They came to film our Satterthwaite pre-season council of war sitting round the big wooden kitchen table. We were learning by now how to just ignore them. It was our real decision making meeting and we weren’t mucking around putting anything on for them.
Paul had the BriSCA F2 fixtures list in front of him, and Jo had the wall calendar in front of her and several different coloured felt tip pens. I had my new tablet in front of me with a BriSCA fixtures Google app downloaded onto it, and was poised ready to type dates into a calendar.
“So Pete, you will be wanting to have a shot at getting into the Final of the World Championship…” Paul started us off. Pete nodded. “So Jo, start out by putting all the qualifying races on the calendar for Pete.”
She started colouring squares in red on the calendar and then filled in the names of the relevant tracks in biro.
“So now, what are we going to do with Eve?” Paul queried. “It would of course be helpful if as many of Eve’s fixtures coincided with Pete’s as possible as we can’t be in two places at once but that doesn’t mean she has to also go for the World Championship. Have you any ideas Eve?”
I leant forward in my seat. “Thing is, I’m enjoying shale and keeping the cars up to scratch for shale costs such a lot less than for tarmac. Also, the speed and quality of the car matters less, it’s more about the driving, so it seems more even handed. But if I said I would go for the World of Shale title, it would be almost the exact opposite schedule from Pete’s because most of his are on tarmac. And also, I shouldn’t limit myself to one surface too early or I may lose confidence on tarmac and never have the guts to try for the World Championship myself.”
“Ok, hold that thought,” Paul said. “We’ve got Jo to bring into the mix yet, so let’s hear from her before we make any decisions about Eve in case it affects anything. Jo?”
She put the pens down and lowered her head, then looked up again as though she was struggling to decide whether to say something. Eventually she spread her hands and said, “Actually, I was thinking about giving up on the driving.”
We all stared at her. She looked apologetic. “I don’t want to let the side down or anything, but you all know I’ve been at stalemate for years now… I’m not going to get any better at it suddenly, so I think I’ve got as far as I’m going to.”
“You’ve been racing so much better since Eve joined us,” her father pointed out.
“And you don’t have to constantly be trying to get up the rankings, you can just drive for the fun of it,” Pete added.
“Ok,” Jo said. “Point One. Yes, having Eve on board made me realise that I didn’t have to settle for mediocre and accept that was a condition that automatically came with being female. But on the other hand, I’m already chasing her and that just shows that despite having done well years ago in the Ministox, I’m just not capable of cutting it against the big boys. I felt I couldn’t let the female side down by dropping out. But now we’ve got Eve, I don’t have to feel like that anymore.”
Her Dad and her brother listened silently, not making eye contact with her.
“Point Two. When I was ill at the end of last season and had to drop out at the last minute from Skegness, I suddenly realised that I felt utterly relieved. And when I came back afterwards I realised that I wasn’t enjoying it anymore. I find it too stressful. And just look at Eve. When she’s behind the wheel there’s just pure primeval joy on her face. That’s how you have to feel if you want to get on. And I just don’t feel like that.”
Her Dad and brother now looked at her, but still said nothing.
“It’s a lot of money to spend when you’re not enjoying it any more. And it’s going to be a huge logistical problem trying to get three cars to every race and into good race condition every week or so. We’d have to have another car following with a trailer as three won’t fit into the Beast. Obviously, I won’t abandon you, I’ll give you mechanical support and help out with the work, and come to some of the races, but if I’m going to give up, giving up this year to enable you to concentrate on Eve would be the sensible decision, and I think that you should take my car and turn it into a spare car for Eve and set it up for one surface or the other so we don’t have to go through such shenanigans between fixtures. That way you won’t have to think twice about which races you put her in for. I’m happy to give it on permanent loan, if she can raise the money to keep it in race condition from now on.”
Paul cleared his throat and said evenly, “If you’re sure that you’re no longer wanting to race, then I think you’re doing the right thing. And if you’re happy to loan Eve your car for a year or two, then it would make a huge difference to our campaign and our workload.”
