Thrills and Spills Read online

  He straightened up and turned round.

  The woman beside me instantly straightened up and took notice. “Eye candy or what?” She hissed to the metro man.

  I tried to see him through her eyes. Six foot, broadening shoulders, celtic colouring with the dark mane of hair, glimmering green eyes and white skin. He immediately gave her a charming smile and she got all flustered. And she was ancient! At least thirty…

  “Quinn, this is-” I looked at her inquiringly.

  “Sasha Holland,” she supplied immediately.

  “They’re doing a documentary next year about the BriSCA F2s and they want to know if you’d mind them following you about with a camera every now and again,” I explained.

  He raised his perfectly arched dark eyebrows and then shrugged. “Don’t see why not…”

  Now Rob turned round. I saw Sasha looking almost as interested in him. Again, I tried to see him through her eyes. To me he was just tall, darkish, rangy and craggy. They explained the concept over again with them. Rob nodded. The photographer took a couple of shots.

  Sasha and metro-man, who I’d now found out by now was called Damian, were having a low-voiced conflab. “We can portray the girl’s team as the nice family and these two as the charismatic dangerous ones…”

  She called out to the photographer, “A couple of the two rookie rivals now.” She came over to us and got us to stand back to back. “Fold your arms, lean back against each other and look sideways at the camera – can you look mean and determined..?”

  “Yep, we can do mean, can’t we McGinty?” Quinn said with a smile.

  “Yup, mean’s our middle name,” I confirmed.

  We looked narrowed eyed and unsmilingly into the camera and he snapped us from three different angles.

  They talked about us as though we were objects and couldn’t hear us. “Yes this is ideal – perfect foil. One tall and dark, one petite and blonde. And thank God we managed to dig out a girl or you can imagine the twitterfeed from the Woman’s Hour brigade about the re-enforcement of gender stereotypes… Great chemistry don’t you think? Yes, I think this means we’ve got the younger end sorted…”

  We all ignored them. Rob held out his hand to me. “Congratulations McGinty! Two titles in one race!” His bright blue eyes smiled across at me in what seemed a genuine response.

  I glanced a bit anxiously at Quinn. I expected him to be a bit off with me. But he put an arm around my shoulder and kissed me on the cheek in congratulations. “Well done, Ginty,” he said. Then his green eyes glimmered. “But don’t think this is the end of it,” he warned. “You’re going to have to really watch your back next season!”

  He smiled as he said it, but I knew he meant it.

  A long drive home, and then back in the Satterthwaites’ massive farmhouse kitchen eating a very late supper, we were reporting back to Sue what had gone on. First about my double triumph, and then the unexpected approach made by the TV company.

  Paul was surprisingly positive about the ITV documentary. “Can’t see any harm in it. It’ll be good publicity for the sport in general, and it will do your profile no end of good, Eve. We need to get your car down the garage immediately though and take those publicity photos, so they’re up on the garage website before word gets out, to allow Entwistle to get the advantage of being the first to spot your talents. And Jo, maybe you should make sure our team Facebook page is up to date, and set a separate racing one up for Eve. If you can take charge of that for her, then she won’t have to waste time thinking about it herself and you can field all the comments and enquiries.”

  Jo didn’t look all that thrilled at that job, but nobly nodded anyway.

  And then Pete shepherded me off to bed with the excuse to the family that I needed my beauty sleep before work tomorrow. And then he proceeded to not allow me to get any for at least another hour…

  Jo and I left for work at about the same time next morning but as she was in her car, and I was only on my trusty 50cc Honda so she had got in well ahead of me, and by the time I arrived she’d obviously broken the news to the men and I was greeted with Dewhurst and Bolton clapping and giving a bit of a cheer as I got off my bike.

  I walked into the flat that evening, slightly on edge, not sure if Quinn was going to punish me by being a bit distant for a while. He was sitting at the kitchen table on Kes’s laptop. He looked up and jerked his head to me to come over and take a look. I leant over his shoulder and peered at the screen. The BriSCA F2 website had been updated with the weekend results and in the ‘news’ section there was a couple of sentences about me.

