by Tara Jones
But what kind of friends did a librarian had than owed a Porsche? The logical part of my brain wondered, but I had no answers to that.
She heard me when I came closer and looked up. Deliberately slowly and with a small smile that made my heart skip not one but several beats, she returned the worn leather book mark in between the pages of her book. I tried to catch the title of the book, before she put it back into her handbag, but I missed it.
“Well, well...” she started to say.
And then everything happened very quickly.
It was only pure dumb luck that I happened to look behind her and saw the dark blue car with turned off headlights creeping slowly forward, towards her.
“I think–” I started to say.
Then suddenly with a roar, the dark blue car accelerated with an incredible speed and drove directly towards her!
I reacted instinctively, without analyzing what was happening or why. Without any finesse or gentlemanly delicacy, I ran straight towards Eleanor and roughly tackled her over the low edge of the convertible car door.
The other car missed her with only a few inches. The fender of the car hit my ankle, which instantly went numb and I felt slightly nauseated as the pain slowly started to bloom and spread along my leg. We tumbled down on the front seat, together with the roses and the paper shopping bag and all.
“What the he–” Eleanor started to say, but then she saw the other car.
As I watched, the dark blue car was turning around and was coming towards us again from the side. Clearly the intention of the driver was to ram its car against the side of our car. I could only guess that the result would be... brutally efficient and messy. Small sports car weren’t really famous for being sturdy.
Eleanor however reacted much faster than I did and tried to push me over the other seat. Before I knew it she had turned the engine key and stepped hard on the gas pedal, making the tyres scream.
“Go, go, go!” I shouted very close to panic.
Eleanor clenched her jaw and with a sharp U-turn that would have made any formula one driver proud we tore away from the car park with the other car in close pursue behind us.
I forgot all about the pain radiating from my ankle as my first priority suddenly became getting the seat belt on. As I struggled with the seat belt frantically, it suddenly occurred to me, that there was a very logical reason why a woman would priorities owning a sports car: She liked to drive fast.
And she really drove like all hell was loose behind us and the small sports car was almost airborne when she drove up on the A40 motor way, leaving screaming pedestrians and a swearing delivery cyclist behind.
Afterwards I’m willing to admit that I lost count on how many near-death experiences I had during that mad trip. Eleanor must have broken at least half of all of the traffic rules that were ever invented and it was a miracle that no one got harmed or that we weren’t stopped by the police.
Her car number was most likely photographed only God knows how many times and it was crystal clear that she was going to lose her licence after this and could look forward to heft fees. Or worse.
That however, didn’t really seem to bother her at all.
She focused only on the driving, and the only thing she did, except clenching her jaw harder until I saw the muscles work under the skin, was checking the back mirror repeatedly. The other car was still pretty close, although the driver didn’t seem to have the same reckless knack for cutting in between the traffic. Also, Eleanor’s disregard for not being afraid of driving high up on the hard shoulders had earned her an increasingly lead.
It wasn’t that she was bending the Highway Code a little. In fact, I can’t even describe it as she was breaking the rules. I would more like to say that she simply just royally screwed them.
“What the hell is going on?” I demanded to know after another razor-close collision with a small red Honda.
“Can’t talk right now,” she said, her eyes never leaving the road and then she added with only a fraction of a second as a warning, “Okay, hold on now!”
The seatbelt locked itself immediately and dug into my shoulder as she turned sharply and mercilessly crossed the grass-clad median between the lanes.
The Porsche made a strangled mechanical sound in protest that merged well together with my swearing protests, but Eleanor didn’t care. She ruthlessly drove on.
Two more uncomfortable bumps later that made my teeth hurt and we were in the opposite lane, leaving a traffic mess behind us that would take hours to clear up.
“Bugger,” she commented and in the side mirror I saw the dark blue car crossing the lanes too, albeit with a lesser death wish than Eleanor seemed to possess. The gap between us was larger now, but the other car was still after us.
There was less traffic going in to London, which I first made the mistake of thinking was a good thing. I should have known better, of course.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
I coughed as a reply, trying to figure out how many ribs the seatbelt must have broken.
“Sure,” I said.
She threw me a quick smile. It was a mad smile, filled with promises of certain death within shortly.
“Let’s go fast,” she said, almost calmly.
In that instant, she scared me actually and she reminded me oddly of a Mary-Poppins-on-drugs.
The traffic was less intense, so instead of zigzagging in between the chocked docile commuters, Eleanor simply floored it.
And, let me tell you this: After that day I can never watch another “Fast and Furious” movie without feeling both queasy and ridiculously happy to be alive.
She didn’t wait for me to answered, but when the speed meter started reaching 150 mph, I’ll admit that I started wondering why I hadn’t sorted out my will.
I bargained silently with any higher deity that may be listening, promising to leave my IKEA furniture to charity and let the money from the flat go to an animal shelter.
Surely God will not let me die if I’m willing to save abandoned kittens and mistreated dogs? I wondered and closed my eyes, while I mentally reminded Fate that since I haven’t actually written my will yet, all my money would probably go to my sister in Leicester.
