The Way Back

by Dominique Kyle

  “Home,” I chose.

  Sahmir dropped us both back at the flat and Chetsi invited him to stay for a coffee. He glanced at me for permission and I nodded, so he came in. Inevitably we sat around discussing the trial and then we got onto Sahmir’s brother Tariq.

  “It’s been lucky for Tariq and your family, that he was in prison all this time,” I directed at Sahmir. “Because he’s such buddies with Hussein I can’t see how he could have possibly not got involved at some level if he’d been around…”

  Sahmir merely looked glum. He must have come to terms now with the fact that his brother would almost certainly have known something about what was going on. “He’ll be let out in a month,” he informed me. He flicked a meaningful look at me from his big dark eyes. “And he’ll be coming back to live at home…”

  I bit my lip. “What are you going to do?”

  Sahmir looked miserable. “My firm is sending me to Malaysia.”

  “Malaysia?” I exclaimed, shocked. That was so far away…

  “Turns out their New York office and their Paris branch weren’t that keen on letting any more dangerous Muslims into their country.” He said sarcastically. “Nor were several other branches they tried. They said that Malaysia was a multi-racial, multi-faith society and I’d fit in well there…”

  I wiped hurriedly at a tear that had leapt unbidden to the edge of my eye. Poor Sahmir. It was so far away.

  “I’ll come and see you there,” I promised.

  “Don’t be silly,” he said, staring at me. “Whenever will you be out there?”

  “The Grand Prix always does a race there,” I reminded him. “I’ll come and see you when I’m over there…”

  He glanced curiously at me. “So you’re going to be on the team that goes out to the races are you?”

  “Probably,” I agreed.

  He suddenly grinned. “I can’t believe myself. I’m actually watching every bloody Grand Prix coverage and I’m even getting quite into it! I’m actually looking forward to following Nish’s career…”

  I grinned back.

  “Saw that interview Nish did after he’d been rescued from those terrorists,” Sahmir darted a sideways look at me and repressed a smile. “Sounds like you did manage to sort them out good and proper after all! With your form I’d even be prepared to suspect that you blew them up yourself!”

  I shook my head soberly. “No. I’m afraid we still needed the help of a bunch of Special Forces and the idiot men themselves to be wearing suicide vests stuffed with explosives.”

  After Sahmir left, Chetsi glanced at her watch, then asked me to come and sit down on the sofa with her. Her expression was serious.

  “Sahmir told us about the kidnapping, and he told us to watch that interview,” she started out cautiously. She studied my face. “And Taib just looked across at me, because, I’m afraid it occurred to us both that the Islamic terrorists aren’t famed for being particularly kind to their female captives…” I knew what she was beating about the bush trying to ask, but I let her carry on. She looked me in the eye. “Did they rape you?”

  I shook my head. But even so the word ‘rape’ had made me flinch. “Luckily they were devout Muslims and I was so haram to them that I got the impression they thought I’d contaminate them if they even touched me. They wanted to go to heaven with a clear conscience. They settled for getting me to cook and clean for them instead.”

  Her eyes searched mine for a long moment and then whatever she saw there seemed to reassure her because she relaxed. “Taib’s due to finish his shift soon,” she said mildly. “So let’s get some dinner organised shall we?”

  Now that I had Friday free, I felt obliged to make my duty visit home. But apparently Dad was away working on a building site in Cardiff so only my stepmother and the cabbage were there. I pushed away the persistent snaily nose of Pauline’s spaniel and looked around at the lifting equipment and the half size bed with cot sides that could be pulled up that had suddenly sprouted in the living room, leaving just one small space with the sofa and massive TV screen in it.

  Pauline saw my face. “We can’t manage lugging him up the stairs now. He’s turning into such a big boy. Aren’t you, Flower?” She directed in fond tones to him. “It was doing our backs in. So we set up down here. It’s better really because we can put him in his cot and live around him without leaving him alone.”

