“Eve McGinty.”
It didn’t seem to ring a bell despite the fact they’d done quite a few stories on me and Quinn in the old Thrills and Spills days.
“Listen luv,” he spelt it out as though I was thick, “we’re a local paper. Our remit is to keep the local community together. Forty percent of our readers are from the ethnic minority groups. There’d be complete uproar. And you’re unequivocally white, in case you haven’t noticed. And so are most of our journalists despite the bloody quota system. We’d be accused of institutional racism. We’d be boycotted left right and centre, and if any small part of the story turned out to be wrong, heads would roll!”
“I just thought you could get a reporter to look into it, I thought that’s what reporters did!” I said.
“You need File on Four, or Panorama or The Report for that sort of thing.”
I looked blankly at him.
“You know, the BBC, Radio 4 – someone whose letter box is out of reach of local dog turds and bombs…”
“Ok,” I said feebly, and retired defeated.
“What are you up to?” Jo demanded. “You keep disappearing off, lunchtimes and evenings.”
But I couldn’t tell her about all this Jessica stuff and all these people I was fruitlessly seeing. She’d go mental with me.
“How’s poor Pete do you think?” I speculated. “Trapped as a permanent hostage with your Dad in the Beast?”
“I think he’s beginning to look a bit miserable,” she admitted. “I expect he could do with some moral support, but by some sleight of hand and mysterious magic, you’ve still managed to never coincide with them at a single race!”
“Yeah, result huh?” I purred.
“I think that you two should talk,” she suggested.
“How do I do that?” I queried. “Have you noticed how your Dad always makes sure we’re never left alone together in the barn?”
“Right, somehow I’m going to sort it,” Jo plotted. “Some weekend when Dad’s got to go away on business I’ll suddenly take a sickie and you and Pete will have to go to some track on your own in the Beast overnight to help out with each other’s car.”
“Ok,” I said, “that’s a deal. You do that.”
That weekend, on the way to Buxton, Cody got me into a flat panic. I’d had that talk with her a while back, as her Dad had requested and she’d gone a bit red and said nothing. Now she announced that she wanted to tell me something. I tensed, and held the wheel tightly.
“What Jessica didn’t tell you is that she once invited me out with her and took me to this flat that was full of Pakistani lads. And not only lads,” she pulled a disgusted face. “Really old men!”
I glanced worriedly sideways at her.
“And she tried to get me to take some tablets, but I just pretended to, then spat them out down the arm of a sofa. And then some bloke, one of the younger ones tried to grope me, but I ran to the door and it was locked, but just then someone unlocked it to come in from outside and I shot out. He was bringing another couple of girls in. I felt terrible leaving Jessica there but she was well off her face on whatever she’d taken. I didn’t dare tell Dad because he’d have been furious with me. He’s warned me off Jessica several times…”
“Do you think she’s recruiting for them?” I asked in as calm a tone as I could muster.
Cody wrinkled her nose. “She apologised to me a couple of weeks later and said that they gave her a quota of a certain number of girls she had to bring in every week or else…”
“So, Cody,” I asked carefully. “Do you think this is consensual or not?” I could see she didn’t understand what I meant so I tried to rephrase it. “Do you think she’s doing this of her own free will or do you think she is being threatened and pressurised into it?”
Cody was silent. Eventually she said with a worried frown, “She says she’s being threatened. But the day I was with her she went of her own accord and tricked me into going with her, and it was she who brought the drugs along and gave them to me, not the men…”
“But if you’d not had the common sense to spit them out and run away,” I ventured. “You yourself may well have been raped. So maybe that’s how she started out?”
Cody began to cry. “She says that when she was thirteen the young handsome ones used to take her out and buy her presents and she thought they were her boyfriends and then they started supplying her with drugs and drink and now it’s all just sex and more sex with anyone who comes along.”
Thing is, I thought, it’s yet again just ‘what Jessica says’. The story she was reporting was identical to the Rotherham and Rochdale cases. She could be basing her tale on what she’d read herself online. There was still no proof of coercion, though Cody’s story backed up the actual existence of multiple men and multiple girls going to flats. Cody hadn’t seen anyone forced into anything. She herself might have been raped had she not sensibly run away, but we’d never know that. If she’d taken the drugs she may have ended up compliant under the influence, or like me, wake up after, having been completely knocked out. In my case the bastard Luke Trevelyn had taken photos as insurance to use against me. If a group of lads did that they could control the girl after with threats of showing them to her parents, publishing them online, and just outright shame. Now I’ve done it once, I’m spoiled forever so I might as well just let them do it over and over again?
We nearly missed the exit off the motorway I was thinking so hard. But dammit, this still didn’t advance us any! It was Jessica who had persuaded Cody to go there, and Jessica who had supplied the drugs. If this had happened recently, after Cody’s sixteenth birthday, it wasn’t even illegal underage sex. I felt really bogged down with this. I really needed someone to help me…
That night I checked through the address book on my phone. I’m useless at most sorts of house-keeping, including the digital sort so I figured the phone numbers would still be there. Sasha’s turned out to no longer exist, she’d obviously changed phones, but Damian’s went through. He answered straight away.
