Chapter Twenty-Three

The party had reached that stage of drunkenness where people were coming and going and falling over all the time, in various permutations of sexuality, so Felix and Jack’s hand-in-hand re-entry was largely ignored. I came in behind them. Although I knew it was hot in the diner, I was still chilled, even my stomach felt frozen.

‘Right,’ Jack kept his voice low and even. ‘Think you’d better get upstairs.’

Felix shrugged. ‘Need my coat. It’s over there.’

I rummaged around until I found the soft fur heaped in a careless pile in a corner. Went to pass it over to Felix but he snatched it from me, groped around inside it for a second then produced a little brown bottle. He grabbed it and upended it into his mouth, then pulled the coat up around his shoulders as though he was cold, too.

‘Was that Valium?’ My voice sounded hoarse and strained, as though normal questions were just too banal to utter. ‘Fe?’

‘Yeah. Want to sleep, don’t want to think. Don’t want all this hanging all night.’

I was about to say something about ODing, but Jack caught my eye and gave his head a tiny shake. ‘Right. When those take effect you’d better get yourself into bed, okay? I’ll go find Jared and get him to take care of you.’

Felix gave a grin which belied the streaked cheeks and desperate eyes. ‘Oh yeah? You up for a threesome, Mr Whitaker?’ But there was a fake note in his voice, as though he was acting, badly. ‘Think I might just take you up on that.’

It hurt to see him trying to slip back into his old self, the carefree player of games. Now I knew what was running underneath it all, his contempt for me, the loss and grief that he carried. ‘Jack,’ I whispered, ‘I need to talk to Felix alone.’

‘I don’t know if that’s …’

‘Please.’

‘Hey. As long as you know what you’re doing. As long as you’re prepared for the consequences.’ A quick flash of some hidden emotion, not humour. ‘And we need to talk too. There are things … I think you need to know about me.’

‘Because of what Felix said?’

He stared down at his bare feet, now filthy with a mixture of dirt and sand. ‘Partly. And partly because of what happened earlier.’

My lips gave a kind of sympathetic throb. ‘Oh. That.’

‘Yes. That. It’s not … straightforward.’ He stood up. ‘Right. I’ll catch up with you in a minute.’ He slipped back out through the doors. I saw women turn to watch him go and my lips throbbed again.

‘Fingers,’ Felix said, behind me.

‘Sorry.’ It was automatic. ‘Fe … Why? Before … before the accident, why was I like that? Why was I so awful to be around?’

He shrugged. ‘Background, I guess.’

‘And why don’t I know what I was like? Why does everything I can remember seem … I dunno, normal?’

‘Because it was normal. For you. That was how you always behaved, how you always were. Why should it stand out as being different? You were needy, difficult, a bitch who acted out … It was all just the Skye we knew and lo … knew.’

‘I’m sorry.’

Another shrug. ‘You say.’

‘I really don’t remember. Everything is so … scattered. I can’t make sense of any of the things I can remember, all just scenes and snapshots. You have to believe me.’ I went quiet, looking down at my feet. ‘After the accident … why didn’t you tell the police?’

An explosive laugh. ‘Is that what you’re worried about? That I’ll turn you in? Is that really what concerns you most at this moment, Skye, whether you’re going to get into trouble?’ He pushed his face close up against mine so that I could see the narrowness of his pupils and the shiny gleam of denied tears. ‘I’ll never spend another Christmas with Faith. We’ll never go to another audition, we’ll never sing happy birthday to our mother, never sit in the little study shooting the crap. I’ll never be an uncle. I’ll never see her in white on her wedding day. My beautiful, wonderful sister is dead.’ A slow tear escaped from under his lashes. ‘And all you’re worried about is whether I’m going to tell the police.’

‘It’s not all, not by a long way.’

‘Yeah?’ Felix stared at me, his eyes tracing the outline of my face. ‘You’ve really changed, Skye, I mean, totally. Like you’ve been re-written from the inside. But I wonder …’ he raised a hand and slack fingers held my chin, turning my face from side to side, ‘is it enough? Could it ever be enough?’

‘I think you should. Tell the police the real reason for the accident. Tell them what I did.’

