By Owlerton Stadium the following Sunday, Rajesh and I still hadn’t heard what was happening at the Rajpur household, apart from the news gleaned from Beth that Nasim hadn’t attended school all week. But on the plus side, the police hadn’t contacted Jamie again.
In the van with the Satterthwaites, and during the afternoon at Sheffield, I cheered up and relaxed. The one place Tariq wasn’t going to be was here.
With our previous race day being on tarmac, Paul took the precaution of reminding me of the differences between driving on tarmac and shale, and gave me a few pointers of this stadium’s quirks and I got into my driving gear, this time with a very modest tee-shirt on underneath – just in case.
I turned round to head out to check the announcement boards and found my way blocked. I stopped breathing and felt like I’d been thumped in the stomach.
Trev was standing there. “Hello Eve,” he said with a nasty smile. “Tracked you down at last. I’ve come to find out what porky pies you’ve been telling Entwistle…”
I got my breath back and took an instinctive glance around to see what heavy metal objects I could see within the vicinity to use as a weapon.
“Well?” He leaned his face closer into mine.
“Piss off you cunt!” I snarled at him.
“What’s going on?” Pete was suddenly at my side on his crutches.
Trev looked him and his plaster cast up and down dismissively. “And who are you?”
“You heard her, piss off!” Pete said aggressively.
“Oh yeah, and how you gonna make me?” Trev sneered.
Pete let go of his crutches, took a step forward and in the same movement punched Trev with a smashing force in the face.
Trev reeled back, recovered then made to go for Pete. But Paul, an even heavier, craggier, stockier version of Pete, had arrived at Pete’s shoulder.
“I suggest you go,” Paul said coldly.
With a muttered oath, Trev glared at them a moment, then retreated into the crowds. I sat down on the edge of the concrete curb and found I was trembling. I wanted to throw up.
“Who was he?” Pete asked.
I said nothing. Jo glanced at me. “Oh don’t be such a wimp, Eve. Men punch each other all the time, it’s one of their favourite hobbies.”
I looked across at Pete. “Why did you hit him?”
Pete looked conflicted. “I dunno. I just saw red. I just didn’t like the way he looked at you. And I thought you wanted him to go away. I’m sorry, Eve.”
I got up and walked away.
“Come back, Eve,” Pete called. “Seriously, I’m sorry-”
I plunged into the crowd and walked blindly until I realised that this was the dumbest thing I could do. Trev was out here somewhere. I sat down quickly in the terraces, my face hidden in my hands.
“All set for our race?”
I looked up. Quinn was standing there.
“You crying McGinty?” He observed. He sat down beside me. “What’s up?”
“Will you stay with me a minute,” I appealed. “I don’t want to be left on my own.”
He glanced at his watch. “Just a minute then,” he said unenthusiastically. “We’ve got to be out on the track in fifteen.”
He nudged my shoulder with his own. “Man-up McGinty. I’d hate to win this race as a result of you going all wimpy and girly. I need you to be on top form so I can make mince-meat out of you.”
I sniffed.
He gave me a bit of a shove. “Now you don’t expect me to be nice to you just because you’re crying do you? When have you ever been nice to me when I’m crying?”
“That’s because you’re such a big cry-baby,” I responded grumpily.
“I’ll be targeting you McGinty, you know that. Rob’s having me start at the front today so I’ll be right alongside you, ready to get you! You need to channel that anger-”
“Yes,” I said. I knew he was right. “Ok.” I stood up. “See you on the track.”
Back at the pits, Pete handed me my helmet without saying anything. And I just took it. Jo was driving in the second qualifier so I drove out on my own.
Quinn looked across at me, I could see him do it out of the corner of my eye. But from the moment he roared away a millisecond ahead of me, I just lost it. Every car that passed me seemed to give me a thump. Quinn, sailed further and further ahead. I got caught in a crush, boxed in, and bumped mercilessly. I couldn’t tell if it was simply because I was off-form, or because everyone was targeting me to punish me for getting my picture in Unloaded or because they’d finally all worked out what sex I was, and were ganging up on me.
