One Perfect Summer

There’s compassion in her eyes.
    ‘He’s so . . . He’s so . . .’ I can’t find the words.
    ‘Haven’t you ever seen him being interviewed?’ she asks softly.
    ‘No.’ I swallow. ‘Have you?’
    She nods. ‘Yes.’
    ‘You never talk to me about him,’ I say in a small voice.
    ‘I didn’t think you wanted me to talk to you about him. I thought you considered it too disloyal to Lukas.’
    ‘I do. I don’t want you to talk to me about him.’ But that’s a lie. Right now there’s nothing I want more.
    ‘Shall I change the chan—’
    ‘NO!’
    She gingerly places the remote control down on the sofa between us, and soon the programme comes back on. Now they’re interviewing the director who made Strike , a grizzled-looking American man in his late fifties with wiry grey hair and horn-rimmed glasses.
    ‘I knew the kid was a star from the moment I laid eyes on him. When I found him he was bruised and battered mentally. I could tell he’d been physically beaten too. You just knew it. It was in his eyes. No wonder he learned how to fight. No wonder he got so good. Of course,’ he chuckles, ‘I had to convince him to come back with me to Hollywood. He thought acting was a mug’s game, but in the end he came around to the idea. The same went for changing his name.’
    The interviewer asks a question off-screen. She sounds confused: ‘Change his name? Isn’t his name Joseph Strike?’
    The director shakes his head with a wry grin. ‘No, no, no. Joseph, yes. Strike, no.’
    ‘What’s his real name?’ You can almost hear her salivating at this exclusive.
    He laughs knowingly. ‘I can’t tell you. That was part of the deal. He didn’t want to change it,’ he says animatedly, sitting forward in his seat, ‘but in the end I guess he was okay with the idea of leaving his identity behind and trying something new.’ He looks thoughtful for a moment, and then the documentary cuts to a fight scene from Strike . Joe and another guy are pummelling each other with their fists and feet. Suddenly Joe knocks his opponent out. The camera cuts to Joe’s face and it’s full of fury, but it changes in a flash to remorse.
    ‘Shit!’ he shouts, dropping to his knees and trying to rouse his opponent.
    We cut back to the grizzled director, who is shaking his head with amusement. ‘He’s not a fighter at heart. But that pain he feels?’ His face grows serious. ‘That pain he feels every day about God knows what?’ He jabs his finger at the air to punctuate his point. ‘That pain translates to the audience. He has the control , the spirit , the drive . It was only a matter of time before he became a superstar.’
    I watch the rest of the documentary without being able to say a word. I keep feeling Lizzy’s eyes on me, but mine are glued to the screen. I go through so many different emotions. One minute I can see the boy I knew, the vulnerable, beautiful boy I fell in love with, and my eyes fill with tears and my heart reaches out to him . . . The next he’s being cast as a womaniser and a playboy, photographed out on the town with models and actresses hanging off his arm, and I barely recognise him at all.
    ‘Are you okay?’ Lizzy asks me when the credits start to roll.
    ‘No,’ I mumble. ‘I’m so confused.’
    She has to lean in to hear me because I’m speaking so quietly.
    ‘What do you want to do?’
    ‘I want to watch Sky Rocket ,’ I tell her in a daze. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve got it on DVD?’
    ‘As a matter of fact . . .’ She gets to her feet. ‘I do.’
    She’s exhausted, but she manages to stay up with me while we watch Sky Rocket , and he’s incredible in it – I’m completely and utterly enthralled. It’s a sci-fi flick, but not a full-on action film. Lizzy tells me that Hong Kong Kid was a martial arts film and he had to master kung fu for the role, but he had only a small part in that. This is more of a futuristic drama set in space, with a fair few fight scenes thrown in for good measure. There’s also a love scene in it which turns my stomach into a jittering mess. My heart thump, thump, thumps and I’m on the edge of my seat as I watch him take that evilly beautiful actress with raw desire. Jealousy courses through my veins, even though I know it’s not real, it’s only an act, but it’s harder to tear my eyes away than it is to watch it.
    ‘I can see what you saw in him,’ Lizzy says when it’s finished.
    She has no idea how horrible her comment