Thrills and Spills

by Dominique Kyle

  “Jeez, Eve – shit that’s awful!” Quinn looked shocked.

  “You said you knew…” I walked round across to the other side of his car and leant on the roof opposite him.

  He turned round so he was facing me. “I never thought about the details. I mean Mum always used to say that it was no wonder you were a psychopath having seen your own mother decapitated in front of you – but I guess I assumed she was exaggerating…”

  “She was,” I agreed. “Mum wasn’t decapitated, it was only the top part of her skull so the brains showed.”

  Quinn’s face twisted up in horror. “Shit Eve, and then I went and cut your rabbit’s throat in front of you with the blood spurting out and everything…”

  “Yeah and yet I’m the one saddled with the psychopath label!” I said sarcastically.

  “I admit – your reputation as a psychopath was kinda useful to me…” He confessed a bit shamefaced. “Meant I could get away with practically anything and it would always be blamed on you!”

  There was a short silence.

  “Mum used to say – ‘What that girl needs is a family’,” he put on a convincing Irish brogue as he said it, which meant I could just hear Kathleen’s self-opinionated voice saying it…

  “That’s a cheek!” I exploded. “I had Dad and Jamie!”

  “Yeah but the trouble with your Dad is he’s never around is he?” Quinn thrust back his green eyes challenging me.

  I glared at him, my eyes dangerous. I slammed the flat of my hand down on the roof of his car. “How dare you! My Dad is the best Dad in the world! He had to bring us up completely on his own, it was bloody difficult for him, especially in his line of work. How’s he supposed to support us financially without going away?”

  “I don’t reckon you’re in love with Pete, I reckon you’re in love with his family,” Quinn said. His eyes were narrowed.

  I stared at him. “Don’t you start on the Satterthwaites now. They’re just the most loving, generous, kindest people I’ve ever met! And they were really lovely to me right from the beginning, long before I started going out with Pete, I’ll have you know!”

  “My case rests…” He said cryptically.

  I faced up to him combatively, my nostrils flared. “And how about you and Rudd then?”

  “What about me and Rob?” His eyes flickered and he instinctively pulled back from me.

  “Rob says this, Rob says that,” I mimicked viciously, “Rob’s the mutt’s nuts. I’m surprised you don’t have to wear permanent tan lotion the sun shines out of his arse so brightly!”

  His expression was conflicted. He didn’t want to admit to hero worship, but couldn’t deny it for fear of sounding like he was doing down Rob.

  “Whenever I pass by you two, he’s always giving you a right bollocking. Which is about right I’d say, because if he’s got your measure by now then he’ll know he needs to keep the screw on you. You’re such a butterfly Quinn. You’ve no concentration, no resolve, no single mindedness of purpose. All you care about is what other people think of you, so I guess that’s what’s doing the trick right now, you care so damn much what Rob thinks of you, you actually manage to put on a bit of a performance! But if you don’t start using your balls for something other than women, you’ll never get anywhere out on the track!”

  His eyes flashed fury at me and his fists in his drivers’ gloves were clenched on the roof in front of him.

  I looked around and saw they were clearing the infield and all the cars were filing off.

  “Ok, time to go!” I slapped the roof of his car. “Get in Quinn, you’re holding everyone up again, just like you do on the track…”

  He held a deliberate middle finger up to me.

  “Oh, grow up, Quinn!” I retorted disparagingly, and I turned and walked away.

  Back at the Satterthwaites’ that evening, when Sue heard about the accident she made me take ibuprofen and go for a hot bath. “I’ve fallen off horses enough times to know you don’t feel it immediately – off you go and have a long soak.”

  Afterwards I felt unexpectedly exhausted and announced I was going to bed at the ungodly hour of nine-thirty. Pete joined me shortly after, just as I was dropping off to sleep.

  “So you keep saying you’re fine,” he said, “but I’m just going to find out for myself…”

  He took my pyjamas off and stroked me gently all over, finding the bruising that was rapidly coming up blue all down my upper arm and hip and thigh on one side.

