeans. ‘Oh, right,’ she drawled, seeing us in our state of near-collapse on the bed. ‘I know the Nevada call-girls ain’t up to much but, brother, you should ask for your money back.’

‘Hey, Liss.’ Jack walked backwards, dragging his shirt off over his head and leaving me with two handfuls of fabric. ‘This is Skye. I think she’s had a bit too much to drink.’

‘Great. If she throws up on me, I shall so sue her ass.’

‘She’s not well, Lissa. Help me.’

I tried to look up into their faces but everything spun, then jumped, as though milliseconds were being cut out of the morning. ‘Did you … spike my drink?’

Lissa gave a hollow little laugh. ‘Lady, look at him. He doesn’t need to spike drinks to get laid.’

‘Shut up.’ Jack walked around the bed, looking down on me, nervously fiddling with a leather necklace around his throat. It hung black and stark against his bare skin. ‘She’s only had two glasses; it’s more than just the alcohol.’ His face unfocused then pirouetted around the top of his body. ‘Shall I get your friend?’

I shook my head, which turned out to be a terrible mistake. The whole room wheeled and split and I felt myself flying through the air, which was an illusion caused by Jack picking me up and thrusting me at light speed in the direction of the toilet, which we managed to reach before Catastrophe came calling at Wotsit-ville.

It took far, far longer than it should have, to bring up two packets of cheesy puffs. Between noisy heaves I could hear Jack on the phone, calling downstairs, and in a few minutes Felix arrived in the bathroom, overheated and with a lipstick mark on the side of his neck.

‘Whoa!’ He looked down on me for a moment as I drooled bile into the toilet bowl. ‘You look crappy, darling.’

I rolled a bloodshot eye up at him and heaved a few more intestines closer to the waterline. To his credit, Jack brought me a glass of water, although I couldn’t steady my hand enough to take it and he ended up feeding me sips, crouched next to the nasty-smelling toilet with me.

‘And you missed such a fantastic outing.’ Felix patted my back ineffectually as another burst of retching caught up with me. ‘Gethryn is down there, chatting. You could have had your moment with him, if you hadn’t been –’ he cast an eye over Jack – ‘making friends up here.’ And then, impatiently, ‘Surely there can’t be anything else to bring up.’

A commotion in the bedroom, and both men turned. My already rock-bottom self-esteem managed a feat of geology to become even lower as Lissa’s penetratingly nasal voice asked, ‘What are you all doing in there?’

Jack straightened up beside me. ‘We’re looking after Skye.’

‘Well, fuck you.’

I managed to sit away from the toilet bowl for long enough to clock Lissa’s expression of revulsion peering into the bathroom.

‘Jeez, Jack, you do pick them. Surely it doesn’t take two of you. Felix, you could come back downstairs with me.’

‘Lissa and I met earlier,’ Felix explained, and the way his eyes traced the contours of those very tight pink jeans spoke an absolute library. ‘So. You and Jack been together long?’ He spoke to her without meeting her eye, which said even more.

‘Way, way too long. How about you, you two …?’

‘Oh, no, we’re – look, it’s a long story.’

All this was going on over my shoulder as the final crisps exited my system in the most undignified and, possibly, loudest, way imaginable. My eyes streamed from the effort, my nose trailed vomit and my head hurt. I just wanted to lie, very still, on the cool floor of the bathroom. Instead I had an audience.

‘Does she have a very low tolerance for alcohol?’ Jack asked. ‘I only gave her a couple of glasses. What? Don’t look at me like that, Lissa.’

‘Here we go again …’

‘No! No, this isn’t like that, Liss.’

I could feel the blonde’s eyes on me. They didn’t seem particularly angry, as I would have expected from a girl finding her boyfriend, however ‘ex’ the nature of the relationship, embroiled with another woman. She looked more sad. ‘If you say so. But if you’d rather chat to some whacked-out, beat-up English chick than me, man, you have your priorities way wrong.’

‘Lissa, you didn’t want to talk, you wanted to harangue me about some director you’ve met that I need to know, nothing that’s going to help me, just some bunch of auteur fuckwits who want cheap labour and a British accent to give credibility to their pseudo-porn.’

As I dribbled the remnants of my pathetic breakfast down my chin, Felix grinned at me. ‘Aren’t other people’s lives fun? You see what you miss when you’ve got your face in someone else’s flusher?’

‘I didn’t exactly choose this position,’ I said, round the drool.

Jack and Lissa had moved back into the bedroom to continue their argument. Felix grabbed my elbow and dragged me to my feet, keeping up the momentum so that we staggered through into the next room, with me still hunched forward over an invisible toilet. ‘Chucker-upper coming through, don’t mind us, keep chatting amongst yourselves and thanks for the most wonderful insights into coupledom. Remind me to stay single forever, would you? Rather sand off my own nipples than go through this, okay, ready to make a dash to our room? And here we go.’

We shot out, down the corridor to our room, where Felix propped me against the wall. ‘Key?’