“I’m clear on both those points,” Jo said firmly.
I looked around at the three faces, all so similar in features and expressions. I could see why they all managed to keep on living and working together without conflict. They knew how to keep it professional. I needed to try and learn from them.
We sat in the flat in a big group to watch the latest episode. Me, Quinn, Kes, Siân, Jamie my brother and Jaimi my best friend. I made us all a curry and we sat down with some alcohol to watch it. Toby, our media link had been round to show Quinn how to tweet and give him advice about what type of message to stick to, and Siân had carefully listened in. Now she was on his phone tweeting on his behalf.
It started with some footage taken a while back of myself introducing my new orange and purple car, ‘This is the new love of my life,’ while stroking it tenderly and off camera Pete’s voice shouts ironically – ‘Yeah thanks for that Eve!’ And they showed some of our council of war including part of what Jo said about deciding to give up. And then they cut to Rob and Quinn doing a similar planning session over a pint in a pub.
The voice-over woman says ‘fierce rivals and previously next door neighbours since they were four, there’s one thing maybe you don’t know about Adam and Eve – they’re now flatmates, living alongside Adam’s oldest schoolfriend Kes.’ (They cut to a shot of Kes, and Siân sitting with us on the sofa cheered). ‘So what’s it like living with them, Kes?’ ‘Wearing’ he sighs, ‘you sure need stamina!’ ‘Aren’t you all rather young to be living independently?’ Quinn – ‘well Mum needed my room for somewhere to retreat when her immune system is down when having chemo.’ ‘And my recently acquired step-mother needed my room for her dollshouse collection.’ I say expressionlessly. (I would have liked to grimace but knew that she would be watching this). ‘We’re well sorted’ – Kes points out a list on the wall. ‘Eve insisted on the cleaning rota. She said that if we were going to persuade her to live with us there would have to be some rules.’ Quinn – ‘like no pants in the fridge.’ ‘I’m sure I never said that!’ – me. Then darkly – ‘but I’ve lived with two men all my life, I have their measure…’
‘Adam and Eve are fiercely competitive…’ They show shots of Quinn doing weights down his gym, then cut to me on a weight machine down at my ladies gym in a crop top and shorts. I stop and sit on the edge of the bench one leg drawn up to my chest and say confidentially to camera. ‘Well Quinn let slip that Rob had told him to get fit for the driving, so I couldn’t let him get ahead of me could I? But I didn’t want him to know what I was up to, so I found this ladies gym where I couldn’t possibly bump into him!’ I look behind me at the stick thin girls there working out. ‘Don’t get put off. As soon as the cameras walked in, the background participants self-selected! You don’t have to be young, slim, and fit to come here. Any size shape or colour is welcome. Only women are allowed in here so all you Muslim girls point this out to your father and brothers and come on down!’
“Why did you say that?” Jaimi queried.
“I was thinking of Nasim,” I admitted.
‘And another best kept secret is that they even go out jogging together.’ Short clip of me and Quinn jogging together at night with me coming to a halt, bent over with my hands on my knees and my chest heaving and Quinn runni
ng backwards laughing mockingly at me and waving – ‘Bye bye McGinty see you back at the flat!’ And he jogs off into the darkness. I turn my head to camera still doubled over and panting. ‘It always ends like this. He used to be a championship under sixteens cross country runner - he’ll be hoofing it on for ages yet! I need a drink. Fancy a retreat down the pub?’ I stand up and do some side bends and stretches. I am soaked with sweat between my breasts and as I do the stretches you can clearly see my breasts outlined and my nipples all pointy. I bit my lip as I watched. Damn! How did they con me into that? ‘That’s why I like the Stocks so much,’ I say, ‘behind the wheels of two cars with exactly the same engine Quinn and I are equal and then he really has to watch out!’
