Thrills and Spills

by Dominique Kyle

  It must have taken more than half an hour because my phone started constantly buzzing. I turned the key in the outer door of the flat, stumbled up the stairs and made blindly for my room. I pulled the phone out of my pocket and texted Jo. I’m in my bedroom now. Don’t cum out looking 4 me. And then I stripped off all my sodden clothes, got into an old fleece and some pyjama bottoms and threw myself on the bed and sobbed.

  There came a soft tapping on the door. “Eve, are you ok in there?”

  Kes. Shit Kes! What was I going to say to him? I sat up on the bed and wiped a hand across my nose, looking around for some tissues.

  “Kes, come in and close the door!”

  He opened the door cautiously, then came in and closed it again, leaning back against it.

  “Is Quinn out there?” I asked urgently.

  He shook his head, his eyes concerned on my face.

  “Kes, sit down on the bed,” I said.

  He was looking really worried now. He sat down.

  I took a deep breath. “Kes, I don’t know how to tell you this,” I said. He stared at me. “I’ve just found my Pete in bed with your Siân – having sex.”

  He just stared in a completely frozen way at me. I knew how he was feeling.

  “Are you sure?” His voice came out all croaky. He cleared his throat in reaction.

  “Yes, I’m sure,” I said.

  His big brown eyes stared blindly at me.

  “I’m sorry Kes…”

  He stood up sharply and left the room.

  I walked into the bathroom and took a long hot shower and stayed in there, keeping on turning up the heat until the place was like a sauna and I was lobster coloured. Then I went back to my room, got into bed and cried until I felt sick and empty and worn out and drained and swollen eyed and unable to breathe. And then I cried some more.

  About eleven, Quinn came in from a late shift. “Anyone around?” He called.

  Kes went out.

  “Are you ok Kes?” Quinn asked. “You look awful. Has someone died?”

  Kes said something.

  “You’re kidding me?” Quinn exclaimed. “Are you sure?”

  Something else from Kes.

  “Shit, Kes! Shit, Fuck…” A pause. “Fuck, poor Eve. Poor you! I could strangle her! I’m sorry Kes. Really I am. What a little shit she is!”

  Kes retreated to his room with a snap of the door. There was a long silence. Then came a quiet tap at my door. I ignored it. There was another tap. I held my breath and kept absolutely silent. Quinn retreated and put the radio on, at a fairly modest volume by his standards. And I went back to quietly sobbing.

  I slept part of the night, but woke up about six, just wide awake feeling like my guts had been ripped out. I lay there for a bit, then got up. Had some scalding hot tea, couldn’t face eating, and then went into work early, opened up and got on with one of the jobs in the workbook list.

  Jo also came in half an hour earlier than usual. Clearly to speak to me before the men arrived. She walked over to me and stood close by me. I carried on with the work without speaking. She didn’t move away, so finally I straightened up and looked at her.

  “You ok?” She said.

  “No,” I said.

  “He came back shortly after I’d got hold of you on the phone. I went out of the barn and called his name but he ignored me and went into the house. So I followed him in and cornered him in the kitchen.” Her expression was angry. “And then I just found myself shouting at him, ‘What the hell have you done?” And he just turned his back on me, so I started screaming abuse at him – which isn’t like me at all. And then Dad walked in and did his hands on his hips ‘well I’m waiting’ thing, like we’re six not twenty six,” her tone was resentful. “So I turned to Dad and yelled, ‘Eve’s only just walked in on Pete having sex with someone else and now she’s out on the moors somewhere in the rain in a terrible state crying her heart out!’ And then – well I’ve never seen Dad look so shocked. He said, ‘Pete is this true?’ and Pete just says ‘fuck off,’ which normally he never would to Dad and he walked out of the house, got in his car and drove off. And then Mum came in and stared at us both wondering what was happening. And then when I told her too, she just sat down and cried…” She trailed to a halt looking utterly miserable herself. “I mean, none of us know what has hit us. This just isn’t Pete.”

  Yeah, but it sure was Siân.

