As the current customer bent into the driver side of her car to demonstrate the problem to me, thus presenting her not inconsiderable backside to the men, my ears attuned like a hawk to their dulcet tones could decipher a distinct, I’d give her one. So I indulged in a graphic hand signal of my own on her behalf.
At half past three my mobile phone rang. I pulled it out of my pocket and glanced at the screen. It was a landline and I didn’t recognise the number. I frowned. What was this about?
“Please, please, Eve, you’ve got to come and pick me up!” It was Nasim. She was speaking low and fierce. “Sahmir spotted me at school and rang Dad and now I’ve had to take refuge in the headmaster’s office and I need you to come and get me because they’ll be lying in wait for me outside, I know it!”
I went into the office to speak to Mr Entwistle.
“I’m up to date with the jobs that need to be done by tomorrow,” I explained. “It’s just that it’s a bit of a family emergency…” Well that was true, just Nasim’s family emergency, not my own. “I’ll come back later if you like, or make up the time some other day.”
Entwistle didn’t seem that bothered. I’d had an exemplary work record for the past three months, not having even taken a single day’s holiday nor sick leave. I’d had to claw my way back from my early dodgy start here and it seemed that I’d made it back into his good books. He told me I could make it up some other time when we were overstretched, and I buggered off quick before he could change his mind.
I drove a couple of precautionary circuits around the school. The way Nasim had talked on the phone I had expected to find her under siege, but I couldn’t see anyone of note. Late stragglers were leaving including Oz and Beth. Oz was the keyboard player in Quinn’s band and Beth was Oz’s girlfriend. And since Beth was doing ‘A’ level English, she often got asked to write the lyrics to the band’s new stuff. The pair spotted me as I drew up. Beth waved.
“What are you doing here?” She called curiously as she made her way over.
Dammit! What excuse could I give? Nasim was in Beth’s set for English and it was too early to admit to where Nasim was staying lest the news get back to her parents. “Sorry Beth, in a hurry!” I muttered with a complete ingenuity failure. And I darted inside.
I had mixed feelings as I made my way through the oppressive corridors and the familiar smell hit me. It may not be quite a year since I’d left the place, but it seemed like forever ago, and I couldn’t quite believe that people like Beth and Oz were voluntarily putting up with such a restrictive atmosphere. At least Kes and my ex-best friend Jaimi (she’d recently announced she’d removed the ‘e’ from the end of her name) had moved on to FE College and were having a wilder time of it. I say ‘ex’ best friend. It wasn’t a massive break-up or anything. I’d really tried hard but since we left school we’d steadily drifted further apart and whenever I met up with her and Fran we just didn’t seem to have anything in common any more. It made me feel sad, but there didn’t seem to be anything I could do about it.
I hovered outside the Headmaster’s office for a minute or two, too nervous to knock. I’d been sent in here a few times for reprimands and final ultimatums during my school career, and I wasn’t looking forward to seeing the guy again. Finally I got up the guts to rap sharply and the door was flung open with shocking suddenness. He must have been waiting for me. I’d forgotten just how tall he was. He towered over me with his hand sticking out disconcertingly.
“Ah, Eve McGinty?” I realised that he was offering his hand to shake mine. A weird moment. But I had survived a thousand crushing handshakes from the customers at work and I could produce my own vice-like version.
“And what are you doing these days?” He asked in avuncular tones.
“I’m a mechanic at Entwistle’s Garage,” I explained, trying to keep my stance confident and my gaze direct, as I fought against my instinct to look down and shuffle in embarrassment.
“Oh, well, it’s better than being unemployed,” he commented, turning away.
Condescending git! I thought. All he cared about was his University Entrance stats. Bet he was only helping Nasim because she was one of his star pupils and wanted to study Law. Nasim was sitting in the corner looking anxious.
“Are you ready to go?” I asked abruptly.
She nodded and got up, and Mr. Henderson seemed disinclined to interact with me any further, returning to his desk. “Now remember what I said, Nasim, and come to me if you need that contact number,” he directed at her as we left.
Nasim looked terrified, muttered something and shut the door quick.