  “Ouch,” he commented. “How’s your head?”

  “Bit of a headache,” I admitted. “And my neck hurts quite a lot.”

  “I wish we’d got that new engine in a bit sooner,” he regretted aloud. “We should have pulled out all the stops in time for this meet.”

  I shrugged. “You can’t have the thrills without the spills…”

  He suppressed a smile. “Save it for the documentary crew – that would make a good line… Talking of thrills…” he murmured and ran his fingers lightly down me.

  I flinched away slightly. Everything was feeling quite sensitive at the moment. “Your hands are quite rough you know…”

  He smiled into my eyes. “Well I’ll have to use my lips then, won’t I?”

  Towards morning I felt like I was falling. I heard a loud bang, I hit the bottom with a jolting thud and there was a ball of flames engulfing me.

  I sat up sharply in bed. “Shit!” My heart was pounding in my chest and I was gasping for breath.

  “What is it?” Pete asked sleepily. When I told him he just said, “It’s just a dream set off by your accident yesterday. Lie back down and I’ll give you a cuddle…”

  I glanced at the clock. It was seven thirty. I was wide awake and severely anxious. “No it’s ok, I’ll go and make a cup of tea. You sleep in if you want…”

  Before I went down I got quietly dressed so as not to disturb Pete who seemed to have instantly dropped off again.

  There was no-one in the kitchen. It seemed very large and empty. I made tea, but it didn’t make me feel better. I paced. I glanced at my watch. Ten to eight. Something had happened, I knew it, but I couldn’t understand what.

  Sue came back in from her early morning round of the horses. She had kicked off her wellies in the utility room and came into the kitchen a bit hairy and horsey smelling in thick woollen socks and headed for the kettle.

  “Hello Eve, you’re up early for a Sunday,” she commented.

  I glanced up at her and said nothing.

  She frowned. “What’s up, Eve?”

  “I don’t know,” I said wretchedly. “I woke up suddenly knowing that something bad has happened and I don’t know what it is…”

  She didn’t poo-poo it. She poured boiling water into the pot and said calmly, “Well then we just need to wait till we find out what it is, don’t we?”

  Paul walked in and I saw Sue give him a warning look. He glanced over at me and said nothing. I sat at the table staring fixedly at my phone. Willing it to ring. Dreading that it might. When it finally did, I leapt a mile. It was my old home number. I snatched it up. Pauline’s voice. She sounded hysterical. “Eve, Eve, Eve!” She was sobbing.

  “Calm down Pauline,” I said, one fist clenched tight in a fist under the wooden table. “Please, Pauline, take a breath… Is it the baby? Do you need me to ring for an ambulance?”

  She took a breath and started again, “No!” She wailed. “No it’s Jack! It’s your Dad! Their helicopter’s come down over the North Sea. Everybody on board is missing! He was coming home!” She started sobbing hysterically again.

  “What time was this?” I asked in controlled tones.

  “Half past seven. They rang me as soon as they confirmed they had lost radio contact and the helicopter was gone from the radar screens. They’re launching search and rescue boats and planes right now but they warned me that the weather is marginal and they might not be able to get out there…” Her voice trailed off and she began quietly weeping again
.

  “Do you want me to come round?” I asked.

  “Yes please, Eve, yes please do…”

  As I rang off, Paul and Sue looked at me with enquiry in their eyes. I explained the situation to them in controlled tones, but my fingers were shaking slightly so I hid them under the table.

  Sue paled. She squeezed my shoulder and looked across at Paul. “I’ll go and get changed and go with Eve to her stepmother’s. You go and get Pete up and tell him what’s happening…”

  I looked gratefully up at Sue. It hadn’t even occurred to me that she would come with me. I was so relieved. I knew that I couldn’t really emotionally manage Pauline with how I was feeling myself, but I’d also known that the only humane thing to do in the circumstances was to go round and be with her.

  “She’s got pre-eclampsia. She could lose the baby. She needs a doctor or a district nurse or something to keep an eye on her blood pressure…” I explained.

