Thrills and Spills

by Dominique Kyle

  Thrills and Spills

  by

  Dominique Kyle

  Not Quite Eden Series – Book 3

  Thrills and Spills © 2016 Dominique Kyle

  Cover Design © 2016 Dominique Kyle

  All Rights Reserved

  This is a work of fiction and although some real places and organisations are mentioned within the plot, the events and the characters are completely made up and are not based upon, nor intended to represent any real events or personalities.

  Paul was waiting for us as we drew up. “Have you got her?”

  I got out of the passenger seat and walked across the Satterthwaites’ yard, followed closely by Pete.

  Paul led me to the converted barn that they used as a workshop. “Come on in, Eve, we’ve got something to show you.” And he flicked on the light switch.

  In front of us was parked a gleaming bright orange and purple machine, a purpose built F2 Randall Stock car with front engine, rear-wheel drive and centrally located driver’s seat – basically a small metal cage on a steel space-frame chassis on open wheels – a vehicle built for attack with huge bumpers and nerf rails, with its yellow aerofoils tipped at a rakish angle.

  I stared at it, then looked enquiringly round at them. They were grinning. My heart skipped a beat.

  “Eve, meet your new race partner…” Paul said.

  They watched smiling as I prowled around her, my fingers trailing across her spotless surface, examining every detail.

  “We got you a good deal. No engine, but that means we can decide whether you want to go for a Pinto or a Zetec. Been in the guy’s garage for most of last year as he seems to have lost interest, but just before he last used it, he had it re-panelled and fitted with new bumpers, rails, and battery tray. And if you add to that a lightweight wing, new front brake discs and reconditioned calipers, new Tilton master cylinder, bias brakes including one new adjuster, new fuel regulator, lightweight kirkey seat, five point harness, radiator and Randall valved Gaz shockers then I think you’ll agree that it’s in pretty good nick and a good base line to build up from.”

  Pete couldn’t seem to stand the suspense any longer. As soon as his Dad had finished his listing of specifications he begged, “So come on Eve, tell us what you think?”

  “I think I’ve died and gone to heaven,” I declared. “My first ever car…” I stroked it reverently. “I won’t have to feel guilty every time I dint it – I can drive it however I want…”

  “By the time she gets a normal car and gets to drive on ordinary roads she’s going to be a complete menace,” Pete directed teasingly at his Dad.

  “So did Jo know about this as well and manage to not even breathe a word to me?” I marvelled.

  “She came out to see it with us and was sworn to complete secrecy,” Pete agreed.

  “So you need to finish the season in Pete’s,” Paul was sticking to the business side of it, “while we get this ready for you. I’ll take charge of sorting out your graphics, and once we’ve got your sponsor’s name and logo on the side we’ll take it down to Entwistle’s to have publicity photos taken with your boss and colleagues on the forecourt.”

  Paul had done all the negotiations with my boss at work for the sponsorship deal, and I hadn’t dared to ask what sum they had agreed on. I thought it was better if I kept right out of it.

  “And now you need to open a separate bank account where you save up money just for use on the car and race expenses…” He advised.

  At this reminder of the huge commitment I’d just taken on, a tiny bit of the euphoria evaporated. It was like being suddenly handed a baby and told that it was now yours and you had to look after it and provide for it. A bit scary.

  “Thank you so much, both of you,” I said at last. I came over and gave Paul a grateful kiss on the cheek. Then I turned to Pete to do the same but accidentally gave him a smacker on the mouth instead. “Sorry!” I exclaimed embarrassed, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand.

  His Dad seemed to think that was funny. “You can kiss him on the lips Eve, he’s not your brother you know!”

  I ignored both of them and stood between them admiring the new love of my life. “I don’t know how to thank you…” I said at last.

  Paul put a friendly arm around my shoulders. “You don’t need to, Eve. You’re part of the team now.”

  “So what are you going to call it?” Pete asked with a grin.

  I looked at him blankly. “What do you mean?”

