“I wasn’t,” Quinn said hurriedly. “I was explaining that she couldn’t!”
“Which means it crossed your mind…” She said in annoyed tones. She turned to me. “You don’t own Quinn, Eve.” Her eyes were flashing and her arms folded aggressively. “You two need to move on from each other!”
“We’re just friends…” I said desperately.
“Well you don’t act like friends,” she said coldly. “You act like estranged lovers.”
“But we’re not, Daisy,” I denied emphatically. “We’ve never slept together, honestly we haven’t!”
She looked cynical and then said snappily, “Well maybe you should have done when you had the chance, to get it out of both your systems!”
For pride’s sake I tried to hold myself together, but I could feel the hot tears welling before I turned away and retreated to my room.
I sat on my bed feeling drained and weak and unable to cope. What on earth was I to do? How could I find a flat I could afford in two weeks? Or other flatmates to rent with? I couldn’t face just going into a random house share with complete strangers with how I felt at the moment. This was so unfair! It was Quinn that had persuaded me to come and live with him and Kes in the first place, and now Daisy was acting like I’d muscled in at some point uninvited!
I picked my leather up from behind my bedroom door and my lid from by the flat door and drove up to the Satterthwaites’ on Quinn’s bike. And the bikes were another thing we’d have to sort out before they both left…
I found Sue down at the stables and burst into tears on her. She walked me over to the barn and we found Paul there. He was looking thoughtfully down at Fay’s car, and I saw with a shock that my own now had a silver roof and aerofoil.
He looked round and saw my face. “I just got on and sorted it out,” he said. “We knew you wouldn’t want a ceremony. I’ve sent some photos to Entwistle for the website though. You have to keep rewarding your sponsors.”
Sue explained what my latest problem was. I saw her look significantly at him, and he nodded slightly.
“We’ll come to pick you up with all your stuff on Christmas Eve, and you can store everything here until you find yourself somewhere new and use the spare room here to tide you over. That way you don’t have to transfer somewhere awful just out of desperation, you’ll have time to look for somewhere suitable.”
I was so relieved. I thanked them. “Jo will hate it though.” I added as an afterthought.
Sue sighed. “Jo will have to lump it won’t she?”
Quinn and Daisy moved out, Quinn leaving his bike with me on semi-permanent loan, and I rattled around on my own in the flat for a fortnight. It was unexpected bliss. I didn’t have to care what anyone thought of me. I could slob. I could cry. I could walk around naked if I wanted. I could stay up till three am staring blindly at a film if I wanted. But most of all I could cry without caring who heard me, without suppressing it, without having to do it quietly. I thought it was doing me good but the day before Christmas Eve Jo remarked at work, “You look more terrible every day I see you.”
I was shocked.
“I hope you’re not getting depressed, Eve. I hope you aren’t going to be mooning around at our place all Christmas like the death’s head at the feast!”
Steve Bolton looked up from the certificate he was filling in, looking horrified. “That was a bit cruel and unnecessary,” he said to Jo.
Jo glowered and stalked off.
Steve glanced at me. “You do look awful though, Eve,” he commented. “You need to take care of yourself better. Your hair looks like it hasn’t been washed or combed for weeks.”
Tony had obviously been ear wigging in the background because he now put in his pennyworth. “You need to take care of yourself, Eve. You need to hang on to your self-respect.”
I felt ashamed. If even the men at work thought I looked awful then things must be bad.
Tony looked intensely at me. “Go back to your running. Run and run until you’re so exhausted you think you can do no more and then go right on down to the gym. It’ll help, honestly.”
The deal at the Satterthwaites’ was that I’d spend Christmas Day with them and then go to my own family for Boxing Day while the Satterthwaites had their extended family over. I tried really hard not to be the death’s head at the feast and joined in everything I could, helping Sue with the cooking, (mainly because I wanted to spy on her to find out how to do it) pulling crackers and groaning at the jokes and everything else that might be expected of me. After dinner, they were exchanging presents, and I felt terrible because I hadn’t got anyone anything. They just laughed and said that was typical of me and they’d expected that. In fact they’d so expected that, Paul said, that only he had bought me anything.