‘Whoa, now that would never have come from the Skye I knew! What is it, atonement you’re after, lover? You think if I make you suffer it’ll make me feel better – well, sweetie, I’m here to tell you that nothing will make it better. Nothing will bring her back. So that’s what I’m going to do – nothing. Because I want you to remember every day, you smashed something that you could never afford to pay for.’

‘She was my friend.’ I put my hand up to touch his fingers where he held my face. ‘Whatever she and Michael did, she was still my friend, and I wouldn’t have had it end like this for anything.’

For a second I saw the façade crack and a glimpse of the old Felix, my Felix, peeping out. ‘Oh, Skye …’ His fingers brushed mine, twined, joined over the screaming ruin that was my heart. Then fell away. ‘But are you really different? Can anyone really change themselves that much?’

‘The old me is gone. Wiped out by going through a windscreen at sixty miles an hour.’ I tried to make a joke of it. ‘It’s amazing what it does for your personality, having your skull opened up on an operating table.’

He shrugged again and turned away, his shoulders lowering in tired defeat. ‘I dunno,’ he said, rocking slightly. ‘It’s just words, Skye. It’s just words.’

I watched him ricochet through the crowd like a large-scale bagatelle game, making his way towards the exit. The party was beginning to break up now, the tighter knots were starting to move towards the bar for a night’s solid drinking; I watched the Thulos contingent stagger arm-in-arm through the door out into the night, seeing Jack just beyond the circle of light, a shadow watching me.

I needed fresh air. Needed Jack. Surely he must have finished his cigarette by now? I moved towards the open doors to the outside, cannoning off the now somewhat deflated Dalek, whose eyepiece was drooping carpetwards. Saw, over near the band, Felix similarly bouncing off one of the pair of Skeel boys, catching him off balance and sending him toppling backwards under the weight of his ‘carbon dioxide’ cylinder. It was so heavy that it pulled itself free from the harness that kept it on his back, performed two long bounces and then vanished into a corner. I had just begun to move towards Jack again when the whole place went mad.

First was the noise. A huge, deep sound like a giant sneeze followed so quickly by the blast that I nearly didn’t have time to register it. The force was vast, like a hot fist in the chest. It was dark, then white light, then a red-toned blackness, with the silhouettes of chairs rising into the air as I fell backwards, caught and carried by the explosion, tumbling amid the debris. I was bowled along the floor with wood splintering around me; I couldn’t breathe, the air was burning, too hot to swallow and my lungs felt like they’d been punched. A noise like rain falling and blows to my head and my back as I carried on rolling; felt something give way and then I was outside being scuffed by sand along the length of my body.

It went on forever and for no time, and then there was silence. My ears felt bulgy, as though the quiet air was full of feathers, and then the crying started. Distant, underwater crying, and the regular flick, flick as flames took hold and grew somewhere behind me. I clambered to my feet and took a step forward but my balance was gone and I fell, catching myself on something soft, which turned out to be one of the fur coats that the Shadow Planet people had been wearing.

It was wet, and when I pulled my hand away I saw the red smearing my palm and the sky above me rocked.

Breathe. I pulled air in and blew it out, concentrating on keeping the rhythm steady, not letting the shakiness get the better of me. All the exercises I’d learned to help manage the stress cut in and took over, count your breaths, concentrate on something, drop your shoulders, relax your muscles.

‘For God’s sake, someone, help me!’

The cry echoed through into the here and now, jolting me into reality. People were hurt.

I turned around slowly so as not to overbalance again.

The diner still stood, bulging into the desert as though the motel had suddenly acquired a pot-belly. The three standing walls were convex, the roof had partially collapsed, and the dusty sand in front now shone with millions of glass fragments. In the far corner a fire flicked lazy tongues from the wreckage of the kitchen, and the ground was littered with people lying or half-sitting amid the ruins of their clothing. Breathe.

I fought the urge to be sick with fear and shock and the smell of hot wood and a sweet, unfamiliar gas. Two seconds more and I’d started to run. ‘Jack! Felix!’ I clambered over the remains of the doorway I’d been blown through, with the velvet dress snagging on nails and splinters, and surveyed the wreckage inside. Called hopelessly into the dark, as around me others began to weave and sway to their feet, holding various parts of their anatomy. Knew that Jack had been outside, was probably behind me somewhere. Safe. But Felix had been inside.