Because–airbags or no airbags!–if we crashed now, I knew that I wouldn’t survive.
“I lost them,” she concluded after what seemed like an eternity.
Hesitantly I looked up and realized that I had kept my eyes tightly shut for the last couple of minutes, or hours, or however long time that had passed.
“That’s good,” I said lamely after a while, hoping that she hadn’t noticed that I had been ridiculously afraid. “What do we do now?”
We were back in London, having left A40 behind and she drove–to my vast relief!–in accordance to British driving regulations again. It felt almost surreal when she courteously stopped and with a polite smile let an old man with a cane a cross the street.
“Well,” she said, “To be honest, we need to go somewhere safe, so I would suggest we go to my place, if you don’t mind?”
“Sure,” I said without adding that I would be happy to go anywhere as long as it involved getting out of this vehicle and its clearly mad driver.
Eleanor continued to drive smoothly and legally into the heart of London. I thought she was only going to drive straight through London, so when she suddenly turned and drove up to a private garage when we had crossed the Thames, I got a slightly confused.
“I thought you said we were going to your place?”
She reached for a small and sleek remote control from the front seat glove compartment. With a digital ding the garage doors started to open without a sound.
“Ah, well... we are, you know,” she said and nodded towards the two guards that were stationed behind the door. They seemed to recognize her, because they nodded back.
“You live here?” I exclaimed, unable to hide my surprise. No one I knew actually lived at the South Bank, an area that was not
iceably reserved for the really rich.
“Yes,” she confirmed with a shrug. “My poor baby,” she added in a concerned voice after she had stepped out of the car after she had parked it neatly.
“Ah well, it isn’t that bad,” I said feeling a little bit touched over her concerned that she had noticed that I was limping as I got out of the car. “My ankle does hurt quite a bit, but I don’t think anything is broken...”
The first initial pain had diminished during the mad car chase, when I had been busy concentrating on surviving, but my ankle still throbbed with a dull pain.
I wouldn’t run any marathon the next following weeks, but then again I wasn’t really a runner anyway, although I had recently renewed my gym card. My lifestyle had started taking its toll I had come to realize lately and I although I was in somewhat in shape I couldn’t pretend that my body still looked like it had when I was twenty-one years old. Nevertheless, there was no reason to sit and vegetate in front of the telly while the decline continued, I had decided and the last couple of weeks I had dragged myself to the gym twice a week after my work regardless of how tired I felt and during the weekend I took my bike out for a ride.
“I wasn’t talking to you, silly,” Eleanor said and stroke the lacquered side of the car. I realized that she was talking about her car, and indeed, it did look rather beaten up, especially since she’d forced it to run through the median and well up on the shoulders where no cars were meant to be. In fact, the Porsche did look quite sad, covered in grass and mud like if someone had decided to drive it through one of the marshes at Dartmoor where I use to go camping with my grandpa when I was a kid.
If cars could get a hangover, this is what it would look like, I concluded and patterned the car awkwardly in sympathy while I collected the rather manhandled roses and the shopping bag from the seat.
“I am sure that a mechanic can take care about it,” I said and limped after her.
“Yes, perhaps,” Eleanor agreed. “Oh, I can take that if you like.”
She took the roses and the bag and smiled.
“I like the colour,” she said with a curved smile.
Ha! I thought. I knew it!
We walked through the underground garage towards the elevator. The garage was an ordinary garage in painted concrete, but rather brightly lit. There were two guards standing on each side of the steel elevator. One of them looked at me stonily.
“ID,” he said, without moving his lips.
“Eh, sure,” I said and found my wallet. “Peter Thompson.”
The guards were heavily armoured, I noticed. They looked nothing like the normal security guards, but looked more like they belonged to a SWAT team from an American action movie or like the armoured car guards who collected money deposits from banks. Both of the guards were wearing bulky Kevlar armour and some sort of short half-automatic rifle that looked highly intimidating.
Does she really live here? And who on Earth is she? I wondered and glanced over at Eleanor, who pretended that she didn’t notice my inquiring gaze.
“Could you step over here, sir,” the other guard said and interrupted my thoughts.
‘Librarian’ my arse, I though somewhat sullenly as the guards frisked me professionally and unemotional, but thoroughly.
“Please press your fingers at the scan.”
I looked at Eleanor confused, “Fingerprint scan?”
“Don’t worry, it’s only a routine,” she said reassuring.
Yes, but routine for what? I wondered.
The questions were starting to build up. I had the growing suspicion that Eleanor wasn’t quite the person she had led me to believe she was. A creeping feeling that she hadn’t been completely surprised by the assault had started to form in my mind.
I also remembered how brutally and efficiently she had pinned me down on the floor the first time I met her, although she was nothing more than a short and curvy girl. Plus and that she had been carrying pepper spray last time I met her.
And, apparently she knows how to drive like a professional stunt-man, I concluded and started to wonder if I was dating a missing actor from the latest Mission Impossible.
After all I didn’t really know anything about her.