Then they say ‘and Quinn has another alter-ego – his role as lead singer of his band ‘B.S.E’. They had filmed it down the Old Brown Cow and absolutely all our friends had turned out. Siân was right at the front and Daisy too, and there was my brother Jamie on the bass. They showed Quinn doing one of his three and a half octave screams and all the female fan base at the front going mental. They’d steered him towards the red leather trousers and white embossed cowboy boots. Back combed mass of hair, black silk shirt, bright red nail varnish and scarlet lipstick completed the ensemble.
Afterwards (in a set up scene that I’d suggested to them) they show Quinn back at the flat in his normal leather jacket holding his alarmingly red nails out to me and saying, “I’ve run out of nail varnish remover. Have you got any Ginty?”
“Why would I have any?” I sneer sarcastically. “I’m a mechanic remember? Nice nails and engines just don’t mix. Ask your sister for some of hers!”
“She’s refusing to loan it me anymore - says I’m costing her a fortune.” He complains. “Dammit, Rob’ll rip the shit out of me tomorrow!”
“If you’re gonna wear the stuff you could at least have the guts to go out and buy some remover for yourself!” I say hard heartedly.
The credits came up and we all laughed. Then Kes rewound it to the scenes with the band again, and Jaimi and I retreated to my room.
“Oh God Jaimi, you could see my tits!”
“Nothing wrong with your tits, you have very nice tits,” she said loyally.
“Yeah but – honestly! I had no idea I’d look so – so nearly naked!” I was going hot and cold at the thought.
“You looked great why worry about it?” She reassured me. “You looked completely natural as well, so no-one will think you were doing it to show off. You spend most of the rest of the show in shapeless dungarees, so be grateful to them for showing how fantastic your body looks underneath…”
At work the next day a female customer came in and when she got out of the car she saw me and said, “Are you that racing driver off the telly?”
I didn’t know what she was talking about for a second. I stared at her for a moment, then said, “S’pose so.”
“Ooo, that gym looks really nice! I didn’t know there were ladies only ones. Where is it? I might sign up… ‘Specially if it means I could end up with a great bod like yours!”
And when I got home I found Quinn opening a box sent by special delivery to the office at his work depot. Inside were ten bottles of different coloured nail varnishes and ten bottles of nail varnish remover sent by some company that had seen the show with their compliments.
I sat down at the table opposite him and felt a sudden sense of panic rise up in me. It was the first time it had sunk in that people out there that I didn’t know were watching all this. And there were some scenes that had already been filmed that I was now dreading hitting the screen, but it was too late now, and it had been kind of unavoidable…
For a second Quinn stared at the tiny coloured bottles, then a slow smile passed across his face. “You know what Ginty, this could be rather interesting. We could get loads of stuff out of this. What if I said on camera that I’d always wanted a Jaguar?”
“You’d probably find a big black cat sitting in a cage outside the front door courtesy of Chester Zoo,” I said drily. But I could see from the glint in his eye that he was set to have a bit of fun with this.
“I didn’t know you went out jogging with Quinn,” Pete said as we were getting the cars into the Beast for our first race meet of the year. His tone sounded a bit aggrieved.
“Didn’t you?” I said vaguely. “Sorry, I guess it’s just never come up. We used to go two or three times a week but since me and you hooked up it’s only every now and again.”
The first few races of the year didn’t count towards the season, no placings affected your grading, and no points were counted until the first of March. So we were going to attend everything we possibly could to smoke out any potential problems with the cars. We were turning Jo’s into a shale car for me and I was insisting its colour scheme was changed to match my other one, orange and purple.
“I’ve always suspected she made a mistake with her pink and purple decision. She’s not really that sort of person at all but she told me she did it to make a point that she was a female driver and I don’t think that’s a good idea. I used to see her getting boxed in all the time, and sometimes I felt it was a deliberate act by the men…”
Jo came with us to help out in case the engines weren’t performing, but she warned us that from now on she wouldn’t always be along. “I’m looking forward to having some weekends off after all these years.”
“What will you do with them?” I asked curiously.
