“What’s happened, is that one of the other teams have lost one of their drivers at short notice, so they approached Bottas, and after a good deal of negotiation along the whole chain, we’ve agreed to release Bottas from his contract a year early, mainly because we’ve got Gilbraith there waiting in the wings ready to go, and we’re willing to take a punt on him…”
I took a deep breath in. “So are you saying,” I clarified carefully, “that Nish will now be one of your two main drivers this season instead of just the reserve one?”
“That’s about the long and the short of it,” Heskett agreed with a delighted smile in his voice.
Nish took one look at my face when he slid sideways to a stop beside me in a big cloud of snow, and demanded, “What?”
I shook my head. “Nothing,” I denied. But I could barely keep my excitement under control. “Have you got your phone on?” I asked suddenly.
He felt around for it and pulled it out and frowned down at it. “No, actually.”
“Well put it on, you idiot!” I said impatiently.
He glanced at me and then his eyes narrowed. “What are you not telling me? Who were you on the phone to when I was approaching you down the slope?”
I just had to dart off, or I might just have had to blurt it out. He chased me down the slope. I wove in and out, he weaved swiftly after me. Then he caught up with me and threw me down in the snow to the side in the trees and stamped my skis off. At this point I offer you a handy piece of advice – don’t have a snowball fight with a man who’s spent many a summer playing cricket at a posh private school and who also has a good working knowledge of the dark arts of spin bowling. A lump of hard snow coming at you at seventy five miles an hour bloody hurts…
“I can’t believe it! I can’t believe it!” He kept repeating. Royce had rung him at three and since then all we’d done was hang around on the terrace of cafés while he texted and phoned just about everyone in his address book.
A guy was listening in on the next table. I could see he could speak English because of his expression. Eventually he leant across and said, “Congratulations mate!”
Nish looked surprised.
“Does that mean we’ve got a new British driver on the circuit?” He established.
“Aye, it does,” I agreed. The guy had a distinct northern accent so I felt safe to go all regional on him.
“What’s your name?” He asked. “So I can be rooting for you…”
“Gilbraith,” Nish said and held out his hand. “Driving for Williams.” They shook hands, and several other blokes who’d been earwigging reached across too, and then there was a big jolly party around him offering to buy him a drink.
He was laughing and shaking his head, “Alcohol and driving doesn’t mix well,” he refused.
So they insisted on buying him a massive hot chocolate instead which when he took an unwary sip of, made him recoil for a moment. “This must be at least half rum!” He murmured sideways to me.
“I’ll help you out,” I offered with a smile.
But I didn’t think that was the brightest thing for those guys to have done, because if Nish really had been a Muslim, he’d have been really upset now. As it was, Nish manfully got some of it down to show willing, and I finished it off for him. Not a hardship for me, it was really yum.
Nish was on a complete high. “I’ll never sleep tonight!” He exclaimed. “I’m just too excited!”
I smiled at him and began slowly unbuttoning his shirt.
“I’ll just go for a pee,” he excused himself.
I didn’t, it was better, more intense if I had a full bladder. And I needed to do everything possible to help him manage it tonight.
He seemed to have a different attitude this evening. As though he was so happy that he didn’t mind how long anything took, and as though he was confident now that he could achieve anything. The closer I got to the climax, the more I searched out his mouth and kissed him with a passionate intensity. I came so explosively that I was overcome by wave after wave, panting and groaning, and then I was grabbing at his head and pulling it down to mine, devouring him hungrily and pulling hard at his buttocks to make him come in. I yelled loudly as he forced himself in, completely out of control and moaned appreciatively at every thrust, matching his rhythm with my own, and biting so hard on his shoulder that he cried out.
Afterwards he seemed a bit shell shocked. “Is that what happens when a woman comes?” He asked.
I sighed with sensuous pleasure, stretched out like a cat and pretended to purr. “It’s what happens when I come,” I said. “Never seen another woman come, so I wouldn’t know.”