I could smell the blood, the metal-sweet tang underneath the smell of burning wood, and had to fight the urge to run back out into the desert again. I bit my tongue and stumbled into a woman, bleeding from a deep scratch across her forehead. ‘Head this way,’ I shouted at her, my voice sounding strained and unfamiliar. ‘You need to get out! The place is burning.’ I grabbed her arm as she circled away from me and shoved her towards where the doors had been. A breeze was coming in from outside, bringing small showers of dust pattering into the shocked quiet. ‘Outside!’

Other figures began to follow her, sheeplike. ‘This way.’ I pushed more of them into line, anyone I came across who was still upright. ‘Come on. Follow me.’ I began to move around the room, collecting little knots of people who fell into step behind me like a giant, bloodstained game of Grandmother’s Footsteps winding through the dark. Some stopped to help others to their feet. Two men formed a cat’s cradle with their hands to carry a girl whose leg was so clearly broken that I had to look away. But I wasn’t just being noble, leading survivors to safety. I was searching.

Two circuits of the room and the remains of the roof were beginning to swing over our heads. Flames had found their way from the kitchen, where small-scale eruptions indicated cans blowing behind the swing-doors, and mouths of fire were beginning to eat into the dust. I seized the man who’d been behind me. ‘Get everyone over that side. Step down through the rubble and get out into the desert. Make sure they all follow you.’

He nodded, a trickle of blood seeping from his nose and dripping down onto a ruined pilot costume. ‘This way,’ I heard him call, as I stepped back into the ringing darkness closer to the door that led through to reception. This was where I’d last seen Felix. It was now a circus of smashed glass; spilled drink made the place smell like an alcoholic’s armpit, but at least there were no bodies slumped in the mess. Felix must have moved just in time to avoid the worst of the blast. So where was he?

‘Felix,’ I breathed. He lay, arms wide as though to push away the explosion, face down on the floor with part of the ruined ceiling on top of him. No reaction. No movement. I couldn’t see if he was breathing under his fur coat, but the pelt was suspiciously spiked, as though a liquid was seeping through. I crouched down, ignoring the sudden heat as part of the wall behind us began to smoulder, worked my hand underneath him, found an area near his ribs and rested my palm against the bone.

Two short, shallow movements and I went weak with relief. He was breathing. I began to clear the debris from his shoulders, whilst being constantly knocked into by people, zombie-like, as they made their groping way towards the starlit outdoors, led by those brave enough to re-enter the building. One figure crashed into me, groped forward and grabbed me by the arm. ‘Go away, I have to get him free.’

‘Skye, it’s me.’ Jack raised his head and the moon caught his wicked eyes. ‘I was looking for you. Heard you shout but …’ An arm wiped across his face. ‘Bloody blast was so bright it knocked my night vision right out.’ He glanced down. ‘God, it’s Felix. Is he … you know … because he’s very quiet.’

‘Fuck … right off … and die, Whitaker.’ The voice came from beneath the shards of plasterboard. It sounded slight and wheezy, but definitely Felix. ‘Ow. Ribs. What happened?’

Jack sniffed, then he moved his head tracking a scent, like a dog. ‘Acetylene. That sweet smell. Where did it come from?’

‘I think one of the Skeel boys.’ I carried on freeing Felix. ‘Fe knocked into one of them, I saw the cylinder fall …’

‘Leave me … alone.’ Felix tried to roll away from under my hand.

‘Shut up. I have to move this to get you out.’ I tried to push the rubble more gently off his body. ‘You can’t stay here, the place is on fire.’

‘Maybe I want to. Die.’

His words made the mild night air chill down to near freezing. ‘Fe …’

‘Can you move him?’ Jack put a hand on my arm.

I screwed up my eyes and tried for levity. ‘It’s Felix. He weighs the same as a small dog.’

‘Are you sure?’ Somehow his eyes were darker than the darkness. ‘Because I need to find out where that smell is coming from.’ He helped me move another lump of box-beam from Felix’s back. ‘If we can smell it, that means there’s more.’

Felix took a harsh-sounding breath. ‘Go. Find it. We will … manage.’ Jack gave me a long look and moved off through the darkness, still sniffing, and vanished. ‘Now. Your turn to … disappear.’

‘I am not leaving you.’

‘You would have done. Before.’