I stared at what he’d given me once I unwrapped it. Two books on design. One extremely technical and specialist to do with cars. Not the sort for the ordinary punter – for mechanical engineers. And the other a more general one about the aesthetics of design.
“God, Dad, how do you expect her to understand them?” Jo exclaimed.
“She can come to me if she’s needs anything explaining,” Paul said.
I flipped through the pages then retreated to a chair in the corner and curled up and that was the last they heard from me all day.
Boxing Day was bearable. Pauline had instituted a massive artificial tree that changed colour slowly in continuous waves via fibre optics technology. She also hauled all the Quinns through from next door for a bit of a party where she put out lots of biscuits, cake, trifle and sausage rolls, which reminded me of birthday parties when I was a child. Mariah threw herself at me delightedly and I held her for most of the afternoon between her forays out to others. Quinn himself wasn’t there – he’d gone to Daisy’s parents. The dog went from knee to knee, begging persuasively with big melting brown eyes and cocked ears, and instantly cleaned up anything Declan dropped.
“Better than a hoover, aren’t you Mr. Greedy Piggle Wiggles?” Pauline cooed fondly at it.
“How old is Ethan now?” I queried to Dad, pulling my hand away from the dog’s insistent snaily cool wet nose, and looking sideways at the unresponsive child, sitting on the floor propped up against an armchair.
“Nineteen months,” Dad said. We both sat staring at the kid for a moment.
“Are you sure he’s not deaf, or blind or something?” I said. Then wished I could bite my tongue out.
But Dad didn’t go bananas. He shook his head. “We’ve had him tested.” There was a pause. “It was when we had Mariah to stay. It reminded me what kids ought to be like. She reminded me of you at her age, sharp as a razor and into everything. You were walking at ten months. Jamie was a bit lazier. Stuck to a bottom shuffle until fifteen months. But he was paying attention to everything. Loved music.” He looked gloomily at Ethan. “They haven’t found anything specific. Say there’s such a wide range of development in the early years there’s no point in worrying too much yet, sometimes they suddenly get the hang of everything.”
I looked at Dad and he looked helplessly back at me. He glanced across the room to make sure Pauline was otherwise engaged chatting to Con and safely out of earshot. “I can’t help it Eve. I can’t make it feel like he’s my son. I thought, like you predicted, that I’d get this rush of love for him once he was born. And I did initially. But when you have a baby sitting there like an leaden lump all day who never smiles at you, never holds their arms out to you, never seems to even notice if you’re there or not, it’s hard to feel connected to them. And he’s just so utterly different to how you and Jamie were, it feels like a strange cuckoo in the nest.”
And they’d only been together for about six months when she’d fallen pregnant, I thought. Not enough time for him to adjust to a completely different personality type and lifestyle. All this had swept him away in a tsunami, and now he was living in the wreckage. No, I mustn’t be so negative. He was probably happy to be with Pauline. It was just
a shame about the kid.
“So how’s that man of yours?” Pauline trilled across the room to me.
I felt like I’d been punched. They didn’t know!
“He’s dead,” I said hoarsely.
The room went quiet.
“What do you mean?” Dad asked with a frown.
“I mean he was killed attending an incident on the motorway about six weeks ago,” I said, trying hard to hold it together.
“Why didn’t you tell us, Petal?” Pauline said, oozing sympathy.
“But you weren’t serious about him were you?” Dad established, pulling a face.
Siân ran over to me and put her arms around me. “Of course she was!” She said sharply. She gave me a big hug. “He was lovely!”
