Star Struck Read Online Free

the words. ‘Might as well, since we’ve come this far.’
    His body slumped a little in … what? Relief? ‘All right, if you say so. Better get going before the cops arrive, anyhow. Hey, do you think they wear those uniforms, like when they rock up on CSI ? With the really tight trousers? Maybe we should hang around. Look, pop another Valium, that should tide you over till we get there.’ He flipped the glove box open and passed back the brown prescription container and a bottle of water. ‘Here. Take two.’
    â€˜Two? Are you sure?’
    â€˜Darling, I take more than that when I’m getting my feet done, you’ll be fine.’ He kept his head turned, watching me swallow. ‘There. You’ll be nice and calm for our arrival now.’
    â€˜Thanks.’
    â€˜Don’t mention. What set you off, if you don’t mind me asking, and now that you’ve got a neck full of calmdown? You were doing so well up ’til now.’
    â€˜Just … for one second it was … I haven’t been in a car since.’
    Felix’s face seemed to ripple as various emotions struggled for expression. ‘Like a flashback? Yeah.’
    We sat quietly for a moment, while my brain shuffled through the blankness that was all that was left where so many memories had once been, until it was caught in the soft edging between sleep and wakefulness. ‘Do you think we’ll ever get over it?’ I let the words trickle from my mouth, muffled by the blanket, and heard Felix’s reply likewise sieved through the wool.
    â€˜I hope not. I really hope not. Now, go to sleep, we’ll be there very soon.’

Chapter Three
    In an untidy room at the front of the motel, an equally untidy Jack fired up his laptop, waited until the Fallen Skies logo appeared and then began to work.
    â€˜INT. SPACESHIP – DAY he typed, then leaned back and chewed his lip. Hell’s teeth, it never used to be this hard. Maybe I’ve lost it, maybe I’m not meant to do this any more. His fingers roamed the surface of the desk, subconsciously searching for the pack of cigarettes he knew he’d carefully hidden from his writing self, found a pencil sitting blamelessly on top of a sheaf of papers, and deliberately snapped it in half. The noise made him jump. Bugger. Must stop doing this, running out of pencils.
    As he turned his attention back to the screen, which throbbed accusingly before him, his hand continued its unconscious movement, and the next thing he realised he was sucking on the broken pencil end, filling his mouth with the boxy taste of wood and tiny granules of graphite. He snatched the stub from between his teeth, spat ferociously, and hurled it onto the floor, where it sat damply between his bare feet.
    I want to go home. The thought took him by surprise and he pulled a face at his reflection in the screen, where the words shone through his hair and INT and DAY formed double-images on the lenses of his glasses. I wake up dreaming that I can smell the moors, that the heather is flowering and the ground is damp and clingy underfoot. I’m walking out under the high sky with the birds like little full stops up between the clouds and there’s nothing for miles but me and the sky and those little purple bells of flower which smell like honey on toast. The expression which stared back at him twisted its mouth. Yeah, right. And Enid Blyton used to pop over for tea with Beatrix Potter and her talking bloody rabbits. Pull yourself together, you nutter. That was then, this is now, Iceman, and you’ve got work to do. Bills to pay, things to hold together and one hell of a lot of forgetting to do.
    He blanked his mind and went back to the script, not even noticing when the other half of the pencil found its way between his lips, and he sucked on it with oblivious contentment.

Chapter Four
    I jerked into a loose kind of wakefulness as the car drew up under a