He reached out a hand and rested it flat on my belly. He stroked thoughtfully there for a moment and then he grinned at me. “You’re a little tiger on the quiet, aren’t you?” He teased.
I ran a finger down the arm he was leaning up on. “How was it for you?”
He suppressed a smile. “A bit scary,” he admitted. “I thought you were going to eat me alive.” His eyes crinkled up. “But really satisfying – you’re right. It was such a turn on to have you so rampant, and before now, you barely reacted to me coming in you, but this time it was really doing something for you wasn’t it?”
“Yeah, it feels fantastic when I’ve come – it properly finishes me off. But if it’s just a mechanical shoving in and out with no lead up, then it can just feel like someone’s trying to poke the small of your back out with a broomstick…”
“Oh my God!” Nish was laughing and grimacing at the same time. “The picture you paint is a grim one! Do you really think that’s how all my partners have been experiencing it?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know – some of them may not even know what they’ve been missing…” I smiled at him. “But you can show them now, can’t you? If you can do that first time when you get a new girlfriend she’ll be like, wow he’s amazing!”
I started stroking him now, as I knew it felt nice for men to be stroked afterwards, now they were flooded with oxytocin to make them more sensitive.
“And if it’s her first time with you she’ll probably be so fired up, and so in love, or at least be fancying you rotten, that you’ll probably have to do very little work at all because every touch will be making her melt and go liquid inside…”
He looked in a fascinated way at me. “Is that how it feels to a girl?”
I thought about it. “If you’re in love it does. You just want to melt into the other person and become one. What does it feel like for men?”
He frowned consideringly. “Maybe I’ve never been properly in love. It’s seemed more like a fire in the loins and an unbearable pressure building up.”
“Oh well,” I said, “Maybe one day you’ll feel something more. Tyler was madly in love with me and he’d just come over all weak and he’d say that when I smiled at him he couldn’t breath and it felt like someone had just taken his heart and squeezed it. And when I heard his voice suddenly if I didn’t know he was present, my heart would just absolutely flip…”
Suddenly I was swept by an unbearable sadness. I tried to conceal it, but Nish had already seen and understood. He reached out a hand to me and rubbed my arm. “Is he the only guy you’ve ever loved?”
I nodded, and then tears were pouring down my cheeks.
“Not Quinn ever?” Nish said tentatively.
“Don’t think so,” I said uncertainly, wiping roughly at my eyes.
Nish smiled in an amused way and pinched my chin teasingly. “You’re awfully possessive off him though, aren’t you?”
I sniffed and eyed him a bit combatively. “Am I?”
He grinned. “You absolutely hate him swanning off with me, don’t you? And you get fantastically jealous if he as much as glances at Sapphie…”
“That doesn’t equate to love,” I said stiffly.
He pinned me down on the pillow and lay his full weight on me, his hands holding my wrists above my head. His dark eyes intelligently quartere
d my face as he looked down at me. “You could have fooled me,” he said with a smile. “There you were, all trustingly curled up in his arms on the sofa at my place, fast asleep like two babes in the wood!”
I tried to throw him off, but I couldn’t. Then I growled deep and cross in my throat at him.
“You’ve slept with him though, right?” He observed.
“No, I damn well haven’t!” I denied crossly.
Nish looked surprised. “Why not?”
“If you think I’m going to be another notch on his bloody bedpost..!” I snapped.
“Fair enough,” Nish agreed equably.
I tensed up and tried to really throw him off this time, then growled angrily again when I couldn’t manage to.
“Easy, Tiger,” he teased. He let go of me and allowed me to wriggle out.
“I really need to pee now,” I said abruptly. He’d been lying heavy on my bladder.
When I got back into bed and switched the light out, he reached over and drew me close into him. I put my arms round him and we interleaved our legs. As I pressed close to him I could feel he was already hard again. Yep, no problem with his fitness levels at all.