  With no fanfare, at Stoke, Loomer Road Stadium on Sunday, and with not as much as a celebratory twirl of the car or a wave out of the window, no 768, Eve McGinty, drove her way into the Novice of the Year title. If you missed this moment, which let’s face it, most of us did, you can take a look at this new phenomenon on the scene, the first female to ever win this title, as she receives the trophy at the NEC on the 16th of Jan.

  “So you, me and Strickland will be up on that podium at the NEC on the sixteenth,” Quinn said. “How do you feel about that?” He gave me a quick sideways grin.

  I hadn’t even thought about it, but now it was sinking in that everything was about to get a lot more public. “Ummm…” My hand closed convulsively on his shoulder. “Glad you’ll be there with me, I think…”

  I got Paul on his own a bit later in the week and asked if I could talk to him seriously about something. He listened carefully to me telling him how anxious I was about how I was going to manage all the race expenses. The diesel alone cost a fortune. You had to change the oil after every three race meetings. We had to change the tyres around nearly every meet and put new ones on whenever the race was really important. And then there were all the travel and transport costs. I wanted to be able to say ‘and what do I owe you for this season?’ but I didn’t dare. They had never asked me for a penny, but putting me through this season must have cost them a fortune and I didn’t know if it was Pete whose car it was and whose unilateral decision it was to loan it to me who was bearing the cost, or his father, or some kind of team family central fund.

  “That’s why you need lots of sponsorship Eve. You haven’t got any capital or family support behind you for this, and on top of that you’re going to need all your spare time to devote to this if you want to get anywhere with it, so you can’t get a second job.” He saw my worried face. “Don’t worry, Eve, we’ll help you. I’ll sort the sponsorship out for you and manage the money and contact with the firms. Your responsibility is just to drop their names into every public conversation and thank them publically whenever you are given an opportunity. All the Stocks reporters finish up by asking you who you want to thank for exactly that reason…”

  When I got back to the flat that night the kitchen radio was on loud, Kes’s door was firmly shut and Mariah was parked on the table in her basket. I surmised that Siân was in residence on a visit to Kes.

  Quinn turned round from the sink. “Siân’s decided to stay the night, so will you help me get Mariah home?”

  I reached for a bowl of cereal to keep me going until I could decide what I was going to eat tonight. “Why d’you need me?” Although Quinn had seemed fine with me on the day of my winning the Novice of the Year title off him, the last few days he’d been markedly cool with me. Or was he was being cool with me to signal his disapproval of my having taken up with Pete? It was hard to tell.

  He shrugged. “Baby and basket on a motorbike, figure I need a pillion up to help.”

  “I s’pose I could visit Dad while we’re there,” I said cautiously. “As long as you’re not intending to hang around there all evening?”

  He shook his head. “Half an hour maybe? Just long enough to satisfy the parents…”

  As we got on his bike with me clutching the Moses basket between myself and his back, and Mariah shoved into a baby carrier sling on his front with his leather jacket half zipped up over her I figured there
must be a law against this somewhere. In this raw mid-November weather I hoped she wouldn’t freeze to death before we got there.

  Quinn drove us home with impeccable care. Outside his house he said to me, “Come in and see Mum.”

  I hesitated because I wouldn’t exactly be her favourite choice of visitor, but I’d hate to think she died and I hadn’t ever been back to see her since we left home. Not that I wanted to say that to Quinn. I shrugged and carried the basket in for him.

  Kathleen was between chemo cycles, so she wasn’t as immune-compromised as sometimes, and was up and about and in the kitchen. I was shocked at how thin she was, and sort of grey. Her bald head was covered up by a paisley print scarf. She reached her arms out to receive Mariah from her son. She gave me a slight smile when I asked how she was doing and told me that they were giving her a few weeks off until after Christmas. Somewhere in the background in the living room, Declan and Liam were making a right racket, sounding like they were trying to kill each other.