The guards were not satisfied until I had emptied my pockets and showed them my ID which they held under UV light. I was almost surprised when I finally was allowed to leave without giving a DNA test or without a full body search, the latter to my vast relief.
“Right,” I said when we entered the steel lift. “I think you owe me an explanation. Or two.”
“Perhaps,” she answered evadingly while she swiped a card at the monitor and entered a long series of numbers before she presses her thumb at the display.
“Welcome,” a digital female voice said which was disturbingly similar to the kind of movie voices that told informed the hero or the villain that “This unit will self destruct in 10 seconds”. I was nearly surprised when it didn’t started to count down or told us to evacuate, but instead the same voice said after a short digital pause “14th floor” after Eleanor pressed one of the buttons.
“You aren’t really a librarian at all, are you?” I asked, trying to sound neutral, but it came out slightly accusingly nonetheless.
She gave me a sideway glance, but didn’t answer at first.
“Who are you, really?” I continued.
She sighed.
“Well, my name hasn’t always been Eleanor Marston, to be perfectly honest,” she said at last. “Before I changed it and broke all contact with my family my name was Eleanor Wyndham.”
She gave me a quick glance. “Walter Wyndham is my father.”
I was speechless. Walter Wyndham! My mind tried to make sense of this new information. It was like she had told me that her father was Bill Gates or her mother was in fact Madonna. Everyone knew who Walter Wyndham was and the Wyndham family was one of the most powerful and richest families in the United Kingdom, next after the royal family.
“Wow,” I managed to say at last at the same time as the clinical voice from the lift informed us that we had arrived.
No wonder she can afford an expensive car in that case, I thought to myself.
The doors to the lift opened without a sound and Eleanor step out. I trailed behind her, trying desperately–and failing utterly–not to stare. Somehow I had imagine that we would enter the tiniest flat, so small that it probably would only be able to contain a bed and a wardrobe filled with tweed jackets and skirts.
I had never, ever expected to step into the penthouse apartment of the building.
The apartment was huge. It had an open solution with no walls separating the rooms. The ceiling was at least 20 foot up and large spacious windows with a spectacular view of the Tower Bridge so close if felt like I could almost jump from the decked balcony outside.
But what really caught my attention were all the books. Everywhere along all the walls stood bookcase after bookcase filled with books. The walls weren’t enough, so some of the bookcases and been placed apparently randomly around the apartment, so that it almost resembled a maze. All of the bookcases and shelves were completely filled and it looked like they had over flown into stacked piles of books on the floor.
Even one of the large walls in the middle of the apparent that was clearly meant to be used to display a huge modern painting had instead been decorated with floating shelves all the way to the ceiling, packed with books. About half of the books seemed to be old and leather-bound, but the rest was a mismatch of hardback and pocket books, both new and second-hand.
Although the apartment in itself was ultramodern in off-white colours and steel, only to be broken off by hardwood details, such as the expensive looking parquet, the furniture that filled the room looked quite out of place. Instead of uncomfortable sleek designer sofas and glass tables, it was filled with mismatched old leather sofas and small worn tables. I even recognized a couple of IKEA bookcases that tried to blend in.
“And as a matter o
f fact,” Eleanor said amused, clearly enjoying watching me not falling backwards from surprise, “I happen to actually be a librarian.”
And a serious book collector, I added mentally and tried to guess the numbers of titles that surrounded us. And you are filthy rich or you’re a kept mistress to someone belonging to the unheard branch of the British Mafia. And in that case, I’m bloody doomed.
“Do... do you really live here?” I couldn’t help to ask as I followed her to an open kitchen designed in steel and dark coffee brown colours where she localized a crystal vase and put the flowers in after she had filled it with water.
Two cats had come to great us and she bent down and stroke one of them behind the ears. They looked like purebred Siamese cat to me, with white bodies and slim darker legs and tails. They purred and stroke themselves against Eleanor’s ankles, but looked at me with large, sceptical eyes. The cats had the same ice-blue-coloured eyes as Eleanor, I realized. It was however, quite clear they didn’t approve of their owner’s taste in guest.
“Well... yes,” she said. “I share it with Cadbury and Twix.”
“Hey, kitty-kitty,” I tried lamely to pet one of them and was rewarded by a swift, sharp claw that efficiently embedded itself into the back of my hand.
More like Hannibal and Dexter! I thought with a frown. Dexter looked at me, like he speculated if I would be stupid enough to pet him too. I declined and withdrew my hand.
“I’m sorry,” Eleanor said. “They don’t like visitors and I usually don’t have people here.”
“Why not?”
It most certainly looked like the kind of apartment you owned just so that you could throw lavish parties and show of your wealth.
“I don’t ... socialize that much,” she said after a pause, still petting the cats lovingly. “And to be honest, I wouldn’t have brought you here unless I knew that I could trust you.”
“Of course you can trust me,” I said, slightly offended. I silently told the voice that reminded me that I had planned to ask Dave to dig around for information about her. “And how do you know that you can trust me now?” I added.