The Way Barred (Not Quite Eden Book 4) Read online

  She nodded seriously. She had big blue eyes in a heart shaped face with a pointy chin and high cheekbones, and she always put blue eyeliner right round her eyes to make them seem even larger. Her big light blue eyes now fixed helpfully on my own.

  “I need lots of advice about what I need to be thinking about, not just finances – you know – like the law, how to register as self-employed, the different business models for partnerships – oh, everything really!”

  She nodded obligingly, “Sure thing – I’ll do my best…”

  The new guy was about to start work at our garage. Mr Entwistle our boss had suddenly become democratic in his old age and had given us all a say in who was offered the new job. He told us that he’d turned down two of them out of hand. One was an older bloke who had said with a slight curl of the lip that he hadn’t been following the ITV Thrills and Spills series that had been documenting my own and a few other drivers’ F2 careers for a season, and Entwistle felt that any mechanic worth his salt would surely be glued to it. And the other one that he ruled out straight away was what he described as ‘a wannabe Eve’ who seemed to have no qualifications beyond having got her Dad to show her a couple of times what was under a bonnet, and who, he suspected, was more interested on getting onto TV. He’d suggested that she pursue an apprenticeship instead.

  That left five possibles who we were to work with a day each over a period of a week. Each night we got in a huddle and discussed what we thought of them. The only other woman to apply was middle aged and taciturn.

  “Don’t get like her by the time you’re old Jo, will you?” I begged.

  I could see that Dewhurst and Steve Bolton, the two male mechanics didn’t like her, but didn’t want to sound sexist.

  I vetoed her myself. “I didn’t feel at all comfortable with her. By mid-morning she seemed to think it was ok to follow me around ticking me off for things, and by afternoon tea break she’d started telling me off for elements of my lifestyle according to what she’d seen on TV.” I wrinkled my nose and hunched my shoulders defensively. “It seemed really intrusive and inappropriate.”

  I could see the men were relieved.

  So we’d ended up with Tony. A medium aged guy that reminded me a bit of the Silver roof holder, Horrocks. Slight, bespectacled, sweet natured and a bit earnest. Young enough to still be fun and have a long working life ahead, but old enough to have lots of mechanical experience under his belt. And a big fan of Thrills and Spills.

  “Your first job,” Dewhurst, the head mechanic told him on his first morning, fixing his eyes challengingly on the serious face of the new boy, “and believe me we’re setting you a difficult task here – is to master the exact ways we all have our different brews…”

  Then Dewhurst’s face cracked into a smile and Tony must have got the hang of how we worked round here – one continual piss take to the next leg pull. We took our fun where we could find it in this forecourt.

  Daisy had asked if she could come jogging with me and Quinn, and she’d also joined my ladies’ gym. This was working out really well. I’d thought that Daisy’s long legs might keep up with Quinn’s, but she didn’t have the stamina, so it meant that by mutual consent we’d both turn round half way, jog to our gym, work out on some of the machines, and then run home together. We did this twice a week and it was a great discipline. I was working on strengthening my neck and back muscles at the gym. I didn’t want to lose my feminine figure, but I wanted to be as protected against whiplash injuries as I could manage. You get jolted around a lot in the full contact F2 Stocks formula, with lots of sudden impacts.

  We were having a late warm spell, so Daisy and I were walking home in shorts and crop tops. Close to our flat a car drew up alongside us and tracked us for a bit. Just as Daisy and I glanced at each other to signal that maybe we should start jogging again, the car window whirred down and the driver said impatiently, “Well are you going to get in or aren’t you?”

  I glared at him. “We aren’t,” I said aggressively. I could see another couple of guys in the car there too.

  The driver’s face flickered with anger but the window whirred back up again and he drove off.

  I felt a bit shaken. “What was that about?” I asked Daisy as we reached the outer door of our three storey section of flats. I glanced around to check the car had completely gone so they wouldn’t find out where we lived.

  Daisy looked uncomfortable. “Kerb crawlers,” she said. We jogged up the long flight of steps to our third floor flat. “It’s happened to me several times when I’ve been walking home recently.”

