Paul put his face in his hands and gave way to gales of laughter.
Quinn rang me up that night. “Oh my God!” He exclaimed.
“Yeah, I know…” I agreed. “Did you go galloping round the field?”
“No, she put me straight onto a lunge rein and had me do a rising trot and a canter for bloody hours! I feel like my bum bones have been shoved up into my ribs!”
“I enjoyed myself,” I said.
“I didn’t,” he groaned. “Were you on Apple Pie?” He asked.
“What are you talking about?” I asked blankly.
“What horse were you on? Mine was called ‘Apple Pie’.”
“How weird!” I observed. “Mine was called ‘Horse’.”
“Well – that’s – um – original,” he responded.
“See you on Saturday!” I said cheerfully, and signed off.
Then I went and got the earring and pen, and made my first attempt to download the material I’d got off them via the USBs. I was shocked at how clear the images were that I’d obtained from the earring. Made you feel a bit sea sick, but I could learn how to keep my head still and stare at something that I wanted it to focus clearly on. I needed to practice as I guessed that I might have to look slightly left of whatever it was to get it central. You could clearly hear the conversation of the two girls in the next cubicle, so the microphone obviously worked well. I uploaded it to the cloud, as I thought that the process of shopping for the disguise might be of some interest. Then I tried listening to what I’d captured on the pen. It was Jo and Zanna stumbling in from their night out. Very soon it was Zanna making extremely lewd suggestions and demands of Jo. I hurriedly turned the sound right down. Jo was saying, “Oh Zanna – I’m really tired! We’ve had too much to drink, can’t we leave it to some other night?”
Then there was some scuffling and Zanna was laughing and Jo was shushing her, “Eve’ll wake up,” she whispered.
“She’s a grown up, she knows what dykes get up to!” Zanna laughed.
“But I don’t want her to walk out and have to see us doing it!” Jo sounded a bit desperate and stressed.
“I don’t think you really love me at all!” Zanna started up. “If you did you’d let us leave here and get our own flat so we don’t have to care about straight-laced party poopers! You never seem to actually want me…”
I abruptly switched it off and deleted the whole file. Then wiped it off the pen. Poor Jo, I thought. She’d known how it would be. She’d predicted it. I couldn’t see this relationship lasting. Zanna was too highly sexed. I felt bad for having accidentally recorded something so intrusive. And I also felt a bit jealous. Sometimes, generally in the middle of the month, I felt really restless and would give anything to have a really good shag. I used to have really good orgasms with Pete, I thought. As I had a bit of a visceral reaction to the memory, I put the thought hurriedly away from me. I wasn’t going to give up and end up with Pete, just because I wasn’t in love with anyone else and I needed a shag. I’d have to be careful not to give into one for old times’ sake, I determined to myself. Maybe avoid being alone with him when I was ovulating? And then that reminded me of something. I’d come off the pill when Tyler died, and now I really ought to look into something like a depot injection. If I was going to be roaming the streets looking for rapists then I had to be prepared for every eventuality, however much I hoped that I wasn’t going to have to face it.
By Wednesday afternoon I was really feeling it. I staggered into work groaning.
“God Eve, you’re walking like you’ve just shagged a whole rugby team,” Steve Bolton called out to me.
I gave him a glowering look. “That’s tasteful Steve, and how would you know what that would look like?” As he opened his mouth to reply, I interrupted hastily, “No I’d really rather not know the answer to that!”
I sat down on a bench and began to ruefully massage my inner thighs. “I had no idea you had to be so fit to ride!” I exclaimed. “I’m discovering muscles I never knew I had! All respect due to your mother, Jo!”
Tony put his hands on his hips. “Eve, can you stop sitting around with your legs sprawled apart rubbing your inner thighs and talking about how energetic riding is, you’ve giving completely the wrong impression of this place to the customers!”
“And about my mother!” Jo interjected indignantly.