  “I thought all women gave their cars names,” Pete teased. “Jo called her first car ‘Molly’.”

  I couldn’t imagine that of Jo, but then Jo probably got her first one for the Ministox at the age of ten.

  “Well I’m not ‘all women’ and I’ve got a few names I might call you in a minute if you don’t shut up!” I threatened.

  Pete dropped me back at the flat in the old mill district. Since I tended to keep my life compartmentalised and normally rode out to the Satterthwaites’ place on my bike, Pete had never been in to see where I lived. I could see him eyeing the entrance curiously, so I thought it wouldn’t hurt to invite him in for coffee.

  We went up two flights of narrow internal stairs and I threw open the door to the flat.

  “Hi there! I’ve brought Pete home.”

  Inside was a blaze of light and a warm fug. Music was issuing loudly from Kes’ room which had its door firmly shut, Radio 1 was on in the shared kitchen come lounge area, and Quinn seemed to be getting a couple of pizzas ready, walking round the room doing everything one handed.

  “Hi Pete,” Quinn said, throwing him a distracted half smile. He came across Pete regularly on the race track so needed no introduction.

  I indicated to Pete to sit down at the small kitchen table in the centre of the space and went to put the kettle on. Pete was watching Quinn deftly negotiating his tasks while carrying a rugby ball sized bundle tucked in the crook of his left arm. As I sat down opposite Pete to wait for the kettle to boil I watched it suddenly dawn on him what the package consisted of.

  He leant forward and hissed to me, “He’s not re-produced already had he?”

  “Nothing as calamitous as that for the human gene pool,” I reassured him. “That’s his little sister.”

  Quinn seemed to catch the last few words and turned round. “You couldn’t hold her for me could you? This oven’s bloody hot and I need to get these pizzas in…”

  The tiny little scrap was dumped in my lap and I lifted her up to show Pete. Her dark blue eyes opened sleepily and her little rosebud mouth gave a yawn while her miniature fists stretched out momentarily. And then all her adorable cuteness screwed up first into a cross little grizzle and then developed into a full on wail.

  Quinn was unfazed. He slammed shut the oven door, put the timer on and went to where a bottle of milk was warming up in a jug of hot water. “Right on cue,” he commented and came over to pluck her out of my hands.

  A few moments later Quinn was sat at the table with us, with his baby sister in the crook of his arm again, and all was quiet apart from the sounds of contented sucking.

  I saw Pete’s gobsmacked expression. “Oh there’re hundreds of them in his family,” I informed him. “He’s had lots of practice. Siân comes round and dumps her here when she’s had enough. Sometimes she doesn’t even bother to check if Quinn’s here. One time I came home to find her Moses basket on the table in a completely empty flat-”

  “I was asked to work late and neglected to text Siân to say my shift had changed,” Quinn explained.

  “So I was left completely alone with her for three whole hours,” I reported appalled. “Terrifying! And she’d pooped herself as well!”

  Quinn glanced across at Pete. “To give Eve
her due,” he commented, “She’d had a pretty good go at changing her nappy.”

  “Thing is, Pete,” I explained grimacing. “I had plenty of practice wiping bums when I used to volunteer at Lyndale, but they wore easy adult nappies – just pull up padded pants – not something you need a degree in origami to achieve!”

  Quinn grinned. “The second I picked Mariah up, it slipped straight off!”

  I thought that was enough baby talk for now. “I’d show you around Pete, but you can see the whole place from here.” I pointed systematically around the four doors that led off the central space. “Bathroom, my room, Kes’s room, Quinn’s room. Welcome to our palace…”

  After Pete had left I said casually to Quinn. “I’ve got my car for next season.”

  Quinn glanced quickly at me then shook his mass of dark hair back from his face in what I recognised from years of acquaintance as a surge of competiveness. “Yeah, me too. Rob’s mate’s decided to move on to F1, so he’s going to sell me the one of his I’ve been using all season.”