  “We need to get there quickly, just in case…” Sue agreed. “I’ll go and get changed.”

  A few minutes later, a hurriedly dressed Pete arrived into the kitchen. He came straight over to me and hugged me fiercely, his unshaven face rough on my hair. I had a little sob while I had the opportunity, because I knew that in a few minutes time I was going to have to be holding myself together with an iron control and everything was going to be about Pauline.

  Paul came back in. “I’ve rung the production crew and told them,” he announced.

  “Why did you do that?” I exclaimed angrily.

  “Because they’ll help you, Eve,” he said firmly. “Whatever you need, they’ll do it for you, and the more publicity there is about the accident, the more they’ll put their back into looking for the men despite the weather.”

  Sue came back in and she drove me back to Pauline’s. I protested I could get there in Dad’s car, but she wouldn’t let me get behind the wheel.

  Pauline fell sobbing in a painfully dead weight around my neck and the dog wagged its feathered tail uncertainly and looked worriedly up at us. The TV was on in the background.

  “It’s already been on the BBC news,” Pauline said, once she’d calmed down a bit. “They reported that this was the third bad helicopter accident coming back from the rigs in the past eighteen months and people are asking serious questions about the company running them!”

  Sue rubbed Pauline’s arm sympathetically. “You sit down now Pauline. You need to keep as calm as possible for the baby’s sake. We’re here now, so you don’t need to do a thing. Shall I make us a cup of tea?”

  I saw the relief flood into Pauline’s eyes.

  “Where’s Jamie?” I asked suddenly.

  Pauline shook her head. “Out at a friend’s but I don’t know which one and his phone’s going straight to answer-phone…”

  I made a calculated bet and rang Dylan’s parents at their home number. “Is Jamie there? Or if not, does Dylan know where he is right now?”

  Jamie was there. He came to the phone. “Jamie,” I said as gently and calmly as possible, “Dad’s helicopter has crashed and they’re searching for them all right now.”

  I heard his intake of breath, but he said nothing. “I advise you stay at Dylan’s for now. Make sure you tell Dylan’s parents what’s happening. It’s already on the news if you want to follow it, but I absolutely promise I’ll ring or text you whenever there’s any developments, so please keep your phone on…”

  He agreed in a sort of muffled monosyllabic noise and put the phone down on me. But I knew Dylan’s parents would look after him.

  Pauline had the BBC rolling news channel on. It was a bit annoying seeing the subtitle SUPER PUMA HELICOPTER CRASHED IN THE NORTH SEA ON THE WAY BACK TO ABERDEEN WITH RETURNING WORKERS FROM THE ETAP OIL FIELD. SEARCHES ARE BEING UNDERTAKEN FOR ALL 14 PASSENGERS AND 2 CREW keep on passing underneath the presenter who’d be talking about something completely different.

  Sue glanced at me. “Try the ITV news.”

  I swopped channels and we put up with some adverts before the news came on. It was the headlining story on ITV, and there was a picture of myself flashed up, one of the promotional shots of me in driving gear by my car with helmet under my arm. ‘Jack McGinty, father of reality TV star Eve, of the Stock Car racing circuit, is one of those missing…” Apart from that there was little that we didn’t already know beyond a mention that it had crashed 35 miles after leaving the ETAP complex in poor weather conditions and two cargo ships in the area were diverting to help with the search, plus helicopters from the rigs, RAF Lossiemouth and the Coastguard.

  “Well at least there’s a lot of craft out looking for them,” Sue comforted.

  “Thirty five miles from the rigs,” I said worriedly, “means ninety miles from shore – that’s a long way out to get rescue boats and copters to…”

  The doorbell rang. I answered. It was Kathleen. “You look terrible,” I said. I realise now that it wasn’t very kind, but I was shocked by how greyish yellow she looked. Her face was all thin and haggard.

  “I’m in the middle of another cycle of chemo,” she explained, without taking offence. “Each successive one makes you feel worse. I’ve brought a bowl with me just in case… But I couldn’t let Pauline go through this alone…”

  I stepped back and let her in. She and Pauline hugged and Kathleen sat down on the sofa and immediately got on in there with the pearls of wisdom which Pauline really seemed to lap up.