Quinn qualified in eighth place. I was way back in the field. Quinn shook his head at me as he drove past me to return to Rob. And I drove miserably back to the pits.
Jo qualified in her own heat. While the race was on, Paul gave me a bit of a talking to.
“You can’t let anything affect your race. You have to put everything out of your mind. You have to have absolute focus. You know that’s why the men round here think that a woman can never win don’t you? That they can’t do it because they have monthlies and moods and no consistency. So you have to show them. You’re going to have to drive ten times better than them to prove yourself, and stay well ahead, because you’re the number one target at the moment, and they’re not going to stop until they’ve driven you out of the game. You understand?”
I nodded and kicked ambivalently at the barrier we were leaning on to watch the race.
“So you get your focus in gear by whatever means you need to use, and get out there and qualify in the consolation. All eyes are on you now that you’ve had that publicity, so don’t let us down!”
I drank a cup of strong coffee, ate a snickers bar and paced up and down thinking about beheading the evil Tariq and picturing taking Trev’s balls off with a monkey wrench. A text came in. It said merely WIMP! Quinn of course. I imagined Rob’s smug face if I didn’t qualify and I ground my teeth at the thought.
There was no-one I knew in the Consolation, and it helped that the top sixteen drivers had already been creamed off. I stared straight ahead at the start and grit my teeth. Zone out woman! Get in the Zone… I had to qualify. And then I suddenly realised Trev was out there watching my race, thinking I’d been laying it on with a trowel at work about how good I was when in fact I was clearly mediocre. Fuck you, Trev! I snarled and rammed the car into gear. I came in fourth.
“Better,” Paul greeted me with. “Now do that again with knobs on.”
Quinn exchanged a long cool glance with me at the start. They’d put him right beside me but on the inside and I had to plan how to get over this disadvantage. We set off neck and neck and unbelievably, pretty much stayed like that. I jostled, put pressure on him and wove at him, but it wasn’t possible to make contact from my position on the outside, so just couldn’t make one of the classic moves to get him out of the way. One car gave me a shove that nearly threw me into him but I wrenched it back with millimetres to spare, lest I end up finishing off both our races by sending us flying into the air over the huge tyres that guarded the infield. We flashed past the black and white flag like conjoined twins, our times on the board exactly the same, round about ninth in the field.
“Not bad,” Paul said expressionlessly.
I ripped my gloves off and undid my helmet. “I couldn’t get ahead of him, dammit!”
Jo pulled up. She’d come eleventh. She’d seen most of the last few laps from just behind us.
“What could I have done, Jo?” I asked.
“You needed to stop trying to overtake him on the outside, pull back and approach him from the inside where you could have attacked to throw him outwards,” Jo said. “I saw your noble effort not to get thrown into him when Tyler bumped you when you were both alongide the infield tyres.”
“Oh, was that Tyler?”
She nodded. “Neither of you got out of his way like you’re supposed to, so he was probably making sure you pay more attent
ion to him next time.”
“Listen to me carefully, Eve,” Paul said severely. “It’s not just about you and Quinn. You have to intend to beat the whole field or you’ll only ever get to be one place better than wherever Quinn ends up.”
I lowered my eyes. I knew he was right.
“And it’s not healthy to allow too obsessional a rivalry to get going. If you look at the disciplinary reports every month, you’ll notice that a lot of them are caused by long standing rivalries – attacks on the driver’s door, abusive gestures, deliberately bashing stationary vehicles – none of them are acceptable and the officials stamp on them quick as anything. You can still indulge in satisfaction whenever you beat him, while not losing sight of the greater prize of beating everyone else.”
In the van on the way home I elected to sit in the back instead of at the front with Pete and Paul as I had the last few journeys, and allowed Jo her rightful place.
I felt exhausted. I napped for part of the journey. I awoke to hear them discussing me.