His words hit me like another explosion. I had been the sort of person who’d leave a friend. The sort of person who lied and deceived herself just to keep from hurting. That had been me. ‘Not now.’ I hauled another beam off his back. Thankfully the diner seemed to have been built on the cheap, all box-beams and boarding rather than solid wood. But this did mean that it was burning a real treat behind us. ‘Whatever happened changed all of me. But it’s all right, you don’t have to believe me, after all, why would you? Just let me do this one thing. Let me get you out of here.’

‘Bravery? That’s … new, too.’

I freed the last beam and pulled him to his feet with my arms around his waist. ‘It doesn’t matter now what you think of me, Felix. Truly. I know I can never turn back time. All I can do is re-make my life and try not to make the same mistakes again.’ I leaned him against me, taking his weight. ‘Knowing I killed them.’

Felix sagged in my grasp. ‘Still just words,’ he murmured, and with a small sigh he passed out, dropping back to the floor again.

I tried to get purchase for another lifting hold, carrying on my rambling theorising, while the smell of burning paint scorched the back of my throat. The adrenaline was beginning to wear off, leaving me free to feel the soreness in my arms and along my spine where my skin had been flayed through the torn dress as I’d been blown along the sandy ground. I tried to get another grip on Felix but my hands wouldn’t obey, closing uselessly and feebly around his coat but unable to find enough force to grab him as shock paralysed my muscles and ordered me to freeze. Stay still. Wait for rescue. I gave a choked kind of sob as pain and weakness hit me together but I wouldn’t … would not give up. Would not let this fire win.

The fire had taken full hold in the kitchen now. We had to get all the way across the ruined diner and out into the desert before it overtook us, and, at the rate it was moving, we had to get there fast. A whoosh, and I felt my hair begin to frazzle. ‘Eighteen months it’s taken me to grow that back.’ I tried again to clutch at the fur coat. ‘Come on, Fe, wake up and help.’ The heat had begun to gnaw into my bones now, insistent, unignorable. The metal holes on the dress bodice were heating up like little buttons of pain across my cleavage, and I could smell the scorching material. ‘Fe!’

But his head was lolling and his skin was grey. I couldn’t carry him, I couldn’t drag him, and I could feel my skin starting to blister on the back of my neck as the fire ate its way across the floor towards us. Despite the heat I was starting to shiver and my breath wouldn’t catch properly; it felt as though I was only breathing with the top third of my lungs and somewhere behind where the bar used to stand, I could hear an ominous ‘tick tick’ noise, as though metal was heating up and not liking it very much.

‘Fe, we have to get out of here,’ I whispered to the inert form slumped at my feet. ‘We have to.’ But he didn’t so much as groan or flicker an eyelash, even when a sudden spurt of flame flicked quickly over the top of both of us, retreating but leaving a smell of singed nylon and burning hair. It stung briefly over the backs of my hands and the pain made me clench tight, despite the sagging weakness in my wrists. The clench brought a handful of Felix’s coat closer to me and I grabbed it with everything I had, arms into holes where the fabric had split, fingers into pelt, I even pushed a foot through a torn hemline. The pain spurred me on enough to move back, dragging Felix along the floor by his coat like a cat dragging a kitten; one step, two steps with the back of his head bumping along the wrecked floor, and we were away from the flames, three steps and he started to slide along on the rollers formed by the broken chairs and tables. I pulled him, using my bodyweight, bent double, dragging him behind me by the tattered material of his coat. Another step and I had to stop, coughing and gasping until I thought I was going to be sick. We were away from the fire now, but it was only a matter of time before it caught up with us; maybe I could get Felix conscious enough to help … I collapsed forward. If I could only catch my breath …

And then Jack was there beside me. He seized Felix round the waist and tugged him upright.

‘Great. Show up now and do the hero bit.’ I coughed again, raising only my head. I was totally exhausted.

‘I’ve found the cause of all this. We’d better get out …’

Suddenly the ‘tick tick’ was louder. Jack grabbed my arm, my injured arm and pulled me to my feet, then began to run. He ran through the wrecked diner, jumped down through the blown-out glass doors, hit the dirt outside, pulling Felix and me behind him, and accelerated for a few strides, then dived onto the sand, dropping Fe and throwing his own body over mine. I just had time to say ‘ow, you’re really heavy,’ before all words were drowned out by the second, louder, explosion of the night.