“It’s Eve McGinty here,” I said. I didn’t even know if he’d remember who I was, those media types move on fast, but I guess he did work with us for a whole year…
“Hi there Eve, what a coincidence! We were just mentioning your name the other day…”
I wasn’t sure whether to believe him.
“We were saying how disappointing it was that you refused all involvement in future productions because we still feel there would be some mileage in featuring you and Adam Quinn in something.”
“God, you must be desperately trawling around to fill your schedules!” I said sarcastically.
“Now, now, no need to be cynical,” he chided. “What can we do for you?”
“I was wondering if ITV does investigative reporting programmes, because I’m struggling to get anyone interested in a case of organised gang underage grooming for sexual abuse going on in my area, and I think it needs to be looked into.”
“Hmmm.” There was a bit of a pause. “Hmmm, could be interesting. On the one hand it’s bang on the sexual abuse trend, but on the other hand it’s a bit old hat now, organised gang grooming cases are two a penny.”
“These are still young girls’ lives being destroyed!” I exclaimed angrily.
“Any unusual angle on it?”
“Pakistani perpetrators again,” I said. I was getting right into the language these days.
“Been done…”
“Oh for God’s sake!” I burst out. “Does no-one care about these girls!”
There was a short silence. “Ok,” he said at last. “I can see an angle. I can see it’s something you’re really passionate about, so rather than it just being some ITV reporter doing the job, we could put you on to it. You know, Thrills and Spills star Eve McGinty, who rescued two trafficked prostitutes from the flat below her a couple of years ago and vowed to do something to clean up her town, gets on the case of the gangs grooming young teenagers.”
> I waited while his thought processes ticked on.
“So Eve,” he finally worked out where he could turn it to his own department’s advantage. “All this is going to work much better if we can remind the public who you are, turn you back into a minor celebrity again. You need to be more than just some unknown young blonde girl on the rampage about her home town. So how about you and Quinn agree to do a short series with us, and I’ll agree to recruit you a team from the investigative side of things to help you out? Because I can see you’re going to need a lot of technical support – hidden cameras, microphones, locator trackers and such like.”
My heart began to beat faster at the talk of hidden cameras and trackers. It made the whole thing seem suddenly rather real and serious.
“Ok,” I said. “I’ll talk to Quinn.”
“You think you can get him onside?” He asked eagerly.
“Yeah, I reckon,” I said. “He’s at a bit of a loose end at the moment…”
“Great!” Damian sounded well cheery. “You get straight onto him, and we’ll start sorting a format out, and I’ll contact our journalism department on your behalf about the other thing. Does that sound a plan?”
“It does,” I said, wondering what I was letting myself in for.
I was doing all this down at the barn after Jo had gone into the house, so now I walked up to look for her in the kitchen.
I stopped short when I saw Siân in there, sitting at the kitchen table with Pete. Without being explicitly unwelcoming, Sue seemed to manage to keep Siân’s visitations down to a minimum, so I almost never bumped into her.
Siân too, froze momentarily when she saw me, then we both pretended we hadn’t. I walked over to the kettle to put it on.
“Actually Eve,” Siân said suddenly. “I wish you’d talk to Adam.”
I turned round and leant back against the worktop. “What about?”
“He seems to imagine his coming back home is helpful, but it just isn’t! He’s not helping out at all, just adding to the work load. It’s getting me down!”
I frowned. “Maybe you should move out, Siân. I don’t see why you should end up looking after four men! If you left them to it, they’d have get their arses in gear for themselves.”
“I can’t,” she said miserably.
“I suppose you don’t want to leave Mariah..?” I guessed.
She nodded. “I really think they wouldn’t cope with her. Dad still doesn’t seem all that fond of her. I don’t know if he blames her for Mum’s death or something, but he never cuddles her or anything.”
I frowned. “You’ll have to leave sometime though… You’ve got your own life to lead.”
She looked unhappily down at the table, and I felt sorry for her. “Thing is, I think Quinn’s a bit depressed,” I explained. “And I think he needed to come home for a bit to sort his head out. So it might just make the whole situation worse in the long run if you chuck him out.”
“He’s just being so selfish!” She exclaimed angrily.
“I agree he’s not renowned for being able to see anything from any other perspective but his own,” I summed up. I poured the boiling water over the teabag in the mug and spent a bit of time dunking it up and down and squeezing it. I turned back round to her. “How about I give you a lift home and then pop in on Quinn? As it happens I’ve got a proposal for him that at least might be a cheerful diversion for him. The quicker we can get him back to his old jolly self, the quicker he’ll leave.”
She nodded and sighed.
Jo burst in. She was beaming. “Result!” She announced.
We all stared at her. She carefully shut the internal door behind her. “Dad’s away on business the weekend of the next World Qualifier, probably because it’s on shale so he’s not needing to attend it. But of course Eve will be going, and I can feel a really bad virus coming on!” She put her hand dramatically to her forehead like a Victorian maiden about to swoon. “So Pete, you’ll just have to go along in the Beast to support her!”
Pete looked between the pair of us like we were mental.
“You’ve got to talk tactics, you idiot!” She informed him.