  I glanced at my half-brother, at present in a sort of large reclining wheelchair looking like Jabba the Hutt. Some snot was slowly dribbling out of one nostril. Pauline noticed and quickly whipped a tissue out and wiped it away. She looked momentarily embarrassed. Oh God, I thought, I really have to try my utmost to hide the revulsion I feel. I felt so guilty. I really have to do better than that, I have to get over the revulsion I feel…

  I looked at her face. Poor thing. She thinks it’s her fault. Dad’s other two children by another woman are normal, healthy and having successful lives, but the one he’s had with her is a repellent unresponsive lump. She thinks it’s her bad genes, or her pre-eclampsia that did it. She knows it’s her fault that Dad is trapped into another cycle of desperately having to bring home the bacon to support a second family, and he doesn’t even get to be proud of this one. She knows he didn’t want another child. That she tricked him into it.

  “New telly?” I inquired to change the subject.

  She got her jolly tones on. “Ooo yes! And we have Sky and everything. We don’t get to go out much so we thought we’d invest in something we can both enjoy when we’re spending the evening at home…” Then she picked up an array of local newspapers. “And you’re back in the limelight again I see,” she trilled.

  “Can I see them?” I asked curiously.

  She looked pleased that she’d hit on something that we could both talk about. “I’ll make us a cuppa, shall I? And then you can tell me all about it… you clever girl!”

  The trial and the fact I had come back to town to give evidence was front page news on all of them. Two papers had some stock photo of me from ages ago, but one had a picture of me walking up the steps to the courtroom with Chetsi at my side and a row of police in the foreground. That must have been taken on Monday, and I hadn’t even noticed. It made me feel quite anxious. I’d have to really watch what I did and said for a bit, because they’d report on it for sure…

  The coverage, as you might expect from a local newspaper was sympathetic. It suited them to make out that their town was full of heroes that had put a stop to the abuse, unlike the other towns who had let it go on for decades without admitting to it.

  Eve McGinty, now a race engineer with Williams Race Team in Grove, took the stand looking cool, calm and professional, and proceeded to run rings round the lawyers who tried to slur her person and her evidence on every front. At times she became the object of much needed light relief in what has been a long and grim trial as she regularly took the mickey out of the lawyer who clearly got lost whenever she mentioned any automotive information, making condescending translations of what she’d just said to him, which even caused the defendant Mohammed to have to hide a smile.

  I put the paper down as Pauline came back with two mugs. She kind of juggled them for a moment then giggled and gave me the one proclaiming I’m a welding Dad - like a normal Dad, but hotter. “Don’t want you to take offence!” She said, holding up her own mug with the slogan I’m still hot - it just comes in flushes now!

  “So tell me all about it, Petal!” She urged, eagerly leaning forward.

  Pauline was always the one for having some insider information to pass on to all her friends, but hey, she didn’t have many other ways in her life these days to gain some kudos, so I told her every possible detail I could think of that might interest her, and I admit, I suddenly started enjoying myself and embroidering a bit. I found her admiring attention rather flattering, which is shallow I know, but human nature I guess…

  We had the proposed business meeting on the Saturday afternoon after Jo had finish
ed her shift at Entwistles. I knew I would be expected to come into the Satterthwaite’s house and sit round their huge scrubbed pine kitchen table in their large red floor tiled kitchen, and there was no way I could refuse. So I had to screw myself up to face Sue.

  Sue smiled at me as I came in and wiped my shoes on the mat. There were a couple of bits of straw in her hair, and she smelt a bit horsey, so I guessed she’d been recently mucking out, or grooming or something. Paul was already there, and to my relief, Jo dashed in a just a few moments later so I wasn’t left alone with her parents. Sue made us all some coffee and then discreetly left.

  We settled round the table, which felt so normal in one way because we’d had many a council of war round it before and hundreds of meals together, but also really weird as I’d been banned from the premises for more than a year now and had resigned myself to never doing this again.