  Jo came and put her arms round me, which was nearly unheard of. But I had to stay stiffly unresponding. “Don’t hug me Jo,” I said roughly, “or I’ll just start crying again, and I can’t be weeping around the place at work…”

  She backed off. “We need to check your car over tonight…”

  “Jo, I just can’t come out there.”

  She was silent. “I’m sure Dad will help me instead…”

  Then we were both thinking about the same next problem.

  “I know it’s Belle Vue and we’d normally all go together, but there’s no reason why I can’t load you up on the trailer and come and pick you up at the flat…”

  I took a deep breath. Yes I knew I couldn’t completely back out. If I wanted to never see him again I would have to immediately give up the racing, and I wasn’t prepared to do that. Thank goodness Jo and I had already made the move to become partially independent. Sod’s law this crisis had happened just before Belle Vue instead of one of our separate ones, and it would be packed out and the cameras would be there. My hands fisted themselves. Fuck. All this would be played out before the cameras. If I knew Siân, she’d make certain of that. No doubt that was fully part of her planned timing. The most public humiliation possible at what amounted to our local track.

  “Ok, thanks,” I said dully and turned back to my job.

  When Dewhurst came in I said, “Could I please be excused from working out the front today?”

  He glanced at my face, said nothing, and assigned Bolton instead.

  Later I heard Jo filling them in. “My complete shit of a brother has done the dirty on her with another woman, so she’s a bit fragile guys, go easy on her will you?”

  I guessed it was for the best. At least they wouldn’t be asking me any questions then.

  I stayed out the back all day and worked with manic silent single mindedness. Jo brought me mugs of tea and ticked me off if she found a nearly full cold one still there an hour later. She brought me a mars bar when I didn’t stop for lunch. When it was still there at three pm, she broke bits off it and forced it into my mouth. I nearly turned round and hit her, but I knew why she was doing it. At five thirty I got on my bike, drove back to the flat, locked myself into my room and gave way to a storm of weeping.

  On Saturday Jo and I had agreed to go a bit later than usual so we wouldn’t have as much hanging around in the pits to go through. I waited till Quinn had got up and gone out, probably to drive over to Rob’s. Last night, on the few occasions that me and Kes had emerged silently from our rooms Quinn had been sitting at the table looking pathetically between us both like a spaniel whose owners were having an argument.

  We were still only a couple of cars away from Pete and Paul in the pit area, but I just said nothing, and avoided his eyes whenever I had to walk by. The cameras came over to me almost immediately.

  “So we hear that Pete has just finished with you for Adam Quinn’s sister, Siân. How are you feeling about that?”

  “Siân’s a very attractive girl,” I said expressionlessly. “Pete’s got a right to go out with whoever he wants to.”

  “So is it going to make your relationships within the driving team more difficult?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Clearly it will be awkward for a bit, but when Pete and I first got together we discussed this eventuality and agreed that we must remain professional at all times where the driving is concerned. Excuse me…” I pushed away through the crowd and hid in the toilets for a bit. Then I walked up into the stands and hid myself in the crowds and gave way to some tears. Come on, I really had
to pull myself together, but I felt in a complete haze. On a different planet. Wrung out. Empty. Desperate. In so much pain I wanted to rip my own insides out just to get it over and done with.

  Twenty minutes until the heat I was down for. I walked back to the pits. The Lyndale college students were there. I tried to smile at them but didn’t really manage. Dev bent over and peered at my face in worried curiosity. He reached out a finger and wiped at my cheek. Then he licked his finger. “Eve sad?” He said.

  “Yes Eve is sad,” I agreed.

  Bobby was rocking and eagerly throwing strings of numbers at me, but I just couldn’t cope. “I’m sorry Bobby, I promise I’ll find you some good ones in a few days’ time. I’ll maybe ring then through to Todd?”

  “Eve, sad,” Dev said again.

  “Yes, Eve is sad,” I agreed. “But Eve can’t be sad. Eve has to drive now. Eve has to get angry now…”

  I walked over to my car and found Paul standing there. He handed me my helmet, balaclava and gloves and looked searchingly at my face.