That evening I sat in bed and sprayed a tiny little bit of that perfume onto my wrist and sniffed it. It took me straight back to being in the back of the van with him and his blackcurrant, raspberry and cedarwood tasting kiss. And when I went to sleep that night I dreamt so vividly that he was standing by the bed smiling at me that I woke up and burst into tears when I realised that he wasn’t really there.
By the end of the four days of the Christmas holiday, Jo was complaining about me again, but not for the reasons I’d expected.
“Is she ever going to get her nose out of those books? She just sits there, reads a page, stares into space, reads another page and lies down on the sofa and stares at the ceiling and then reads some more!”
I’d read the technical one from cover to cover and then started again from the beginning to try to understand it properly.
Over the evening meal, maybe prompted by Jo’s remarks, Paul asked me how I was finding them.
“There’s something I’m not understanding,” I said, putting my fork down. “And I can’t decide if they’ve missed something out or whether there’s some bit of the maths I just don’t get.” I got up from the table and went next door to fetch the book, then nudged Pete out of his chair beside Paul, sat down and thumbed through for the page I was looking for. “Here,” I pointed at the formulae.
He read it through. Then he frowned and pushed his plate away and leant over the book, following it with his finger and finally reading it aloud to himself several times. The rest of the family shut up respectfully while this was going on. Well trained into letting him think by the looks of it. Finally he frowned and stared ahead of him.
“They’ve missed at least two of the figures out,” he said at last. “That makes no sense at all as it is. We should probably write to the publishers to let them know there’s a serious error here.”
“How’d she know that?” Jo marvelled unflatteringly. “I thought she was useless at school and failed all her exams?”
I frowned. “I don’t know which ones I passed and which ones I didn’t because I just tore the certificate up and threw it away.”
“Why on earth did you do that?” Pete asked with raised eyebrows.
I shrugged. “I already knew what I planned to do, so I didn’t care.”
“What did your Dad say about that?” Sue asked.
I wrinkled my nose as I tried to remember. “Nothing, I don’t think. I don’t think he even asked me how I’d done…”
“Well I expect your school will have a record of them it you ever need them,” Sue consoled.
“I don’t expect to ever need them,” I said abruptly.
Paul pushed back his chair. “How about you come with me now and I start to train you up on the computer package I use for engineering designs? It puts everything into 3D for you so you can have a better idea if your figures are correct and how your design will work out in practice.”
We disappeared off into his study and didn’t emerge until midnight when Sue looked in and reminded us with a yawn that it was a work day tomorrow.
The next three weeks went by in a regular daily pattern. Work. Running for absolutely miles across the moors with a head torch. Studying and researching the technical side of building a car, including intense perusal of all the PDFs of the current BriSCA technical rules, and then bed.
And then it was the Autosports International Show at the NEC again.
“You have to come, Eve,” Jo insisted.
Paul interrupted. “Oh she’s definitely coming, Jo. I’ve organised for myself and Eve to attend on the Friday for one of the Trade only days so she can make some contacts in the engineering and supply sectors and she can get to some top presentations and talks.”
Jo looked taken aback.
“And Steve has organised for the four of us to be up on stage to be interviewed about the successful ‘Satterthwaite team brand’ as he put it!” Paul added with a wry smile.
Jo pulled a face, but I knew why Paul had agreed to it. Steve had rung me a couple of days ago to ask if I’d be interviewed at the show again.
“Why?” I’d said a touch aggressively.
“Because we like to interview all the Championship winners.”
“But I didn’t win it did I?” I pointed out. “You know I’ve told them to present the cup to his family?”
“Yes, I did. It’s a nice gesture,” Steve agreed. “But no-one begrudges you the title. We all know you might have won it fair and square by the end of the day.”
“But what would you want to talk about?” I interrogated. “I don’t want you mentioning my relationship with Tyler. Nor talking about any subject at all that might upset his kids.”
“Yes, I understand that. We’ll just stick to the driving and your plans for next year. How about we get all the Satterthwaites up with you and discuss how you’ve managed to develop into such a successful team – how you work together – team roles and dynamics and so forth?”