  “Tea or Coffee, Mum?” Quinn was by the kettle.

  She shook her head. “Neither. Everything just tastes of metal at the moment – I’m surviving on hot lemon barley water at the moment.” She jiggled Mariah up and down on her knee who gurgled happily at her.

  She looked back at me. “Are you going in to see your Dad?”

  I nodded.

  “Pauline’s been marvellous. I don’t know how I would have coped without all her help.” Kathleen suddenly commented.

  “What? Dad’s Pauline?” I established surprised. When Dad’s girlfriend had moved in, I had pointedly moved out.

  Kathleen accepted the mug of steaming barley water from her son, and glanced back at me. “I think you’ll find they have some good news to tell you…”

  My heart lurched. I really hoped they weren’t getting married.

  I hot footed it next door. Pauline gave screams of joy and enveloped me into her ample bosom. “Look Jack! Look who’s come to see us!”

  I wrestled myself out of her cleavage and went over to Dad. His eyes lit up and he gave me a brief squeeze on the shoulder. Pauline’s brown and white spaniel leapt up and down at my side then barked and spun around like a Stock car winner celebrating a triumph. As Pauline dived off into the kitchen to make us a drink I leant over to Dad and said in a low voice, “Have you two anything to tell me?”

  He looked completely blank. “Don’t think so. Why?”

  I shook my head and shrugged. “Nothing,” I said quickly. I couldn’t imagine what Kathleen was on about then… “So guess what, Dad?” I said. “I’m going to be in an ITV documentary about Stock car racing, and I’m going out with Pete Satterthwaite…”

  Pauline came back in time to hear the last bit. “What the short, swarthy, non-descript stocky one?” She said disapprovingly. “What’s wrong with the gorgeous Adam or the delectable Kes or the luscious Rajesh?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Help me out here Dad?” I appealed.

  He dragged his eyes reluctantly away from the pre-match lead-up that Pauline had switched to mute when I arrived and spread his big hands. “Kes and Rajesh are already taken and Adam is too immature and unreliable for my lovely daughter,” he summed up succinctly. He met my gaze. “You’re onto a good ‘un with Pete,” he said with an approving nod.

  Good old Dad, I thought. I stood up, “I’ll leave you to watch the game then, Dad.” And I could see him thinking ‘good girl Eve, if you bugger off now then Pauline will let me watch this…’

  A couple of days later and we were having breakfast at the flat. Pete had stayed over again, but left early to go to work, but not before having come back to the door three times to repeatedly kiss me whilst we studiously ignored Quinn’s outraged harrumphing noises. Kes was yawning and putting slices of white bread into the toaster.

  “What do you see in him?” Quinn complained after Pete had finally gone.

  “I don’t know what you mean,” I blocked. Ok. So maybe it was about Pete then?

  “Well he’s not exactly an oil painting,” Quinn said disparagingly.

  I leant back against the kitchen work top. “That’s not what’s important to me,” I said crossly. “Pete’s really kind, really reliable and really capable. I trust him completely. I know he could sort anything out for me if I needed him to, and I know he can protect me.”

  Kes looked round at Quinn’s disgruntled expression and grinned. “There you are, Adam, if you’d realised that being kind and reliable was a pussy magnet, you might have tried it…”

  I left Quinn digesting that and went to the bathroom. I found my period was just starting. I wasn’t sure how I was going to tell Pete that I wasn’t available for sex for the next week, but I supposed that with three long term relationships under his belt, he must have some grasp of the female menstrual cycle by now. At least I was having a period. I’d taken the morning-after pill straight away and gone down to the GP surgery to sign myself up for the normal sort of contraceptive pill (not fancying Siân’s long term hormonal implant route) but had been advised that to be completely safe I also needed to use a condom as back-up to cover the first month. And since I hadn’t been able to face telling Pete that, I’d just taken the risk.