“Don’t know…”
“The TV team are badgering me to do something feminine, and I’ve no idea what!” I complained. “At first, me and Jaimi thought, ‘that’s easy, we’ll have a girls’ night out down the Golden Disc’, but then Damian pointed out that we’re all still under eighteen and they couldn’t film us getting into a night club on false IDs and getting served alcohol or the place would get closed down…”
“God Eve, aren’t you even eighteen yet?” Jo seemed to have forgotten.
“Only a month and a half to go,” I sighed. “But in the meantime, do you have any ideas for girly things to do?”
“I’m the wrong person to ask,” Jo folded her arms militantly across her chest.
“Yup,” I agreed. “I’m with you on that. I’m at a complete loss…”
The ITV team were also complaining that as well as male, the Stocks were also far too pale. Did I have any ethnic minority friends to be seen doing something with on camera?
I rang up Rajesh. “Are any more of your cousins getting married any time soon?”
“Eve, you saw my family, we could found a small dynasty – there’s always some sort of cousin getting married…”
“Have you seen Thrills and Spills at all?” I asked.
“Sort of,” he said cautiously.
“Sort of ‘yes’ or sort of ‘no’?” I established.
“Well, no not really,” he decided to be honest. “But Suki’s told me about it. As soon as Nasim mentioned they were following you, she’s been an avid devotee…”
“It’s just that they want to film me doing something girly so I figured attending a wedding might fit the bill. Do you think your family would mind some TV cameras being there?”
“Doubt it, Aashi’s a complete Diva, it’d make her day…”
“Will you ask them for me?”
He agreed then said suddenly. “Do you think I should marry her?”
“Who?” I was bewildered.
“Nasim of course,” he said impatiently.
“Well that’s not up to me to say is it?” I thrust back.
“It’s just that it’s going to be years yet otherwise – she’s got to finish her ‘A’ levels then do three years at Oxford. I figured that if we got married before she goes to Oxford, then her parents might be happier about her being at University and pursuing a career, and they won’t be imagining her getting up to mischief… She can go to Oxford just like any other normal student, but come back to me in the college vacations.”
“Eighteen’s very young to get married,” I said cautiously.
“Yeah but the whole of her life she’s been half expecting an arranged marriage at eighteen so it won’t feel so odd to her…”
“Well how about me and Nasim come to this latest wedding and you introduce her to all those Mamijis, see if she and they cope, and take it from there?” I suggested.
A few days later I went into town to shop for an outfit for the wedding and bumped into Sally, Jamie’s ex-girlfriend. She was on her own and when her big violet blue eyes caught sight of me, I saw a red wave wash up her face. I hesitated. Since meeting the Satterthwaites I’d begun to think that I needed to be kinder to people. What would being kind to Sally look like right now?
Instead of ignoring her, I walked up to her and said, “Hi Sally, how about a coffee?”
She glanced around quickly as though she wanted to make sure there was no-one she knew watching, then squeaked out a panicky sounding, “Yes, ok.”
We were in a department store so we only had to make it as far as the in-store café. I paid for her coffee and cake figuring she was still at school and making a bet that her parents would be so down on her now they wouldn’t even let her out of their sight long enough for a Saturday job.
I chatted innocuously to her about what subjects she was taking for ‘A’ levels and such like until her eyes stopped being quite so fearfully wide and she relaxed a bit. Then I said, “I’m sorry about what happened Sally. It must have been awful for you. Dad and I were gutted, and we were really angry with Jamie…”
Her eyes filled up with tears like two big goldfish bowls.
“Did you really love him?” I asked.
She sniffled and nodded. I couldn’t really make myself believe in the existence of undying passion in a couple of fifteen year olds but I was trying hard to come across as sympathetic. Jamie had surprised and relieved Dad and myself in equal measure by signing up for a music production course at the local FE college plus working towards his grade six music exam on his guitar, whereas Sally had stayed on into the sixth form at school so she and he rarely crossed paths.
Thrills and Spills (Not Quite Eden Book 3) Page 7