“That sounds safe enough,” I agreed.
“I’ll ring Paul then,” he said.
“Oh and Steve,” I added quickly before he rang off. “Thrills and Spills have been sniffing around to do a ‘Tyler’ memorial and a ‘what are they all doing now?’ catch-up. I’ve refused to be involved, and even then Damian started asking all sorts of intrusive questions over the phone to me and I got suspicious and demanded to know if he was recording me, and finally he admitted he was – so watch what you say to them will you please? Tyler’s kids are bound to watch it.”
“Understood,” Steve confirmed.
Friday was interesting, challenging intellectually, but safe emotionally. The place swarmed with perfectly spoken middle aged men in expensive suits. High flyers from automobile and autosport companies from all over Europe and the States. Everyone was a stranger to me. Paul knew a few. Though he made sure I got introduced to all and sundry at the most useful stands. They stared at me like I was a unicorn. I guess there weren’t that many other young women there on the buying side of the trade stands. And the ones on the selling side were clearly just there as eye candy. I was there in my normal jeans and leather. I hadn’t thought to dress up.
Saturday was really challenging on the emotional front. It just hadn’t occurred to me that no-one from the world of Stocks had seen me since the day Tyler died, and that they’d all want to speak to me about it. It varied from commiseration and sympathy, to a complete lack of awareness of what level of intimacy had been between Tyler and me with the inevitable accompanying lack of sensitivity in the remarks they made.
Mick was the one that affected me the most though. He caught up with me in the Performance Car display and said gruffly. “I’m sorry I was so unkind to you both. If I’d known this was his last year, I’d have wished you all the best. You made him very happy you know in his last few months.”
Tears sprang to my eyes and I tried to brush them quickly away. But tears had sprung into Mick’s eyes too, so we both started to turn away.
“What’s happened to the garage and the business?” I asked suddenly, halting my retreat.
He turned back. “I bought it off Jeanette. The house was set back far enough to be sold separately.”
“And you’ve kept Tom on?”
>
“Of course,” Mick said. “But we’re both going to miss our contact with the Stocks, because neither of us would be any good as a driver.”
“If Jo and I ever got a client who lived more over your way who needed some ongoing mechanical support for their Stock car, would either of you consider being willing to take it on?” I inquired in business like tones.
“Maybe,” Mick said. “Tom certainly would.”
“Ok, I’ll bear you both in mind then…” I said.
We both tried to turn away again, but Mick stopped with his head down. “I worked with him for twelve years you know. I miss him like crazy every day. Just seeing that ‘For Sale’ notice outside the house rips my guts up.” He glanced briefly sideways at me and saw me wiping helplessly at my eyes.
“I feel like there’s no point in even being alive anymore,” I admitted brokenly.
He put a hand out and grabbed my arm. “Nat wouldn’t want that.” He said fiercely, his eyes gripping mine. “He’d want you to drive in every Championship and wipe your feet on them all. He’d be cheering you on all the way you know.”
I shook my head. “There doesn’t seem any point to it without him there.”
“He’d want you to be happy…”
“He made me happy.” My voice trembled as I tried to hold it together. “Driving against him made me happy. Knowing I’d have to drive to my absolute limit to beat him made me happy. Every time I win a title now I’ll know that I’m only getting it because he’s no longer there to take it off me.”
Mick suddenly laughed despite the tears in his eyes. “He said that you know! He said to me that he was the only one standing between you and all the titles and he wasn’t sure how much longer he’d be able to hold you off.”
I smiled waveringly.
“So you do your bit Eve, and make sure you keep everyone else out of the top spot in honour of him,” he urged me. “You were the only one he was willing to hand over to.” He smiled wryly as he remembered something. “He suddenly said to me on the way home one night, ‘that new young slip of a girl, I’m predicting she’s going to be causing me some trouble. One day I’m going to be watching out in my rear view mirror for her.’”
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