  Blast it! That would put Quinn at a massive advantage for the beginning of the new season, I thought crossly. Whilst I would be having to get used to the handling of a completely new car, running in the new engine and sorting out all the unexpected flaws that revealed themselves over the first few races, he would be able to sail insouciantly on without a break in performance.

  At work next morning I walked straight across the forecourt and gave Jo a massive hug. She wasn’t at all the huggie sort, but on this occasion she gave me a reflex squeeze back.

  “Dad told me you were really made up…” She said.

  “Honestly Jo, I was speechless with joy! How did you manage to keep your mouth shut?”

  She gave a small smile. At the age of twenty four I guess she’d grown out of being unable to contain her excitement.

  The men were looking inquiring over at us. “What’s the crack McGinty?” Steve Bolton demanded.

  I pulled my phone out to show them pictures of my new pride and joy. Entwistle strolled out of the office. “Yes Satterthwaite rang to tell me the latest.” He took a glance at the picture. “As soon as the photos are taken here at the garage we’ll get them up on our website. You girls can both come into work in your race gear and we’ll have Eve inside the cab at the wheel and Jo on the bonnet and that way we’ll be able to make a point of having two female racing drivers in our employ.”

  Since Entwistle had homed in on the marketing potential of making our garage female friendly, he had become singularly focused on targeting that demographic. Once I’d recruited Jo for him, things had moved on fast, and there was a very different atmosphere here now that the gender split amongst the mechanics was 50/50. Not that it was appreciated by 100% of the customers. Ten minutes later there was a case in point. A man pulled in with a rather nice Audi A5 Sportback. He’d arrived on spec rather than having booked in, and these ad hoc customers were my responsibility to greet and assess. Part of the rationale was that it would be better for any lady drivers, already anxious about having to call in at a garage with a problem that they didn’t understand, to be put at their ease by a fellow female. I suspected that Dewhurst had designated me to the job because Jo didn’t smile all that much and could be just as intimidating as the men.

  This male customer looked through me as I spoke, and then glanced around over my head for someone else to speak to. “Can I see your senior, please?” He insisted inflexibly.

  “Dewhurst!” I called. I jerked my head towards the man, and walked away.

  Dewhurst ambled over, spoke to the man for thirty seconds, then called out, “Jo, can you come and see to this gentleman please?”

  Jo, virtually indistinguishable from the men in her blue dungarees with her swarthy stockiness and brutally short dark hair, came over and began to listen to what he had to say about his car in her usual unsmiling fashion. It took the man several long minutes to realise that this was actually another female stood in front of him. I saw it dawn and smiled to myself as his discomfit grew and he found himself completely unable to ask for yet another change of staff without giving away the fact that he didn’t trust a woman to know anything about cars.

  Back home that evening, I found Quinn lying on the settee with his feet up. He yawned. “Run McGinty?”

  These dark nights it was hard to motivate oneself for stuff like that. I sat down on one of the chairs at the table waiting for the kettle to boil. “Can’t face it. My neck really hurts. Been working all day at an awkward angle in the cold and my whole back seems to have stiffened up.” I rubbed at my neck and sighed.

  “Do you want a massage?” Quinn offered.

  It had been a very long time since my brief attempt at a liaison with Quinn, but the one thing I’d really missed was his talent for back massages. I glanced at him out of the corner of my eye. There didn’t seem to be any underlying agenda to his offer.

  “Oh, go on then-” I agreed.

  He came over and started to work on my neck. It was bliss. “Bit higher,” I was directing, then, “Bit lower down into my shoulder blades…”

  “Best come and lie down on the bed so I can do it properly,” he suggested at last.

  We retired to my room where I left the door open, took my shirt off and lay down flat on the bed. He sat on top of me like he used to and started to work into all my aching muscles. When he undid the clasp of my bra. I instantly protested.

  “Honestly Ginty, I’m not trying to take advantage, it’s just in the way that’s all.”

  So I relaxed and let him get on with it. This was heaven. I never wanted it to end. Kes walked into the flat and put a hand over his eyes. “Is that Eve with her shirt off? Shouldn’t you two close the door?”