  “So how are things with you?” Paul asked me as an opener.

  “Ok, I think,” I reported politely. Then I frowned. “Apart from the fact all the papers are inaccurately citing me as ‘a Williams Race Engineer’ when I’m not, so I’m a bit worried Williams will think I’ve been bigging myself up…”

  Paul glanced at me. “Actually, I rang them up yesterday to see how you were doing and to make sure they didn’t forget about why you were there…”

  I looked a bit tensely at him to hear what the outcome was.

  “And I thought we needed to have a bit more information about what your likely role was going to be there before we had this business meeting, because we could do with knowing your availability in the coming year…”

  “And?” I prompted, unable to bear the suspense.

  “And I got passed on to a Mr. Heskett who seemed to have a fairly good handle on what was going on with you…”

  “Yeah, Heskett somehow seemed to inherit the task of managing me after I got sent up for my first bollocking,” I agreed.

  “First bollocking?” Jo queried with a roll of the eyes. “How many have you had?”

  “A fair few,” I admitted, “though mostly from Alan who has no sense of humour whatsoever. At the moment I’m on a verbal warning for punching one of the men. Heskett tried to have a go at ticking me off for that, but he kept coughing and snorting into his hanky and then gave it up as a bad job because he was laughing so much…”

  Paul closed his eyes briefly for a moment and Jo stared at me. “Honestly, Eve!” She said impatiently. “When are you going to stop resorting to violence? Don’t tell me it was actually you that blew up those terrorists as well?”

  I shook my head. “SAS or such like...”

  “Ok,” Paul intervened severely, “so as I was saying, Heskett was able to confirm that you’d be staying within a team that would attend all the races, so that does mean that your time is going to be severely limited next year…”

  I eyed Paul speculatively. What else might Heskett have said to him? But hey, it was a relief to know that they’d definitely be keeping me on, and of course it was an honour to be entrusted with being on the pit team, and Heskett was right that it would give me a good basic understanding of the business – it’s just that it didn’t seem to be advancing my career any. I was just exchanging being a mechanic at a backwater garage being told what to do by someone else, for being a mechanic in a more glamorous garage, being told what to do by someone else…

  “You don’t look a hundred percent happy about it,” Jo observed.

  I shrugged and sighed. “Heskett says they might sponsor or fast track me through a degree later on. I guess I can’t be involved on the design side until I’ve done that…”

  I saw Paul glancing assessingly at me. Looking for signs of a resistance to the word degree, I guess, given the huge aggressive fuss I used to make whenever he mentioned the subject to me. But you know what, although the idea of having to set foot back into some educational establishment was terrifying, the thought of being able to study automotive engineering in depth, mentored by people who knew everything about the cutting edge of the subject was exciting.

  A moment later my thoughts were interrupted by Jo saying sharply, “Yoo hoo, Eve? You’ve blanked out! We’re trying to have a meeting here!”

  I blinked. I hadn’t been aware of it. “Sorry,” I excused myself, “I was just wondering where we could next take the KERS technology. Or whether there was some completely different sideways step we could take to develop some more innovative environmental methods of recycling energy…”

  Jo rolled her eyes. Paul just smiled.

  “Actually, it’s about your designs that we’re wanting to discuss with you,” he plunged in. “We’re getting a lot of orders for your Stock car.”

  I stared at him. “What do you mean by ‘a lot’?”

  “Six definite, two possibles…”

  “Blimey…” I remarked, raising my eyebrows. I wasn’t sure how to react.

  “Since Horrocks has been showcasing it by winning everything going including the Gold roof, everyone wants one…” Jo explained dryly.

  “But I can’t possibly make that many with the schedule I’m on, living miles away down south!”

  “No, but Jo could make them for you,” Paul suggested.

  I looked at Jo. “But six?” I said. “That’s nearly a full time job!”