“And you might as well do the Qualifier yourself,” I suggested, “while you’re there.”
He looked unenthusiastic.
“You get five points just for attending,” I pointed out.
“I s’pose,” he said dismally. He was another one who seemed a bit down at the moment, I thought.
Siân threw open the door to Quinn’s room. He was propped up on his bed, music blaring, little Mariah curled up in pink teddy bear patterned pyjamas asleep at his feet.
“She should be in bed,” Siân said disapprovingly.
“Oh leave her alone, she’s fine,” Quinn said impatiently.
“McGinty’s here to talk to you,” Siân said abruptly, and left the way open for me to walk past her, then closed the door on us.
Quinn raised his eyebrows enquiringly.
I looked with disfavour around the room. “How can you bear to be back here after having your freedom?”
He shrugged. They clearly had never properly converted the room over to Mariah’s, but neither had he managed to properly convert it back to his own. It was a bit of a mad mix of leather, after shave and random chunks of metal, and my little pony and Princess Barbie. No wonder Mariah was a mite confused as to whether it was still her room or not.
“None of my business, I guess. Each to their own…” But I let it be implied by my tone of voice and expression that I thought he was taking the immature option.
His eyes flickered angrily. Good, I thought.
“We’ve had a proposal from ITV to do another short series with them, just me and you,” I informed him. “Are you up for it?”
He eyed me from the corner of his eyes. “Maybe,” he said cautiously. But I could see I had caught his attention. I didn’t mention the other programme I was trying to agree with them. It wasn’t time to let on about that yet.
Pete drove us in the Beast towards Kings Lynn.
“Do you feel like you’ve been let off the leash without the Black Panther along?” I asked cheerfully.
He changed gears impatiently. “Honestly!” He exclaimed. But a few minutes later he admitted that perhaps he did.
I nudged him in the ribs. “So lighten up and have a bit of fun! Shame it’s not Skegvegas – we could’ve gone on the big rides for old time’s sake.”
His hands tightened on the wheel as though he didn’t want to be reminded of the night we got it together for the first time at Skegness, left alone just like this, for a weekend in the Beast.
“Boy, you’re tense!” I needled.
“Boy, you’re annoying!” He slammed back.
I made a sort of mocking noise back at him. And then we pointedly ignored each other for some time. I realised then that we probably hadn’t spent more than twenty minutes completely alone with each other since we split up. So this was probably going to be kill or cure, I thought.
Once there, we got on with the racing. I was happy with how I did, coming second after a few mishaps on the way round that I’d thought I might not come back from. Pete was trailing behind at seventh. I could imagine the punters beginning to speculate… They’d not seen Pete and me on the same track this season. I’d just beaten him on shale, his Dad had beaten him on tarmac. I could hear the chins wagging from here. So could Pete, I guess.
We sat almost silent over our fish and chips.
Back at the Beast we pulled down the bed and lay out our sleeping bags. Tomorrow we’d be travelling on to Mildenhall to get me some more points. Pete was going to race there as well because he might as well, having brought his shale car, but I sensed his lack of enthusiasm.
I wriggled down into my sleeping bag and resigned myself to this weekend not turning out as Jo had hoped. Pete had hardly said a word to me the whole time. We lay quiet in the dark and I began to drop off, then was brought abruptly back to the surface by what sounded sus
piciously like a sob.
“Pete?” I queried.
There was a sort of scuffling as though he was hurriedly turning away.
“What’s the matter Pete?” I asked.
He gave up trying to cover up and said in a choked up voice. “I’m so pissed off with myself!”
“Why?” I leant up on one elbow, trying to see him in the bit of light that came in from campsite outside.
“I’m twenty eight and I’m going nowhere! And I don’t even know where I want to go. I mean, if I did, I could at least head at it, but I don’t!”
“You should probably move out of home for a start,” I said. “You can’t grow up properly when you stay at home, however nice your parents are. Why don’t you get a flat with Siân? She could do with moving out as well…”
He turned over to face me, silhouetted. “I don’t love Siân.” He stated bluntly.
“Oh dear, poor Siân,” I said in reflex pity. “Does she know that? Or does she not love you either and you’re just both using each other as a prop for the time being?”
“I don’t know,” he said abruptly.
That was a bit worrying. Potential for lots of heart ache there…
“Do you want me to find out from her?” I asked.
“No.”
“Because you probably ought to start easing yourself out gently if we find out she’s really stuck on you…”
“No!” He sounded angry.
“Ok, I get it. I’ll back off!” I snapped and turned crossly away from him and lay down.
The silence lay heavy between us and then there was another muffled sob.
“For God’s sake Pete! What is it?” I demanded. I sat up and looked over at the dark shape beside me.
“You don’t get it do you!” He launched, “It’s you I love and I went and messed it up and now there’s no way of getting you back, is there?”
I felt suddenly angry. “You don’t love me Pete. You never once told me you loved me and then you went and slept with Siân! And then I gave you opportunity after opportunity to make it right and get back with me, and I even humiliated myself by sending your Mum to ask if there was any chance of it before we went on our summer jaunt back to Skegness and you said no!”
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