“The incident with that bloke seemed to send her right off kilter,” Pete said.
“She looked really upset and was shaking quite violently,” Jo observed.
“So why did you punch him?” Paul inquired. “I had my back turned, and the next thing I saw was you laying into him!”
“I don’t know.” Pete seemed perplexed. “I just had an overwhelming desire to punch his arrogant lights out.”
“She ran straight off to Quinn,” Jo said.
“Did she?” Paul sounded surprised.
“Well there’s obviously some history there,” Jo deduced. “Bet they’ve gone out together at some point…”
“How’d you make that out?” Pete asked.
“The other night when we were on their home ground. They were exchanging information with their eyes all the time, and then one little jerk of the head at the end of the evening and she was right at his beck and call. Bet she can play him like a Stradivarius.”
“Oh yes, I’d forgotten you’d gone to see the guy in concert,” Paul said. “How was it?”
There was a short silence from the two siblings while they sought some words to describe it.
“Ummm, different?” Pete.
“Mental!” Jo.
“But to give the guy his due, he does have an amazing voice,” Pete reported. “Boy he can hit a high note!”
“Only because someone was giving him a wedgie on that G string!” Jo mocked.
I let out a snort of laughter.
They glanced round with a guilty start.
“I can hear you, you know,” I said.
They quickly moved on to another subject, and I made no effort to enlighten them about anything at all.
On Monday Jamie announced to me that Tariq had been arrested and questioned but not charged yet. Apparently Nasim was too upset to go to school and Sahmir had missed his exam because he was being cross-questioned by the police.
“He swears he’s stuck to our story, even pretended that he once innocently mentioned playing in the barn there to Tariq. They’ve searched the whole house but found nothing… We made sure we didn’t do anything at either of our own homes.”
They can’t have any evidence against Tariq either if they hadn’t charged him yet. Bummer. I passed the news onto Rajesh who groaned.
“I can’t wait to move out of home again, it’s driving me nuts being back at my age!”
“Did Chetsi tell you what she’d found out?”
“Suki you mean? Yeah, sobering isn’t it? And with the way Nasim’s family have been behaving, you wonder if anything’s moved on in the world don’t you?”
I could already see a change in my muscle definition with every night I did down the gym. Every evening I also saw Quinn heading out on increasingly longer runs. I wanted to take up running too, but knew I wouldn’t have the motivation on my own. Could I ask Quinn if I could join him? I sighed. Of course I couldn’t! And every night more of HER belongings arrived in boxes piled up in my Dad’s bedroom.
On Wednesday I learnt how to bring someone down with a simple judo throw, and how to use various improvised objects distract an attacker’s attention.
On Thursday I saw Quinn coming back in the dusk in his jogging shorts and sweatshirt with headphones in his ears. I stopped the bike beside him and switched off the engine. He likewise came to a halt and took his ear-pieces out.
“Hi there,” I greeted him. “Good run?”
He was putting in some hamstring stretches while I spoke.
“Working it up a bit more every day.” He did some side pulls.
“Can I come?” It popped out without my meaning it too.
He stopped stretching, looking surprised. “I s’pose so,” he said after a pause. “As long as you don’t hold me up.”
Shit, what had I done? But it was too late to lose face by going back on it now! I bit my lip. “I’ll drop out whenever I can’t keep up and hopefully that’ll be a bit further on every day.” I promised.
“And wear proper shoes or you’ll knacker your knees,” he advised.
“I’ll go and buy some,” I agreed meekly.
“Well, I guess it’ll help me have to keep at it,” he admitted. “I was beginning to get bored of it already. But you’re not to tell Rob – he’s determined I’m going to beat you. He’s even told me to keep off the alcohol, the cheek of it coming from him!”
“What did he think of our last neck and neck result?” I asked curiously.
“Gave me a right ear-bashing,” Quinn said ruefully.
I could see that Quinn was under just as much pressure as me to get a result. Paul and Rob must have a real old-time grudge going.