‘I don’t have it. I thought …’ A threatening belch erupted, ‘I thought you’d got it.’

‘Why would I take the key, when you were in the room?’ He dropped his head into his hands in a moment of despair. ‘Thought you’d be there all morning, catching up on your beauty sleep. Oh, this is buggering terrific. And you – just breathe, my days of the mop and bucket are long behind me.’

I took a deep breath. ‘Won’t the reception desk have a pass key?’

‘Suppose.’ Felix turned to head towards the lift.

‘Don’t leave me! Fe, please …’

With a dramatic sigh and a turn that was more flouncy than Cinderella’s party frock, Felix came back and grabbed my elbow again. ‘All right. We’ll both go down, but I am warning you now, any more vomit and you can spend the rest of the convention sitting outside in the yard with the kitchen boys Miguel and Carlo – cute, but put it this way, they’re not much good to you.’

‘I’m sorry.’ I tried to explain as we got into the lift, which was apparently working again, but now bore a sign in very large letters saying ‘three persons maximum’. ‘I really only had two glasses of wine … thought it would be fun, the Valium was stopping me feeling scared, it was boring being on my own and he asked me –’

‘And he was so cute you couldn’t resist.’ Felix looked sour. ‘Yeah, all right, ten out of ten for lusty thoughts, lover, but Jesus H-in-a-catsuit, you never, never drink on Valium, you got that?’

‘An hour ago that would have been good advice.’

‘I thought you knew.’ The lift arrived on the ground floor and the doors sprang open to reveal that the foyer was packed with people coming and going, mingling, queuing out of the door of one room and round into another. Felix and I dropped into this crowd like a shovel full of shit in church.

I caught my breath and my hands sprang closed into defensive fists, even though our arrival went largely unnoticed. Everyone was too busy circulating, greeting, loud hails overhead trumpeted triumphant names as successfully autographed pictures waved. Toddlers chased one another through the forest of legs, and an occasional costumed figure progressed between the crowds in its own space.

I froze until Felix poked me in the back, prodding me towards the reception desk. I moved alongside him, hoping that no-one would register the stink of alcohol and vomit, until I could rest my elbows on the desk and drop my head into my hands. I stayed there, very, very still. I could hear Felix talking to someone but my brain had shut down and wouldn’t even contemplate trying to make out actual words. It was enough of an effort to keep breathing.

‘Okay, babe. Antonio here says he’ll come and open up for us.’ I straightened up as Felix turned to me, momentarily forced to stand so close that he almost brushed my chin as a tight knot of people surged forward from one of the meeting rooms. They were all heading for the main doors, moving through a gap in the crowd caused by –

‘Shoot me, Fe. Please.’

If I’d thought being seen by Gethryn with a tucked-in top was the height of embarrassment, then being seen by Gethryn whilst smeared in my own sick was the depth and breadth of it. I wanted to close my eyes but didn’t dare, since the dark brought back the swinging unsteadiness, and the acid-burn was already far too close to my tonsils for comfort.

Gethryn’s voice travelled across the space between us and my ears quivered at the sound. ‘Look, I’m only going to stretch my legs. Sitting in that chair is playing havoc with my quads, you know? I’m not going to do a runner, if you stay in the line I’ll be back signing in just a minute …’ Oh, that deep Welsh accent. It poured into my ears like a molten love-letter. I wanted to hug every word to my chest, to memorise every intonation, but I didn’t even dare to raise my gaze from the ghastly reception-area carpet. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Gethryn marching his way through the crowd, preceded by several large clipboard-carrying men who wore headsets and luminous Security vests. As he drew level with where Felix and I cowered, the crowd in front was as thick as the crowd behind and one of the guards had to go on ahead to forge a path, leaving Gethryn stationary opposite us.

He turned his head and met my eye.

In that second there was no crowd. No guards, no walkie-talkies, no shouting. Just Gethryn Tudor-Morgan, a stray wisp of hair fluttering in an unfelt breeze, gazing at me with his pure white shirt open at the neck to show a silver chain against his smooth skin. He was beautiful. From the soft expression in his amber eyes to the artful highlights in his flicked hair, he was poster-perfect. I was frozen with longing for him, until a sly burp rippled up to scald my back teeth with a wave of acidic saliva, which made my eyes water.

Sound rushed in, followed by movement and Gethryn being hustled on towards the doors. Just before the crowd filled the space between us again, he half-turned in my direction and dropped me the tiniest, cheekiest little wink you have ever seen, and my knickers would have erupted if I hadn’t been feeling like a pile of second-hand crap.

Oh, and so embarrassed about the whole vomit-stained thing that I wanted to die.

‘I think he fancy you.’ Antonio, a burly Hispanic guy with a receding hairline which was about to meet an increasing neckline, nudged me. ‘You be good girl and he maybe buy you drink.’

The retch that this thought engendered sent another dribble to join the stains already ornamenting my front, but at least we were moving towards the lift by then.