  The phone rang for Pauline. A BP representative, basically with no more news that what we’d already heard on the TV. Sue went and made Pauline some more tea, and Kathleen produced her lemon barley water for some boiling water to be put in it.

  I began to feel increasingly bereft. Up until about ten months ago, if this had happened, it would have been myself that would have been Dad’s named next of kin and the person being rung by his employers with news, and myself that would have been receiving the sympathy and support. Now, all eyes were on Pauline and her belly and I was on the periphery, reliant on hearing any official updates about my own father from a woman I barely knew…

  The doorbell rang again. This time it was John Holt, in civvies.

  “Oh,” I said, surprised, like I’d somehow conjured him up by speaking about him yesterday.

  He looked serious. “Kathleen rang the church as soon as she heard, so we’ve said prayers for your father in the service, and Father Tom is saying a private mass as an intercession for Jack and the missing men right now…”

  “Oh,” I said lamely. I had no idea what that entailed or of what possible use it could be, but it was kind of them anyway.

  Holty went over to Kathleen, Pauline and Sue, and sat down with them for a few minutes, stroking the head of the dog who had run over to him and rested its head on John’s knee. I sat on the stairs and stared into space. On his way out John stopped in front of me.

  “You’ve completed your year of supervision then…”

  “Yes,” I said expressionlessly.

  “Your sentence supervisor always spoke highly of you whenever I asked how you were doing…”

  I glanced swiftly up at him. He’d been regularly checking up on me then.

  He gave me a slight smile. Never a bundle of laughs was Holty. “And you’re enjoying this driving lark?”

  “It’s not a ‘lark’,” I said stonily, “It’s a lot of skill and hard work and I’m turning out to be good at it…” I wondered what he’d think when he saw the next episode with me being pulled out of the window of an upside down car in flames. Would it bring back memories for him too?

  “Good,” he said, in peaceable tones as though he was trying to undermine the start of a squabble. “I’m sure they’ll find your Dad, Eve. I was looking at the survival rate of the last five helicopter crashes in the North Sea to and from the rigs, and there was only one crash where they were all killed. In all the rest, they either all survived or most survived. And they have excellent specialist tracking systems in place now…”

/>   It was the first sensible thing I’d heard anyone say today. I met his eyes and nodded. I kept trying to reach after whether Dad was still present to me or not, like when Dad knew that Mum had gone even before they rang him. But I just couldn’t tell… I wondered if it was Holty who’d had to break the news to my Dad. It seemed quite likely. John reached out a hand and briefly touched my shoulder. On impulse I reached out my hand as he withdrew his, and he took hold of it and gave it a gentle squeeze.

  After he left, I ran upstairs to my old bedroom and sat on the floor in the Peter Rabbit themed blue painted room with my back leaning against the big wooden slatted cot, and gave way to a storm of silent tears.

  A while later and the doorbell went again. I heard the voices of Paul and Pete and my heart lifted. “I think she’s gone upstairs,” I heard Sue say.

  Pete appeared at the door to the room. I looked up at him. “This used to be my bedroom,” I said sadly.

  He came inside and sat down on the floor beside me. “You weren’t kidding about the dollshouse collection, were you?” He observed with a grimace.

  “She’s got eleven now,” I said listlessly. I’d counted three times, just to make sure.

  He put his arm around me and hugged me tight and I felt some of the tension drain out of me as I settled into his warmth. “Jo’s back home manning the phones and your racing Facebook page, and Dad’s been sorting everything with the ITV team.” He told me. “They’re going to fly you up to Aberdeen where the rescue is being co-ordinated from and they’ve organised for you to have a meeting with a BP representative, and someone from the helicopter firm, and it means you’ll be on hand to welcome your Dad ashore when they bring him in. In about ten minutes a car will arrive here to take us to Manchester Airport.”

  “Us?” I queried, my heart thumping at the news.