  It hadn’t happened to me, but then I drove my bike to and from here, and Daisy walked in from the bus stop a couple of streets away.

  “You need to start asking me and Quinn for a lift more often,” I said worriedly. “Shower first or second?”

  “Second,” she said. She usually liked to flop around having a drink and a chill out first.

  “It never used to happen,” I frowned, halting in the middle of the bathroom door. “I used to jog home on my own and no-one ever bothered me. I wonder what’s changed?”

  We were all at the World Championship at Hednesford supporting Pete.

  “Getting the car into perfect condition is vital for this track,” Paul explained to me. “It’s a big track and it’s shaped and banked almost like a cycle velodrome. The F1’s go really well here, it gives them a good chance to really open up the throttle for once, but the F2’s can struggle – the race always increases in speed with each lap, so drivers have to resist the temptation to go all out from the start and ruin their tyres before the last vital laps and there’s rarely been an F2 race here where someone doesn’t blow their engine…” I wondered if he were using ‘educating’ me as a way of reminding Pete what he needed to think about without sounding like he was giving annoying advice. “Because it’s big and fast, it’s hard for drivers to make enough contact on each other to push each other wide and if they go for a big hit it nearly always ends up being too hard and damaging the hitter more than the receiver. So it’s more like normal racing and less like full contact Stocks, and the quality of the car is vital…”

  So for once, I found out what it was like to be the support team biting their nails on the stands instead of the driver.

  “I feel so helpless,” I remarked as we waited for them to line up correctly according to their places on the grid. Pete was on the inside, three rows back.

  “We couldn’t have done any more for the car or the engine,” Jo pointed out. “If it was a dog it would win Crufts!”

  I found myself leaning into Paul and he took the hint and put his arm around my shoulders.

  The driver in pole position, decided by the placings in previous qualifying races, had the privilege of deciding when to hit the accelerator and start the race. That was Tyler, the current World Championship title holder. As they all shot away, I found out that the normally reserved Jo was completely disinhibited as a spectator. No wonder she’d turned up a few times to greet me sounding completely hoarse. Paul was watchful, muttering instructions that Pete could never hear, his hand tight on my shoulder. Whereas I found out that I watched in total silence. Tense as a steel cable quivering in a high wind, but silent.

  Right from the start it looked as though it was going to be Tyler’s race. But a couple of yellow flag incidents with repeat big crashes on the West Bend meant that the cars left behind had a chance to catch up. Each time Tyler had the chance to choose the start of the race again and made the most of it, but as fewer cars were left in and a couple more pulled off with smoking engines it was clear that the race was now between Tyler, Horrocks, Pete, Toon the Dutchman who had come third in the World of Shale and one of the Northern Irish drivers. Nothing in the Stocks is certain of course, Tyler’s engine could blow or a back marker could get in his way, but there was enough of a gap between himself and his next nearest rival that it was clear that no-one was going to be able to ambush him from behind. The tussle was for
second and third. Pete was placed fourth at the moment.

  “Oh shit,” I said. Pete’s engine was clearly smoking. He appeared to be ignoring it, did a lunge into Horrocks in the last bend, and collared third position before coming to a halt half a lap after the chequered flag. “Phew,” I said. “That was amazing…”

  Jo was exhausted. Paul was smiling.

  “Will he be pleased with that do you think?” I asked cautiously.

  “Of course he will!” Jo exclaimed. “It’s his best position yet in a World Final. Honestly Eve you’re such a cool customer!”

  Paul went off to join Pete in the scrutineering. Finally we got to congratulate him. Jo rushed into his arms and hugged and kissed him. He smiled and hugged her back. I reached up and gave him a kiss on the cheek.

  “Well done. Jo was going bananas! How’s your poor engine?”

  He kept one arm around Jo and put the other round me. “Knackered, I’m afraid. It’s going to turn out to be an expensive race!”

  On the way out of the scrutineering area I bumped into Tyler. “Oh look, here comes the Dog’s Bollocks,” I teased.

