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.
Chapter Eight
‘Well, that was fun. No, not fun, what’s that other thing? Yeah, pathetic.’ Lissa stomped around the room and Jack thought how much she resembled an angry stick insect. She turned her back on him and rested her hands on her hips, her shoulder-blades sticking out behind her like spines, her whole body all angles. ‘And why are you laughing? This ain’t no laughing matter, Jackie, ’cos if she decides to take this to the press …’
‘What, getting sick-drunk in my room? Hardly headline material is it, even out here.’ And anyway he hadn’t been laughing at that, he’d been laughing a
t the thought that making love to Lissa had been like shagging a set-square. He shook his head, wondering why he’d ever done it, why he’d ever found that underfed-rabbit look attractive. The humour died as he remembered why, remembered all the things that had come associated with dating Lissa, all those things that had almost cut through his famed detachment. Fear, of the world, of himself, trying to forget who he was and what he’d done and the running, the endless fucking running. And then the pain. ‘Mind you, in this place it probably makes the papers when a cow craps.’
‘You would be surprised.’ Lissa rummaged in her bag for her phone and checked it quickly for messages. ‘You wanna know why I really came schlepping over to this God-forsaken corner that’s got more dust than my Aunt Effie’s shelving unit? I came ’cos I’m worried about you. That last meet we had, you were wound tighter than I’ve ever seen you and this last little while you’ve been kinda weird, twitchy – and you’re smoking more. And the one thing I do understand about you is that you smoke when you’re stressed.’
Jack turned back to his laptop, using his interest in it as an excuse to keep his face averted. Whatever else she might be, Liss had always been good at reading his expressions, at knowing what he was thinking and at times like these he wasn’t sure that staying friends had been such a good idea. ‘I’m fine. What about you? How’re you doing these days, Liss?’
He could hear her careful breathing behind him. When she spoke again her voice was different, softer and without the top-note of complaint. ‘Hey. It’s okay, I’m not blaming you. Some chick got drunk, not your fault. I’ve never blamed you, Jack, not for any of it.’
‘What about Geth? Does he come under this “blame moratorium” that you’ve got going? He’s done a bloody good job of bringing both of us to our knees in his own, inimitable way.’ And all Jack could see then was Skye’s face, her wide blue eyes as she tried to hide her desperate crush, the little flush that broke out on her cheeks when she said Gethryn’s name. ‘Please don’t tell me that you’re prepared to forgive and forget, Liss, you know how he operates – the moment you weaken he’s in there like a dog with a new leg to hump.’
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