  I turned my head sideways on my pillowed arms. “Don’t worry Kes, he’s just giving me a massage, he’s really good at them, you should get him to give you one sometime.”

  Kes stood at the door watching us for a second, looking amused. “Perhaps you should rephrase that Eve, I’d object strongly if Adam tried to give me one! How’s work?”

  “I’m getting sick of MOTs,” I said.

  “I’m getting sick of ‘lone women’ who when I get there turn out to have some hopeless drippy bloke with them and they’ve just said it because they know they’ll get priority treatment,” Quinn complained.

  Quinn was the local RAC branch’s urgent motorcycle response for ‘lone women’.

  “And we know how Adam adores his lone women don’t we Eve?” Kes commented ironically. “Coffee?”

  Kes had come to me two weeks into our first month at the flat and said, “You knew what you were doing didn’t you Eve, when you insisted that my room was between yours and Adam’s?”

  I grinned at him. “I really didn’t want background soundtrack of my life to be the sex acts going on in the next room.”

  When Quinn arrived in with whatever latest female he had in tow, Kes would now retreat into his room and put some music on really loud, and I’d turn the radio up in the kitchen. More annoying though was getting up in the morning to find some complete stranger sitting half dressed in the kitchen asking me where the tea bags or the cornflakes were or whatever. Finally Kes and I resolved it by making a rule that if a female arrived with Quinn, she must always leave with him too and never be left alone in the flat. That had resulted in a return to stress free mornings for the rest of us.

  Quinn finished off and sat his full weight back down on my bum.

  “Ow! You’re too heavy!” I complained, and he got off me and went out to chat to Kes.

  I closed the door to change out of my work clothes. That was another thing Kes and I had been forced to institute. Closed door meant ‘do not disturb’, door ajar meant ‘open to interruptions.’ Not surprisingly, Quinn, having grown up in that overcrowded house of his, had a different extravert quotient to the rest of us, which Kes and I had to police for our own sanity.

  Jo called in sick to work the next day and in the evening I
had a call from Pete. “Jo’s completely flat out. She’s obviously got some horrible virus. And she says there’s no way she can drive this weekend. And Dad’s away for work. So that only leaves the two of us. Normally I’d just shrug, but I think you could do with the points, And Jo says she’ll lend me her car for the day so I can start getting my eye back in for next season, so would you be up for coming to Skeggie with me?”

  “Sure,” I said without having to think about it. No way was I missing out on a weekend of racing unless I really had to.

  It was a three hour drive so we set off after work on Friday evening in the huge race transport van known affectionately to the Satterthwaite family as ‘the Beast’ and went via Halifax, Scunthorpe, and Crimsby. When Pete pulled us up on the sea front at Ingoldmells I stared amazedly around at the scene.

  “I had no idea it was a holiday resort!”

  Pete grinned. “Golden beaches, theme park, Butlins, wall to wall caravan parks – everything you could ever want – unless you want to be on your own of course…”

  I hadn’t even realised it was on the coast. It was nearly nine o’clock by now and we were starving. We went in search of fish and chips, then walked along the front eating them. Everything was brightly coloured lights and noise, even at this time of year so late in the season. “Whoa – look at those roller coasters!” I pointed out impressed.

  “One of them is the longest suspended rollercoaster with the greatest drop in Europe,” he informed me.

  I stopped dead and looked fixedly at him. He laughed obligingly. “Ok then, you’ve twisted my arm…”

  As I tottered dizzily off wondering if I’d be able to stand after being thrown and whirled and dropped and spun, he threw a casual arm around my shoulder.

  “I thought you were going to break my hand,” he observed with a grin. I’d grabbed it at the first stomach lurching drop and clenched it with a vice like grip for the duration. “For a woman who shows not even a glimmer of anxiety as she hurtles round a race track in a small metal box at seventy miles an hour, you’re clearly a complete light weight when it comes to roller coasters!”