  “Someone needs to take you in hand, you cheeky pup,” he came back at me, but he graciously bent his cheek for me to kiss.

  I looked around. “You don’t seem to have crowds of women lining up to kiss you in congratulation? Isn’t your family here?” I knew from Thrills and Spills that he had a wife and two primary school aged daughters.

  “Sore point,” he said abruptly, a shadow passing across his face. “You’ll get all the low down on next week’s episode, I believe.”

  “That sounds ominous,” I commiserated. “I hate it when you’ve had to record something you don’t really want everyone knowing, and you have a week or two waiting for it to hit the screens…”

  I started to walk away.

  “Oh, I meant to say – congratulations on your own title,” he called after me.

  I glanced back and smiled. Then I made a couple of deep throated dog barking impressions and walked away. He’d once referred on Thrills and Spills to me as a yapping terrier on his heels which he wasn’t worried about. Told me to be more Doberman. I had been taking that advice seriously ever since.

  Paul and Jo shared the driving home as they felt Pete had done enough driving for one day.

  “I bumped into Tyler,” I announced sometime during the journey, “and when I commented on his lack of adoring womenfolk hanging around congratulating him, he said sore point, and said we’d be finding out about it on the next Thrills and Spills episode. Sounds a bit ominous don’t you think?”

  Paul glanced at me out of the corner of his eye. “I heard on the grapevine that his wife had just left him…”

  “Oh shit, me and my big mouth,” I berated myself. “I feel terrible now!”

  On Wednesday Daisy, Quinn and I curled up together on the settee in the flat to watch the latest episode. Daisy had baked us a cake and we all cosied up together with Quinn in the middle.

  It started showing some brief footage of the last few minutes of the World Championship Final and Tyler, Toon and Pete receiving their trophies, and then they went over to Tyler’s wife.

  “Yes, I’ve left him.” She was clearly using the programme to get back at him. “I couldn’t stand the racing any longer. He’s never home, he’s always away racing or working till all hours on one or other of his cars. And the expense! If it weren’t for all the money that gets thrown away on those cars we’d be comfortably off by now! I want my girls to have ballet lessons, not kill themselves in armoured minis on a racetrack which is what he’d have them doing if he had his way!”

  “Oops,” I said. “Poor Tyler, this is so humiliating don’t you think, Quinn?”

  Quinn nodded. “Makes you wince…”

  Then they went to Tyler. He was looking miserable. “Yes it’s always been a tension. That’s why I gave up going for the Silver roof once the kids were born – it’s too much of a commitment. And you have to remember I earn my living with a garage business and local rescue service, so if you add to that more after-hours mechanical commitments with the Stock cars then I guess I wasn’t home much. I just wanted a few more years at the top of my game. I was talking to Paul Satterthwaite a few months ago and he cited the fact that his wife had forgotten what he looked like as one of the reasons he’d finally retired himself, and I knew that I wasn’t noble enough to do that – I don’t feel ready to finish yet. But I don’t feel good about myself. I feel like I’m a selfish (they bleeped the word out). And I’m really missing my girls.”

  I felt gutted for him.

  Then they swopped to two times Silver Roof holder (National Points Champion) Horrocks. He blinked a bit anxiously through his glasses at the camera. “Yes, I am worried about the commitment, time and money that it takes to pursue a top class Stocks career. Since we’ve had little Harry I’ve known that I’ll have to give up eventually because the commitments only get heavier as a special needs child gets older. He’s only three at the moment so it doesn’t seem much worse than looking after any other three year old, but we’ll really begin to notice all the extra time and money needed as he gets older, when other people’s kids would be getting independent. And we’ve heard he might need a heart operation this year. So I decided to make the most of the time now, while I could…”

  They went to the advert break. “We need to make the most of being single and childless,” I remarked to Quinn, “Cos it doesn’t look that much fun once you aren’t.”

  “Cake?” Daisy offered.

  In the second half I was surprised that they went to some footage they’d filmed a couple of weeks ago here at the flat. But I could see where the subject matter related.

  Tanya, the interviewer who was assigned to us younger ones was asking how it was going after our first couple of months with our new flatmate Daisy.