We went our separate ways at the end of a week that had been most satisfying in every which way. I came home, wondering how I was going to cope with having to go back to life without daily sex. But I came into my flat to find a shock awaiting me.
I got immediately on the phone to Chetsi, Sahmir’s sister-in-law, my hands shaking. “Please help me, Chetsi,” I appealed desperately as soon as she answered, “they’ve sent me a letter saying I’ve got to turn up in court to testify against Mohammed next week…”
“So how long will you be gone for?” Heskett demanded, obviously displeased.
“I don’t know, I really don’t. They haven’t said how many days I’ll have to go in for. I expect they won’t know…”
“Well, you’ll have to really get your head down when you get back here,” he informed me sternly. “Because you’ve got plenty more to truly master yet…”
I nodded obediently.
“So what’s it about?” Heskett asked.
I hesitated.
Heskett frowned. “We’re in the media all the time here, Eve, you know that. We have to know about anything that could affect us.”
Nish was now big news, about to start his first season, and my name had been linked to his, so I could see their point. I had a go at an explanation.
“Are you serious?” Heskett sounded aghast. “You went undercover to expose a Pakistani grooming gang scandal?”
I nodded. “And that’s why I was so worried initially by the break-ins last year. With Nish being half Pakistani, I wondered if some newspaper suspected I was going undercover again to expose something that he was up to and were trying to dig out what the dirt was…”
Heskett sat back in his seat. “Looks like we’re lucky to find out that it was only a ruthless bunch of Islamic extremist kidnapping suicide bombers,” he observed dryly. “Heaven forbid that it could have been the press…”
Chetsi had told me to arrive at theirs on Saturday even though I wasn’t due in to the Courthouse till Monday. She said it would give me time to settle in. Before I went to them, I diverted to do something which I knew I ought to have done at Christmas, but couldn’t bring myself to because it would be too intrusive to turn up in the middle of the festivities. I turned into the Satterthwaites’ yard. I couldn’t see anyone around, so I walked into the barn where the F2s were kept.
Ten minutes later Paul walked in. He looked taken aback. “I couldn’t think who could have turned up in a car like that,” he said.
I was sat on the concrete floor in front of my two cars holding my knees tightly to my chest, with my chin resting on my knees. “It’s Gilbraith’s,” I explained. “I’m on his licence and while he’s away he wanted me to keep it on the road.”
Paul came over and sat on the bench just behind me.
“Sorry,” I said. “I know I shouldn’t be here, but I need to decide which car to sell…”
“You’re welcome to come here anytime you like,” he assured me. Then he asked, “Why are you having to sell a car?”
I sighed. “I need to get a Ministox for Nadia, and this is the only way I can afford it…”
“Are you giving up the driving?” His tone was neutral, but I knew he’d be gutted if I had to say ‘yes’. On the other hand it would be his damn fault if I had to.
I shrugged. “Just can’t make it with every other weekend of the same season taken up with another format, can I? And even if I just about managed to squeeze into enough qualifiers for the World, it wouldn’t be fair if I got the Gold, would it? Because I wouldn’t be able to fulfil my tour duties, would I?
“That was a great race you drove,” Paul complimented with a smile. “I didn’t have time to tell you that on the day…”
I returned a smile in his direction. “My new design now has a Gold and a Silver roof on it,” I said triumphantly.
“It wouldn’t have done if you’d managed to get anywhere on the grid.” He suggested.
I waved a dismissive hand.
“So how’s it going down in Grove?” Paul asked.
I shrugged. “Good. They don’t seem to remember I’m just an intern.”
Paul frowned. “Well don’t let them leave it that way. Make sure they change your contract when you get to the end of your internship so you get proper pay and conditions.”
“End of Jan, I think,” I said vaguely.
“If you need me to ring them up and negotiate for you, let me know,” Paul said firmly.