“He’s got your picture from Unloaded pinned up in the workshop and he refers to you as ‘the Top Totty’.”
I pulled a face.
“How come I never got to see that racy little red number?” Quinn asked teasingly.
I turned the key in the ignition and revved the engine very loudly. “What are you complaining about? You’ve got to see it now, along with several hundred other men!”
And I roared off giving him the finger as I went.
On Friday night I arrived at Lyndale, executing my usual swerve around a wide stanced, fist pressed together Bobby with his head down like a ram about to butt something.
We swopped engine statistics as we walked into the main part of the house and I managed to guess the models of two out of the three he fired at me which pleased him, and me too for that matter. It was like arriving at school for an exam every time I walked into Lyndale.
Todd met me at the door. He looked grave. He bit his lip. “The manager wants to see you in the back room.” The small office block was always locked up at the weekends so we had any meetings in the back room. As I went to walk straight there he said, “I should take your leather off first…” He hung it up for me at the door. I slipped my bike keys into my shoulder bag so Bobby wouldn’t rifle through my jacket for them. I had no inkling whatsoever as to what was coming next.
I walked into the back room which had a table and some old armchairs in a circle, expecting to see Antonia who was the head of the college, but it was a severe looking middle aged woman whom I’d never seen before.
“Sit down,” she glanced down at some papers on her lap, “Eve.” She concluded, obviously having had to remind herself of my name.
I sat down.
“Do you know who I am?” She asked me, removing her glasses to stare hard at me.
I shook my head. Whatever this was about, it didn’t seem like it was going to be anything good.
“I am the director of the Learning Disability side of Craigside,” but she still didn’t tell me her name.
Craigside was the company that ran Lyndale along with a couple of other Learning Disability Further Education colleges, some elderly person’s care homes, dementia units and even a couple of Secure Units. Todd had told me that they’d been hoovering up every small institution in
sight.
“We have had a very serious complaint against you,” she stared hard at me again. “From a very vulnerable student, and when investigating her claim, some extremely serious concerns have come to light.”
I stared at her - amazed, rather than confrontational. I had no idea what she was talking about.
Todd came in, and she indicated for him to sit down, then she glanced back down at her papers.
“Katie Branson has accused you of sexually assaulting her.”
I stared open mouthed at the woman.
“I don’t understand…” I faltered, glancing at Todd for help. He kept his eyes lowered and didn’t look at me.
“Katie Branson has said that-” she put her glasses back on and read from her notes, “ – I quote – ‘that you took her up the jacksie in the shower’.” She took her glasses back off and glared at me. “So what do you have to say for yourself?”
For a moment I had nothing to say for myself. This was gobsmacking. I was completely blank. Then reason and self protection re-asserted itself.
“It’s not true!” I defended myself. “Someone must have misunderstood! She’s always saying ‘up the jacksie’, it’s like a refrain of hers – ever since they swopped her over to Friday suppositories – she has no bowel control and her parents are vets and that’s how they jokingly explained it to her when she changed from daily laxatives to a weekly clear out to save her from being messy all week…”
“That’s true…” Todd interjected.
She darted him a sharp ‘keep your mouth shut’ look then addressed me. “She has said, and I quote, ‘Eve – up the jacksie – in the shower.’ What were you even doing with her in the shower?”
“Well showering her of course,” I said bewildered. “After the suppository it all comes away at once and we nearly always end up having to put her in the shower because it’s impossible to properly clean her up otherwise.”
“And who else have you been alone with?” She asked sharply.
“Well everyone at some time or another I suppose,” I said. “I often help shower the girls.” A vision of Mikey’s tiny little widgie floated before my mind’s eye. Shit, I wasn’t going to mention that I’d also got in tiny cubicles to dress naked male students. I remembered Todd immediately calling out, ‘What’s going on?’ when hearing me telling Mikey to put his pants on, and hoped that he wouldn’t get the wrong idea now at this late stage…
Paradise Postponed (Not Quite Eden Book 2) Page 29