  Jo nodded. “Yeah, I know. So I’d have to go onto half time at Entwistle’s…”

  “Entwistle is going to love me…” I drawled sarcastically. “First I bugger off and then I take Jo with me…”

  Jo smiled slightly. “And Tony’s interested in helping out. He’s getting quite into Stocks now…”

  “Is he?” I smiled slowly.

  “What does that smile mean?” Jo asked suspiciously.

  I shrugged. “I just thought he might. That’s why I asked him to help you out when I left…”

  Her eyes narrowed on my face. “You asked him to help me out?”

  “I knew he’d go for it, once he’d dipped a toe in.” I covered quickly, to divert her. “Is he going to start driving?”

  Jo frowned. “I never thought of asking him that.”

  “He could use the hire ones whenever you haven’t got a client,” I suggested.

  She hesitated. “I might just give that business up…”

  “Seems to me it’s a good advert, and it gives you an opportunity to stay in the mind of all the Stocks community – an excuse to turn up to all the major venues and keep a finger on the pulse without having to drive yourself. If you’re going to start building all these cars you’ll need to be seen about the place…”

  “Hmmm,” she pulled a reluctant face. “But I see what you mean…”

  “So we need to decide on the structure of this new business,” Paul intervened to get us back on track. He glanced at me. “It seems to me that given your commitments Eve, the business ought to be Jo’s with her paying you a fee for the right to use your design every time she sells another car.”

  I thought about it. A while back I would have been disappointed by that suggestion, but now it sounded like a big relief. I wouldn’t have to have any involvement in the finance or the set up or the business decisions or the day to day running of it…

  “Ok,” I agreed. “But I don’t see how the ongoing development can take place without me driving regularly. When I went over to the Reivers to talk to them about their design and construction business, Pa Reiver said he was always driving his latest one to test it and tweak it, and gain new ideas. He said his worst year was when he won the European, and then everyone expected him to be fast and asked pissy questions whenever he wasn’t, when of course, if you keep changing things to test out the effects, sometimes those effects will be detrimental rather than positive, and he found it a complete pain…”

  “Well, if we got Tony driving,” Jo thought aloud, “and he was willing just to do it for fun rather than really competitively, he could test out different set-ups for us couldn’t he?”

  Paul looked at me. “And
if you’re going to have to wait a season or two before transferring over to the design side at Williams, maybe you can keep honing your bright ideas into new Stock designs. It’s all good experience for you. Because we can only build this first design for a year or two before someone else starts copying it or it’s superseded by someone else’s improved design. So you need to keep one step ahead all the time to keep the orders rolling in…”

  Yes, I could see it would always be a kind of arms race. “Ok,” I said thoughtfully. “I can see that that sort of set-up would suit me rather well. Because if I’m honest,” I spread my hands apologetically. “I loved building the first one because it was all about developing the materials and the design and learning new skills, but it would drive me mental if I had to stand around making eight more identical ones. I’m only really interested in the design side of it…”

  “Whereas I,” Jo put in, “Can’t think up new ideas, but find it really rewarding to take on projects someone else has started, and systematically take them through to a conclusion.”

  “Really?” I said, a bit gobsmacked. I couldn’t understand that point of view.

  “Yeah, sorry an’ all that,” she responded wryly to my expression. “I know it’s hard to comprehend how completely boring I am!”

  “It sounds like you’re perfectly matched to me,” Paul put in with a laugh. “One designer and one builder.” He looked across at his daughter. “And if you put me in place as your consultant, I’m sure I’ll be able to iron out any wrinkles you come across on the way…”

  Finally the moment I had been dreading all afternoon arrived. As I walked back out to my car with Jo, Sue caught me. She smiled and offered, “Do you want a tour round the new stables?”

  Jo poked me hard in the back. “Go on, Eve, they’re impressive”

  I gritted my teeth. I knew I had to get it over with, for both Sue’s sake and my own.

  “S’pose I could,” I muttered ungraciously.

  Jo gave me a right good shove to push me after her.