I showed them all the finger then hauled myself to my feet and hobbled over to the first car on my list of jobs. I stood in front of the bonnet and groaned. “I really don’t think I can even bend over!” I moaned.
Dewhurst put his head in his hands and his shoulders shook. “Someone give the girl some paperwork to do, and for goodness sake keep her away from the customers!”
That night in the flat as I lay moaning on the settee, Jo said to Zanna, “I really think you need to give Eve one of your sports injury massages…”
Zanna made me take two ibuprofen then got me to strip off to my underwear and gave me a right good going over while I yelled protest or groaned in pleasure.
Jo seemed a bit conflicted. “Keep it down you two, or else the restaurant will think we’re running an S‘n’M parlour up here.”
“God, your neck’s tight,” Zanna said disapprovingly.
“She’s always having trouble with her neck,” Jo explained as she sat watching us. “It’s all the constant impacts when driving. We all get it in the Stocks…”
“You need to wear a neck support,” Zanna suggested. “There’s two good ones, the Hans and the Hybrid. Lots of auto sports drivers wear them.”
“I don’t want to look wimpy and ridiculous,” I said feebly. I winced as she dug right into my neck and shoulders.
“It’s really important Eve. They’re taking repetitive impact injuries really seriously now in all sports, not just rugby and boxing now. Football, cricket – everything! Every time your head gets thrown backwards and forwards in an impact you’re injuring your brain in tiny amounts that can cause cumulative long term effects on your concentration, memory and motor skills, and you’ll be getting repeat whiplash,” she lectured me. “A collar supports your head and neck and reduces the overall effect of the thrust. As a female you can’t help but be more vulnerable to it, as your neck and shoulder muscles aren’t as strong.”
“Show me online and I’ll order one for her,” Jo promised.
“And I’ll recommend you a good chiropractor to try to sort out the damage that’s already been done,” Zanna added.
She finished off by rubbing all the sore bits of me with deep heat which stank the flat out and I gratefully crawled into bed and fell straight asleep. At some point Jo must have come in and switched the light off for me, because it was off in the morning and I hadn’t done it myself.
I felt much better the next day, as though the crux had passed. Which is maybe why I was letting my mind wander. Horse began to jig about and toss her head up and down.
“Eve, stop right now,” Sue said sharply. “What are you thinking about?”
I came to a bit guiltily. I’d been worrying about starting the undercover campaign which I was now putting off until this dressage thing was over.
“Are you anxious about something?” Sue came over and looked up at me.
“Sorry,” I said. “My mind wandered onto something that was worrying me.”
“When you are doing this, you have to absolutely concentrate. You have to zone out in it like a meditation. All the time you’re in the zone the horse will be too because she can only do what you tell her too, and you need to give her complete confidence. She’ll notice the second your mood changes because all your signals will change. Get down now, and you can both have a few minutes rest.”
We walked over to the fence and Sue pulled a mars bar out and gave it to me. “Keep your strength up,” she said. I meekly took it. Long ago I’d made an agreement with all the Satterthwaites that I’d eat when and what they told me to without arguing about it, because I knew my judgement got flaw
ed when my blood sugar got low.
“How does she know?” I asked curiously.
“How do you know someone is frightened or anxious?” Sue turned it back on me.
I frowned. “You can just tell by how they look and how they sound,” I said at last.
“Well for Baby it’s the same. She can feel all your tension through your body contact with her. And she can smell any fear. All the time you feel safe and happy, she will too. That’s what the problem is with a lot of beginner riders. Horses are primitive creatures, they’re not self-aware. If a human approaches stinking of fear, the horse panics and thinks there must be something to be afraid of and has no idea that the human is actually scared of them, the horse. So the horse leaps around looking for the dangerous creature that must creeping up on them, the beginner gets even more scared of the horse and a vicious cycle begins that ends with the horse getting so scared of the invisible enemy that it bolts.”
That made sense to me. I nodded.