  “Forget about everything but the driving now Eve,” he said to me. I hadn’t spoken more than the odd necessary word to him and hadn’t met his eyes. I didn’t answer. I put the gear on and climbed into the driver’s seat and started the engine.

  We were lined up at the start for a while. Some mechanics were racing out to one of the superstars behind me with some last minute engine problem. Everyone politely waited. The rolling start, the green flag. I put my foot down.

  I woke up staring up at a guy in a set of dark green overalls. I was being lifted up onto a stretcher. Someone was unzipping my racing overalls and lifting my top and slapping sticky circles on my chest. There was some kind of stiff collar round my neck. A girl who looked like a boy leaned worriedly over me. Some older bloke who looked a bit like the girl was there as well.

  The green overall guy was telling them that there were no obvious serious injuries apart from possible neck and head injuries.

  “She’s not yet been able to answer any orientation questions so she’s not fully conscious. We’ll take her to hospital.”

  There was lots and lots of noise. Tannoys. Loud engines. Tinny music. The girl was saying, “We shouldn’t have made her drive Dad, she’s barely functioning! She was doing her not eating thing again. I gave her a mars bar earlier but I found it left on the bench. And I’m really worried Dad that I missed something with the car. It’s been a while since we used it and I just assumed we’d have put it away in good condition so I gave it a really cursory look over…”

  They were loading me up into the ambulance. My hand was briefly squeezed tightly by someone. The girl’s voice said, “I’ll come up to the hospital later Eve, and drive you home when they let you out.”

  The green overall men were attaching me up to things. The doors were closed and the noise lessened somewhat. The engine started and we drove off.

  They don’t discharge you from hospital at the weekend, so it was lunchtime on Monday before the Consultant said I could go. Dad came and picked me up.

  “How are you feeling?” He asked as I strapped myself in.

  “Crap,” I said. “I’ve got a headache and my neck’s really stiff.”

  “Well that’s no surprise is it?” He said prosaically. “But they said there was nothing broken and it’s only concussion so you’ll get over it.”

  He was trying to negotiate the complicated inner city road junctions. “Paul Satterthwaite rang to say you’d had an accident, but I wasn’t really clear what happened.”

  “I don’t know what happened Dad. I can’t remember anything after the green flag.”

  “Oh well,” he said cheerfully. “These things happen when you take up a dangerous sport, don’t they?”

  “Apparently I’ll need a Doctor’s note before I’m allowed to drive again.” I told him glumly. “And I was just really building up my points for the season… I hope I’m not barred for long…”

  The flat was empty when I got in. Quinn at work and Kes at college. That was a relief at least. I went to my bedroom, pulled the curtains and lay down flat on the bed, pulling a pillow under my neck to support it. Then I fell asleep.

  “No, I didn’t see it,” Quinn said when he knocked on my door later to see if I was ok. “I passed you almost straight away so it all took place behind me. They put out a yellow flag, so we filed round and then I saw a proper pile up and your car seemed to have smashed front on into the metal post of the entrance gate and you were sitting there not moving with your head sort of hanging, and the marshals were running over and then they were radioing and a red flag was put out, and then the paramedics were leaning in and putting a collar on you and someone started cutting the roof off your car to get you out. That’s all I know. People have been putting footage on YouTube, but it’s not particularly clear. Looks like somebody tangled wheels because one car shot up in the air like a salmon, but you headed straight at the post, so I don’t know how that happened.”

  “I can’t remember a thing,” I sighed, rubbing my neck.

  He came over and put a hand on my neck and tried giving it a little knead. I yelped in pain and I felt a bit nauseous. He backed off. “Ok, better leave it till you feel a bit better,” he observed. “That’s obviously really sore.”

  Next day I arrived into work and Jo said to me. “We couldn’t find anything catastrophic wrong with the car, apart from the damage that was caused by the impact. At one point I wondered if the throttle had got stuck open, but it would have still been revving away when we got to you, and it wasn’t. Can you remember what happened?”