  Paul brought my new car down to Entwistle’s Garage for the photoshoot, complete with the newly earned blue roof, orange and purple livery and all the beautifully written graphics on the side. The guys at work loved the car, and Entwistle loved seeing his name written all over it. Paul had brought a professional photographer along with him, to make sure we gave the right impression. We had a photo taken with Entwistle and the guys standing round the car with me at the wheel dressed in race gear and helmet, and Jo sitting on the bonnet in race gear with her helmet at her side. And then we had one of me on the bonnet, helmet on my lap, with Jo leaning over the top of the car behind me.

  “Come on Jo,” Paul was exhorting. “Nice smile now! No trying to look butcher than the men!” Which of course merely elicited a scowl. And he insisted on my having my hair loose and my head thrown back when I was on the bonnet. “A bit of glamour won’t do you any harm!” He insisted when he saw I was about to resist. “Most sponsors have to make do with photos of the ugly mugs of fat forty year olds in dungarees – make ‘em jealous of Entwistle’s choice…”

  “He’s pimping you out for sponsors,” Jo hissed in my ear.

  But you know what, beggars can’t be choosers can they? By the close of the garage that evening, Entwistle already had the pictures up online.

  Once you’ve left home, Christmas becomes a strange vortex which sucks you back for a few days a year into an incarnation from your past. Except that every room in our house had changed colour and Dad’s woman was like a whirlwind around us instituting new Christmas ‘traditions’ left, right and centre. Dad, Jamie and I sat on the sofa in the midst of it, looking like traumatised orphans in a storm.

  I’d warned them that I hadn’t had time to think about Christmas and didn’t have any money to spend, but Pauline was one of those present lovers who wraps everything exquisitely with bows and ribbons and I got increasingly embarrassed by the contrast between my measly gifts to them, and her over the top ones to us. Dad just seemed distracted and subdued. Finally she went over to a big oblong shape that had spent the last twenty four hours covered with a cloth that we’d been banned from peeping under. “This is your special present, Eve,” she said with a flourish. Since it was from her, I didn’t expect anything as remotely useful as a new performance camshaft, but even on the scale that I was expecting, what was revealed as she dramatically whipped the cloth off was a bit gobsmacking.

  “Ta tan tara!” She chortled at my face. “I knew you’d never had the joy of a dollshouse, so I wanted to rectify that terrible deprivation – but your lovely Dad said you wouldn’t thank me for it! So I made this as a compromise…”

  It was a kind of one room dollshouse, set in a garage, with lots of tiny models of bits of machinery and tools, a model motorbike on a stand in the m
iddle, and a sort of blonde Barbie doll but a bit less busty, dressed as myself in a leather jacket and jeans with a spanner in her hand.

  Pauline beamed at me in expectation of my joy. “I had to go down to Halfords and ask the man there what tools I should put in for you and bring their catalogue away to copy them.”

  I could just imagine the Halfords’ man’s face once he realised that she wasn’t going to actually buy these tools, just make scale models for a dollshouse. I’d really rather she’d have bought me even just one of the originals, but I recognised how much effort had gone into this reconciliation gesture, and I didn’t want to hurt her feelings. I cleared my throat. “Oh, thanks very much Pauline,” I managed. “It’s lovely. What a lot of work you must have put into it…”

  Out of the corner of my eye I saw Dad looking gratefully across at me and Jamie having trouble suppressing his hilarity. I averted my gaze from Jamie lest he set me off.

  But the worst shock of the season took place next door in public. Jamie and I were horrified enough when it was announced after the midday turkey that Pauline had arranged for us to go next door to share an afternoon of games and general jollities with the Quinns, but what took place ten minutes after we’d sidled like crabs scuttling under a stone into the Quinns’ overcrowded living room was one of the worst moments of my life.

  “Now, now, move over Liam,” Kathleen chided, “let Pauline have your space on the sofa, she needs a proper seat in her condition.”

  Kathleen saw me looking sharply at her, and she took in Pauline’s swift blush. “Surely you’ve told them, Pauline? Jack?”

  “We were waiting for the right moment, weren’t we Jack?” Pauline patted Dad on the knee as he sat down beside her.