“So when you get into that ring on Saturday,” she advised. “You must just zone out. No nerves. No tension. Pretend you’re back here in the paddock on your own, and not in front of lots of people. And concentrate absolutely for the whole time you’re out there. It’s only a matter of ten minutes at most.”
Jo said her mother was refusing to give any hint to the family about which of us was doing the best, saying they’d have to wait and see on the day.
“Are you all coming?” I asked, thrilled.
“Course we are,” Jo said robustly. “Wouldn’t miss it for the world!”
Sue drove me and Quinn over to the Equestrian Centre on the Saturday morning, all togged out in posh clothes loaned by an Equestrian outfitters. Cream jodhpurs, black boots, dark jacket, white shirt, tie. Even the horses were dressed up posh with plaited manes and tails. Mental.
“Mum’s been up since six getting them ready,” Jo told me as Sue loaded them up.
In the huge horsebox transporter I got all excited. “This is just like going in the Beast to a track,” I realised. “Except we’ve got two horses instead of two cars in the back! And you do the same job sort of as me and Jo – you look after and train the horses like me and Jo do the cars, and then train up the riders for the competitions like me and Jo do the drivers!”
Sue smiled.
Paul, Pete, Jo and Siân were there to greet us at the centre. Siân was there to cheer on her brother. They wished us luck, then had to go to the spectators’ bit. Sue had sensibly shown me and Quinn pictures of the indoor arena online so we could picture it all. And she’d drawn diagrams of the enclosure and sketched out with arrows and pencil lines how we needed to fill the space with our manoeuvres. So the sawdust covered square wasn’t a shock. And it was a bit like being at an oval, in that where the trailers and horses were parked up was like the pits, where everyone got the horses last minute perfect, like we did the cars. And then we had to warm the horses up, like taking the cars on a practice lap, and then we waited for our turn to go on. Sue got us to watch some of the competitors who went ahead. They were awesome. I could see now that the routine that we were about to do was comparatively simple compared to the advanced classes. Then some of the Level One competitors came on, and their standard was more like ours.
Quinn and I were placed at the end. It was explained to the audience why we were here and why the cameras were filming us, and everyone clapped dutifully. We were going to both do our routine first, before the points were announced. We’d be judged on the same criteria as everyone else but were only competing against each other.
Sue had organised for us to do exactly the same manoeuvres, but in a different order and formation and to different music, so the task was equal, but the horses wouldn’t get confused. I went on first. Horse was confident. She stepped out well and stopped precisely in front of the judges for me to take my hat off and bow my head to them. Horse bowed her head too and the audience laughed. Then the music started.
The five minutes passed in a flash but also in a suspended age. At the end Horse stopped in front of the judges again and I removed my hat again and respectfully bowed my head. Horse did too. Everyone clapped. Horse seemed delighted as we went off, pricking up her ears and swishing her tail and picking up her feet.
Jo and Paul were waiting by the exit for me.
“Blow it Eve, how do you do it?” Jo exclaimed. “That looked faultless!”
“I dunno,” I said, jumping down out of the saddle and patting Horse. “I don’t do anything, I just think what we have to do next and Horse just does it!”
Paul glanced enquiringly at Sue who was just coming back from sending Quinn in. “Horses aren’t telepathic,” Sue said to him. “But if you stay relaxed and in tune with them, you automatically give out the right signals when you concentrate on what comes next…” She gave me a little push on the shoulders and I quickly went back in to watch Quinn.
Poor Quinn. Apple Pie was jigging and swishing his tail. His ears would flicker back and he’d miss a time change. He sidestepped when he should have gone forward and pawed the ground when standing still. Finally it was over and you could see the relief on Quinn’s face. Sue indicated to me to quickly get back on, and I rode back into the ring and drew up Horse up beside Apple Pie. Apple Pie swung his head at her and she just superciliously ignored him. Quinn was sweating. I smiled reassuringly at him and he gave a bit of a smile back.
They read out the list of points first for me and then for Quinn.