“Thanks,” I said. I stood up awkwardly as the floor was cold and I’d stiffened up and now had pins and needles. “I’ll sell the one that wasn’t Tyler’s and negotiate with Pete to see if I can buy Tyler’s old one off him in instalments so I can keep both of them for Nadia when she’s sixteen.”
I caught a sort of sad look in his eyes as I turned round. I wasn’t sure if it was on behalf of me and Tyler, on behalf of Nadia, or just because it must seem like the end of an era. The car I would be selling was my shale one that used to belong to Jo. Now he, both his children and myself would be completely out of it. Since his own father had been there at the very start of the Stox racing and was one of the pioneers in this country, it must seem like a betrayal of his heritage.
“Rob says in a couple of years’ time he’ll pass his F1s on to me,” I told him, trying to offer a sop. “And maybe by then I’ll have more idea about what my regular schedule will be looking like.”
Paul smiled. “You’ll enjoy the F1s…”
“Yeah,” I agreed and smiled too.
“And you and Rob are a match made in heaven,” Paul commented.
“Excuse me,” I said stiffly. “Rob is a happily married man..!”
“I just meant that your driving style and attitudes are pretty much on a par and he’ll enjoy mentoring you,” Paul explained.
“You mean we’re both competitive, bloody minded and ruthless?” I interpreted dryly.
Suddenly he glanced beyond me to the doorway of the barn. I turned to see Sue standing there. It felt like a punch in the stomach. I hadn’t seen her since that night over a year ago now when the stables had been firebombed and her horse had been killed.
“Come into the house for a cup of tea, Eve,” she said. She was trying to sound normal but her expression and tone of voice was strained.
“Gotta go,” I said abruptly and walked swiftly out, weaving quickly round her before she could reach out, getting as fast as I could into the car and slamming the door.
I drew up outside Chetsi and Taib’s and sat there for a few minutes until my hands stopped shaking, and then I got out and rang the doorbell.
Chetsi was being a complete darling. Reassuring me. Checking out tiny details like what I’d brought to wear in court. Promising me that there was no way the prosecution would send me in there without seeing me first to talk about what t
o expect. I could see she was less than impressed with the fact that I’d just got an official letter and hadn’t even been rung to have it explained to me what would be going on.
“But this trial has been rolling on for months now,” she sighed. “Every week in the local paper there are more revelations and reports from the court. There’re just so many accused, and so many victims and witnesses that I guess you’re just one of many, are adult, and don’t even live in the area, so they’re just processing the lot of you on an industrial scale. I’ve been kicking up a stink to make sure the younger witnesses and victims get more supportive treatment and I think it’s been making a difference.” As one of the psychiatrists working in the local hospital, and treating some of the victims, she would have some clout.
“How did Sahmir manage?” I asked. “He seemed awfully distressed about it when I saw him last year.”
Chetsi and Taib exchanged glances. “It was really rough for him,” Chetsi reported. “Hussein’s friends and family turned up every day in court and jeered. He got spat on outside the court as he came and left. He got attacked. He’s had death threats.”
“And Tariq..?” I asked nervously.
“The death threats were from him,” Taib said grimly.
“Shit,” I said in hollow tones. Then my eyes filled with tears. “This is my fault isn’t it? I started all this and I got Sahmir involved…”
Chetsi put a hand on mine. “Someone had to do it Eve. You’ve managed to put a stop to a horrible cycle of abuse before hundreds more lives were ruined. Sahmir didn’t have to agree to do it…”
Taib looked seriously at me. “It took a long time for Sahmir to come to terms with it,” he gripped my eyes with my own, trying to get me to understand and accept, “but now he knows that he’s done the right thing and there are other sectors of the community supporting him all the way, so I’m sure in the long run what he’s been through will be the making of him…”
“We’re looking after him, Eve,” Chetsi promised.
Half an hour later, the doorbell rang. Chetsi answered it. “Oh! You must be Jo?” I heard her saying.
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