  “Yeah, good,” I said, tipping my head consideringly on one side. “Quinn’s a lot less restless now he’s got Daisy on tap…”

  “Ginty!” Quinn protested.

  “She’s more like his regular shag than his occasional shag now,” I explained.

  The camera swung to take in Daisy’s reaction, but she must be used to us now, and she didn’t seem put out, merely nodded and agreed that she probably would qualify as that now.

  “And she’s a really good cake baker,” I said. “We’ve been spoiled rotten, haven’t we Quinn?”

  “Yep,” he responded.

  “And,” I added, “I’m ashamed to admit this, but she often does our washing for us, doesn’t she Quinn? I mean, we’ve never asked her to, but she goes and hunts it down in our rooms and claims she was just needing it to fill the machine, and then she dries it and folds it up for us…”

  Quinn nodded.

  “Cos we’re just so busy. I mean, I go straight from my work at the garage out to the Satterthwaites’ to work on the cars until late, and spend at least one, sometimes two days away at the weekend racing, so I just don’t get any time to do anything domestic. I mean, without Daisy here and Sue Satterthwaite there, I’d have probably starved to death by now. Quinn and I have both decided that what we need is a wife. Which is fine for Quinn, but I’m not going to be able to have one am I? I think I’m going to have to keep my eye out for a chef to marry! If I ended up with another mechanic we’d just have to set up a bed in the garage…”

  Once the thumping heavy metal music started up with the credits rolling, Quinn got the giggles. “You know what I really wanted to say after you said that, but didn’t dare say on camera because Mum would be watching, was that the obvious solution was for you, me and Daisy to set up in a threesome!”

  “What like a kind of harem?” I established. “You shag the pair of us, and I get you to look after my car in return for shagging you, and Daisy gets to look after the pair of us in return for you shagging her?”

  “Yeah, perfect don’t you think?” Quinn grinned.

  “For you maybe,” I rolled my eyes at Daisy
. “Which one of us is going to thump him first?”

  We both leapt on him and all ended up in a silly play-fight hold-him-down-and-tickle-him sort of moment that Quinn absolutely loves to bits. Contrary to what I’d expected, he’d turned out to be really happy as the only boy in a flat with two girls. It gave him the starring role.

  Now that Pete had completed what he had set out to do this year, he wasn’t that bothered with anything else. But Paul and Jo were determined that I should qualify for the Final of the Grand National in October and the Shoot Out Final in Birmingham in early November, so they wanted me to keep up the points rankings. However, since neither Pete nor I were trying for the Silver roof of the National Points Championship, we could ease off a bit. We didn’t need to spend whole weekends heading off in the Beast on the agonisingly long journeys to tracks in Devon and Cornwall or off up to Scotland.

  I noticed that the Thrills and Spills production team were flailing about for something to create a bit of tension or interest. Most of the major titles had been won. The Novice of the Year, so tightly contended right up until the last race between three of us last year, was this year being walked away with by a sixteen year old lad from down South called Wentworth, so there was no suspense to it. Horrocks was already thought to have the Silver in the bag, due to his big rival and previous title holder, Devlin, having had engine trouble and other mechanical issues all year. He’d started out trialling a Zetec engine then when it hadn’t gone well, swopped back to a Pinto, and still struggled. The will they/won’t they? Romeo and Juliet love story of my friends Rajesh and Nasim from either side of the Indian Hindu/Pakistani Muslim divide had come to its conclusion and they were safely married off and on their honeymoon. The production team had seemed a bit disappointed that Nasim’s family hadn’t turned up to try to disrupt the wedding or attempt a pre-nuptial honour killing but had instead kept a furious silent distance. And the other will she/won’t she story was being stymied by Quinn’s mother who remained stubbornly alive. You could see from their faces that the ITV staff had had hoped for a juicy funeral and a weeping Quinn by now. Neither Quinn nor I had plunged into a great romance with anyone, not even with each other (another outcome hoped for by the general populous of viewers, so I was told regularly by the research team, presumably to orchestrate the outcome they wanted).