“Congratulations, both of you on what you’ve achieved in a mere week from a standing start,” the steward said over the microphone. “But as you can hear from the points there is a clear winner – Eve McGinty on Babbington Sentinel – a score so high she would have come well up in the points table, even if she’d been in the official competition. So well done Eve, maybe you should have a change of career!”
A jolly steward came out and fixed a red rosette on Horse’s bridle, and a blue on Quinn’s and then we paraded out to much applause. Sue fielded Quinn and Apple Pie and Quinn remarked, “Phew, I’m glad that’s over!”
Paul came towards me and Horse. He reached up to me, put his hands around my waist, and swung me off. As he placed me on the ground he kept me in front of him with a hand on either shoulder. “Look at me Eve,” he said. I met his eyes reluctantly. He held my gaze. “Time for you to come and race against me,” he told me. “No excuses.”
For once I didn’t blur my gaze out as I met his eyes. “They’re less green than Pete’s and less orange than Jo’s,” I mused aloud. “Altogether more brown.”
He smiled slightly, released my shoulders and stepped back. As I turned to lead Horse away, I saw Sue watching us with a frown.
Jo whisked me away to Belle Vue on Sunday for my third World of Shale Qualifier in as many weeks and on Monday night I walked into Rob’s workshop and hopped up onto a bench and sat cross legged watching him working on his car.
Finally he glanced up at me and raised his eyebrows.
“He’s finally thrown down the gauntlet, and I have to pick it up or look like a wuz,” I informed him.
Rob straightened up. “So where does the battle commence?”
“Cowdenbeath next Saturday followed immediately by Crimond on Sunday,” I said gloomily.
Rob whistled admiringly. “The guy knows what he’s doing! If it was just about the machinery, I’d have made it Hednesford, but clearly it isn’t, it’s obviously about intimidating you…”
I put my chin down in my hands and looked at glumly at him.
“Come on now, you can’t get a Silver roof without having done plenty at Cowdenbeath,” he pointed out.
“I s’pose,” I agreed. “But I’ve only ever been to Crimond a couple of times. It’s so bloody far away!”
Rob leant back against the worktop and folded his arms and looked sideways at me. “To be fair, in mileage terms it’s probably no further than St. Day.”
“But it feels like the end of the universe!” I complain
ed. “At least you tend to link together St. Day with doing one at Taunton or Bristol or one of the ones in the Midlands on the way down!”
“You can bring your car in one last time for a once over,” he offered generously.
“Thanks,” I said. I sat and stewed for a moment or two. “He’s bloody well gone and kidnapped my car and now he’s taunting me to come and get it!”
Rob grinned at me.
“I’m imagining this scene where I can’t bear to put my own baby into the wall and then he comes and slaps me one for being too sentimental to drive competitively!” I told him.
Rob knew what I was referring to, and laughed. “Toughen up girl. If you put the baby into the wall, it’s gonna be his responsibility to get it ship-shape again by Crimond, not yours!”
I eyed him thoughtfully. “Hmm, bet he thinks I won’t be able to bear to lay a bumper on my own car, but you’re right. He knows he has to give it back at the end of the season in perfect condition, so there’s no reason why I should make it easy for him.”
He went back over to his own baby and started laying out some tools. “Bring the car in on Thursday evening,” he suggested. And then he went back to work.
On Tuesday I went up to the barn with Jo to get the tarmac car as perfect as possible. “Your Dad’s bound to notice me driving it out on Thursday,” I bemoaned.
Jo lifted her head. “No, I overheard him telling Mum he was taking her to the theatre on Thursday to make up for the nervous breakdown you and Quinn put her through last week.”
“Oh dear, did we?” I said penitently.
“Well mostly Quinn by the end,” she said.
“I hope she was getting paid by the programme company,” I said.
“Oh yes,” Jo reassured me. “She got a bloody good deal on it. They paid her a sizeable tutoring fee, all expenses and a separate fee for hire of the horses.”
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