  “I can’t remember anything after the green flag,” I reported.

  I thought I was managing ok, but about lunch time Entwistle called me into his office and a few minutes later Jo was making me get in her car.

  “Where are we going?” I asked her.

  “To A and E,” she said.

  Sometime that afternoon, they put me in a scanner. And later on, after she finished work, Jo came back for me and dropped me at the flat. She told me that Entwistle had ordered me to stay home for the rest of the week. I went back to bed.

  Seven thirty on Wednesday night. Quinn rather anxiously asked if I was going to come out and watch tonight’s episode with them. I asked him why he was asking.

  “Cos I think they’ve got me on film saying stuff that might make you cross with me and I’m sorry – I shot my mouth off – typical me…”

  “Ok, I’ll stream it on my laptop in my room,” I said. I’d been intending to do that anyway to avoid having to watch anything about Siân in front of Kes and Quinn. Kes slammed out at about a quarter to eight. I figured that he would be watching it someplace else as well, for the same reason that I was.

  It started, as I expected with Siân, telling them on camera with deep satisfaction that that Pete had dumped me and was now going out with her instead.

  Then they showed the clip of me giving my convincingly neutral and controlled response.

  Then they snaffled Quinn.

  “Why are you trying to talk to me now?” He said impatiently looking at his watch, “It’s only twenty minutes till my heat.”

  “We hear that your sister is now going out with Pete and has split up with Eve, what do you think about that?”

  “I could wring her bloody neck, and in fact if she comes anywhere near me I surely will!”

  “Eve seems fairly sanguine about it…”

  “Well she’s not going to tell you she’s heart broken, is she?” Quinn snapped.

  “So you think she’s upset about it then?”

  “Upset?” Quinn exploded. “I’ve had the pair of them sobbing in their rooms for two days now! I’m standing outside their doors not knowing which of them to go into first, and then I daren’t go into either because I’m probably the last person they want to see right now given what my beastly little cow of a sister has done to them! She’s just managed to break the hearts of both my best friends in one fell swoop!”<
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  “So why do you think she did it?”

  He stared at the interviewer. “Well I would have thought that was bloody obvious! To get back at Eve of course! She’s been doing her damndest to achieve this for years! And now she’s finally hit the jackpot – kerching!”

  He glanced at his watch and went to turn away, but the interviewer stopped him with another question, “What do you mean by that?”

  “Oh for God’s sake!” He exclaimed irritably, but turned back. “Let me fill you in on a few details of my sister’s life long campaign shall I? First she thinks she’ll try to annoy Eve by getting off with her little brother, but Eve just throws her out and waterboards her brother until he promises never to do it again. Then Eve starts going out with some proper nasty piece of work but what my stupid little sister doesn’t realise is that Eve is just putting up with an occasional wandering hand to get her own hands on his GPZ 900. And when the bloke won’t let her take it apart, Eve buggers off, but my little sister has already started sleeping with him thinking she’s taking him off Eve. So then Eve takes up with my best friend Kes, and what none of us know at the time is that while the rest of us were screwing around like hormonal baboons on Viagra, Kes and Eve have looked at each other, gone ‘can we be bothered? No. And apparently whenever they retreated to his bedroom, she was lying on his bed reading Autotrader and he was at his desk doing his homework! They were just pretending to go out to keep the rest of us off their back …”

  Quinn pushed his hair back from his face and leant back on his car with folded arms. He was getting right into the flow of this now.

  “So then the little bitch arranges for the proper nasty boyfriend to beat Eve up, and while Eve’s in hospital, gets off with Kes and makes him go up to the hospital to split up with her.” He grimaces.

  “But Eve’s not that bothered given that they weren’t really much of an item, and so finally I ask Eve out which properly gets up Siân’s nose cos she can’t shag me to get back at her can she? But all Siân has to do is sit back and wait because I’m gonna do the job for her, aren’t I? Guaranteed!”