“There’s no-one out there,” I reassured her as we hurried along the corridors. “But I’ll bring the bike around to the back if you like.”
Back home we sat and drank hot chocolate on the settee. She was shaken up. “Oh, I’ve done something so awful…” She uttered in appalled tones.
“What?” I couldn’t imagine her ever doing anything that awful really. She was too nice and too nervous. Unlike me, who did appalling things all the time and couldn’t seem to help it.
“Well, when Dad turned up at school I ran to the headmaster and I sort of – well, I sort of happened to imply that they were trying to force me into an arranged marriage and that I was afraid they’d kidnap me and put me on a flight to Pakistan…”
“But they’re not are they?” I thought I’d better clarify.
“Of course they’re not! But I thought that if I just said that they’d found out that I’d got an older boyfriend that they disapproved of, he’d probably side with Dad and and make me go home!” She bit her lip. “And then Mr. Henderson started saying I should report it to the police and started suggesting I ring this case worker at an Asian Women’s Refuge who has experience of helping girls faced with this sort of thing! And then I was so terrified that he was going to report it himself, and that Mum and Dad would have police turning up on the door to arrest them that I tried to back-track. But he said it was to be expected that I’d try to cover up for my parents, and that he understood what a dilemma I was in, and started going on about having had pupils in the past whisked off during the summer hols for forced marriages and female circumcision, and they’d now drawn up a school policy about what to do if this was suspected!” She shuddered. “So then I started trying to tell him that we Pakistani’s don’t go in for FGM and then I thought ‘what am I doing talking to my headmaster about genital mutilation?’ And then it all got really complicated!”
I looked at her open-mouthed. “What’s female circumcision?”
She stared at me. “I can’t believe you don’t know about FGM! It’s disgusting and I’m not telling you – you’ll have to google it… I can’t believe we’ve had pupils from our school being dragged off to Africa or somewhere for that! It’s illegal in this country…”
We seemed to have got off the point. “So now what are you going to do?” I asked.
She looked cross. “My Eng Lit essay,” she informed me abruptly. “Have you got a computer?”
I showed her where it lived in the corner of the room. A sore point with Jamie who’d sit there for hours doing his first person shooter thingies, speaking rapidly into his microphone and ordering me to turn down the TV. He wanted the computer to be based in his own room but I was adamant that I’d bought it for the whole family and he wasn’t to hog it and if he wanted to spend hours on it in his bedroom he would have to earn some money and buy his own.
I gave her my password to use my own log-in and went to make something for us for tea. Dad wandered in, whistling again. He’d come in last night smelling of garlic and red wine, and humming to himself. And he wasn’t normally a wine drinker.
“Where’d you go last night?” I enquired as I put some frozen chicken kievs and oven chips into the oven.
“An Italian place,” he revealed, glancing away from me. “A bit posh.” He didn’t seem inclined to elaborate and just as I was wondering about pursuing the subject further, Jamie bur
st into the kitchen.
“What’s she doing on the computer?” He exclaimed resentfully.
“Her homework, like you should be doing,” I retorted. Jamie was coming up to his GCSE’s but we never saw any sign of him working for them. I’d asked Dad what they’d said at the Parent’s Evening at the end of last term, but Dad said he’d forgotten to go, so neither of us had any idea what was going on with Jamie’s schooling.
“Well, she’d better be off it by five-thirty as I’ve a game booked,” he snarled.
“Well, tough!” I responded brutally. “You don’t own that computer and you need to share. Nasim’s got course work to give in tomorrow which counts towards her final marks and that takes precedent over some stupid game!”
Jamie glared at me and kicked the washing machine.
Dad looked shocked. Jamie never used to be like this. Dad’d never had any trouble with Jamie until the last six months or so. It was me that had turned his hair grey. “You respect our guest and you respect our property!” Dad directed at him, his brows snapping down.
Jamie said something really nasty under his breath and Dad looked furious. “What did you say?” He challenged, his fists looking ready to take a swing at Jamie though I was sure he wouldn’t really.
Jamie looked back through angrily narrowed eyes. “I said ‘and how about a bit of respect for me?’”
“You’ll get respect from me when you earn it by exhibiting some rational, adult and polite behaviour,” Dad stated sharply.
Jamie put two fingers up to him and slammed out of the house. Dad started shaking his head. I opened the oven up and returned one of the kievs to the freezer section. Then Nasim, thankfully oblivious to the unpleasant debacle, called out to me to ask me how to get the printer to work, and somehow I never remembered to ask Dad who he’d been out with.
When I asked Nasim after tea what she’d like to do, she told me she had to read a few more chapters of the book she was studying for her English ‘A’ level, so I suggested she retreat to my bedroom where it would be quieter. I waited until she seemed to be settled, then I slipped next door to see Quinn.
Con and Kathleen, Quinn’s parents, were thankfully nowhere to be seen. Con was fine, but Kathleen hated me, and every time I had occasion to pass through her house she stiffened and bristled and made sarcastic remarks. The mutt, under the kitchen table on an old blanket, caught between the family split, growled indecisively and at the same time rhythmically thumped his stump of a tail as I walked in. Siân and Liam were sitting on the sofa watching TV and proceeded to studiously ignore me. Declan was in bed, his toys strewn in potential neck breaking fashion all over the stairs. I picked my way over them and stopped outside Quinn’s bedroom door and knocked. That may seem excessively polite of me, but he didn’t know I was coming over, and you don’t want to accidentally walk in on your boyfriend wacking one out do you?
There were no guilty scuffling noises and the call to come in was immediate. Quinn was just slobbing on his bed with the inevitable music on. The room was tiny and smelt distinctly of male human, engine oil, aftershave and cigarette smoke. I loathed it, and that’s why, on top of the lack of privacy in his overcrowded house and the hostile Quinn family attitudes to me, I mainly encouraged him to come round to mine. The cigarette smoke I particularly hated. All his clothes and hair these days were saturated by the smell of it. I knew I was a hypocrite since I’d started smoking when I was thirteen as well, but when I left school I just seemed to forget to carry on, and Entwistle had a big downer on allowing us to do it anywhere on the garage premises, whereas Quinn with his RAC mates seemed to be puffing away all the time.
His face lit up when he saw me, which disarmed me somewhat. He always looked so delighted to see me. For the first few moments at least. I sat down beside him on the bed and he offered me a can of Carlsberg. Not my favourite tipple but I was resigned to the fact that it was all I was going to get right now, so I accepted it. I proceeded to fill him in on the Nasim drama. His responses were disappointing, mainly homing in on how long I expected her to be sticking around. So just to annoy him, I told him that at the rate it was going it might be a year, and the ruse worked. He had his disgruntled face on for a good ten minutes after that. He didn’t seem to have any idea how awful it must be to be facing the prospect of losing your family, your boyfriend and your future all at the same time!
Inevitably we ended up lying on the bed with our arms around each other, kissing and running our hands deliciously over each other’s bodies. But when he ended up getting overly pushy, trying to get a hand between my legs, I pulled away.
“Why won’t you sleep with me?” He complained in aggrieved tones.
Like I’d be about to sleep with him for the first time with Siân and Liam listening in downstairs! Fact is, I probably would have done by now if he’d played his cards right. If he’d carried on telling me how wonderful I was and how much he loved and respected me. But his continual attempts to get just a little bit further without me noticing, and then whining on about me not having sex with him whenever I drew him up short, just served to make me perversely stubborn, and had ended up with me being determined not to give in, just to spite him.
He withdrew sulkily and folded his arms. “Why won’t you sleep with me when you were happy enough to sleep with Kes and Beck?”
I stared at him. “What?” I almost couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “Let’s get this straight right now, shall we? I have never slept with Kes and Beck!”
Quinn's eye’s narrowed, and his tone when he came back at me was insultingly disbelieving. “Course you have! When I asked Kes if you were a good fuck he said you were!”
I took a sharp breath in. “When you what?”
My dangerous tone should have been warning enough, but Quinn has an almost unique inability to spot when he’s digging a hole for himself. “When Siân told me that Beck chucked you because you were useless in bed I thought I’d check out with Kes whether it was worth…”
“Worth what?” I stood up sharply and turned his annoying music down. Then I stood confrontationally with my hands on my hips, glaring at him.
At last Quinn began to notice that he may have made a slight tactical error. “Ummm…”
“Worth asking me out? Is that it?” I hissed at him. I would have shouted at him but I didn’t want any of this conversation to appear on his sister’s radar and she was only just downstairs. “If I wasn’t a good fuck you wouldn’t have bothered to ask me out?”
“Ummm…” He looked like he was desperately trying to think up a way out of this one. “Well, why would Kes pretend to have slept with you?” He exclaimed at last, avoiding my last challenge.
“Because you’re such a damn promiscuous alley cat, boasting to him about your every conquest, I imagine he couldn’t face the ridicule of admitting to you that he’d never slept with anyone!” I pointed out.
Quinn looked gobsmacked. “Kes has never slept with anyone?” He echoed blankly.
“Well, he probably has by now,” I surmised acidly, “since in common with her older brother, your little sister is such a persistent little slag.”
Quinn’s face betrayed the conflict involved in desiring to defend his little sister, and yet not quite knowing how to, whilst also wanting to pursue some further details of the conversation before I completely pissed off. “But Siân said…”
“When have you ever known your sister tell the truth?” I demanded furiously. “She wrote that stuff about me and Beck on her Facebook page to get back at me for chucking her out on her ears when I found her in the house with Jamie. How could you possibly think I’d be idiotic enough to sleep with a guy who was such a complete psychopath? And when he told me he’d deliberately lost you your job at the garage, I chucked him straight away!”
“He what?” Quinn looked bewildered.
I crashed to a sudden halt. I’d forgotten that I’d managed to keep completely shtum about how I’d ended up taking Quinn’s job at Entwistle’s. “
Beck and co,” I edited cautiously, “were the ones that got you sacked by vandalising the garage and scrawling ‘Quinn out’ and all that crap. When he started boasting to me about it, I called him a weasel and told him where to get off.”
Quinn stared at me. “Why would he do that? I barely knew the guy back then!”
I shrugged and pulled a face, hoping he’d never work it out.
“So, back to you,” he said, drawn like a magnet back to the original topic exercising his limited brain. He eyed me with mixed emotions. “Are you saying you’re a..?” He couldn’t quite bring himself to say the word. “But you’ve been out with half the boys in the area!”
“Hardly!” I disagreed. “I’ve been out with the few boys in the area that own a sufficiently interesting vehicle that they’ll allow me to take apart. Beck wouldn’t even let me drive his GPZ 900, let alone strip it down.”
“Right,” Quinn responded uncertainly. His eyes flickered over my face, as though he was trying to judge my veracity. It seemed he was struggling to adjust his assumptions about me. And on top of that, he was clearly affected in the same way that most boys are by the word virgin. On the one hand it gets thrown at girls as an insult, like it’s something to be got rid of as soon as possible, and on the other hand it titillates as they begin to imagine being the first one to do the honours. The latter thought seemed to be gaining the upper hand. A slow seductive smile began to curve and his feline green eyes began to gleam suggestively. He patted the bed beside him.
I glared at him. “You’re so fucking shallow!” I folded my arms. “I told you when you first asked me out that I’d promised my father that I wouldn’t do it with anyone till I was eighteen, and that includes you!”
“Oh, for God’s sake! Who keeps their promises to their parents?” He dismissed impatiently.
“I do!” I snapped. But I knew perfectly well that I wouldn’t have if Quinn had only been a bit cleverer in his approach. He clutched my boobs like he had a right to them! I would have liked to make my point more forcefully, but disappointingly, I realised I was growing out of slapping him. And besides, he was so much stronger than me now that if I hit him and he thumped me back I’d come off much the worse and be forced to pick up some convenient heavy object to get my own back, and then there’d be little chance of damage limitation. I still had an active conviction for grievous bodily harm on record, and hadn’t yet completed my year’s supervision order and my one hundred and fifty hours community service, and I doubted our combined parents’ representations that it was ‘just Adam and Eve’s way, they’ve been trying to kill each other since they were four’ would cut much ice down at the police station.
Paradise Postponed (Not Quite Eden Book 2) Page 2