He looked horrified.
“She needs to be prepared,” I told him sharply. “Did you want her to hear about it for the first time when it hits the national press or on the next Thrills and Spills episode?”
He face flushed briefly red and he wordlessly shook his head. “The church?” He muttered.
“Yes, I’ve told her about the church,” I confirmed.
Quinn could barely look at his mother. His mother fixed her own gaze upon him like a laser beam. “I kept excusing you Adam, because I know you’ve never expressed any faith, and I know it’s hard for boys when all those hormones start washing around, but the level of promiscuity you insist on indulging in and boasting about on our TV screens is frankly disgusting! And now I find out my daughter has gone the same way and it seems that everyone has known this fact except myself! What a figure of fun I must have been down at the church when I talked about my lovely daughter and all and sundry knew that she was just a common little slut with a vindictive viciousness that I can barely comprehend! And the only person who’s had the common decency to tell me about what’s been going on, is this girl here who has been the main recipient of the bad behaviour of the pair of you. Because it there’s one good thing I can say about Eve,” she paused as though she realised that maybe she’d never said anything good about me before now, “it’s that she always tells the truth, unlike my own lying, deceitful, cowardly family.”
There was a really long silence. Really long.
“Well Adam?” Kathleen challenged at last.
His eyes made a swift dart to her face, then lowered again. “Sorry Mum,” he muttered.
“That’s just the beginning,” she said severely. “I expect you to make reparations, especially to this girl here who you’ve behaved badly towards for years. And now I need to go home and consider what to do about your sister.” She stood up.
“Shall I run you home on the bike?” Quinn said.
“Mother of God, if you think I’m ever getting on that death trap..!”
“I guess that’s a no then?” Quinn almost managed to make a joke. He reached for his phone. “I’ll call you a taxi.”
Then she had a sudden change of mind. “No, maybe it should be on my list of things to do before I die… Find out why my son loves riding around on such an dirty noisy dangerous unstable object so much… Take me home then.”
I handed Quinn my much smaller ladies helmet for her and laughed at his worried expression.
“Let’s be going then,” Kathleen said impatiently. And Quinn followed her down the stairs.
He arrived back half an hour later and threw himself down on the settee.
“So you got her back in one piece then?” I surmised.
“Just about,” Quinn responded. “I was terrified she was going to make me come into the house and confront Siân, but she let me just drop her at the gate.”
“She’s not stupid, Quinn,” I said. “She’s going to have to think about how to handle this first.”
“What have you done, Ginty?” Quinn groaned.
“What you and your Dad should have done last year,” I said sharply, “and what someone should have done the minute Siân started topless sexting to all the boys in her year, and then maybe your mother could have somehow got her in hand!”
He suddenly got distracted by noticing all the flowers, “What’s going on? It looks like a mausoleum in here!”
“Rats!” I said. “I should have given your mother some to take home.”
Jo came round on Friday evening with even more flowers. “We put as many as we could in Entwistle’s office until he started wandering around outside complaining that the scent of the lilies was overpowering him in such a small space!”
She stayed for coffee. Unlike Pete, she’d hardly ever set foot in the flat so looked around interestedly. “Now, Eve,” she said in business like tones, “we need to start work on your shale car, and since they opened up the roof like a sardine can to get you out, we might be needing your Dad along…”
She saw my face. “And before you say anything, Pete and Dad are away racing all day tomorrow, so there’s no chance of you bumping into them, so shall we say ten am tomorrow? Just you to start out with. I’ve bought all the parts we’re going to need, so we need to get cracking. Next weekend it’s tarmac and the weekend after, shale. It all depends when you get your Doctor’s certificate…”
I knew I had no other option.
I arrived at ten am and walked into the barn. It suddenly felt agonising again. I wanted to walk in and see Pete bending over his car and for him to straighten up and smile at me and for me to be able to walk into his arms. It felt visceral. An almost physical pain.
Instead Jo looked up in her unsmiling way, and I walked over to look down at the mess that was her previous pride and joy.
“You know how to proper trash a car, don’t you?” She said sarcastically.
“Sorry Jo,” I said penitently. Car number two as well…
She gave me a quick run down about what we had to do. Quick to say, hours to do.
“I think you’d better go and see Mum first,” Jo said. “She’s been worrying about you. Go and find her down at the stables.”
I’d never actually gone down to the stables. Most of the horses were turned out into the paddock, but there were a couple left inside for some reason or other and Sue was emerging from one of the stable doors carrying what looked like a heavy bucket. The air smelt thickly and cloyingly of straw and hay and organic mouldy ammonia. Like rabbit hutches that needed cleaning out. She didn’t see me at first but when I called out a greeting, she turned sharply, put the bucket down and walked swiftly towards me, opening her arms. I walked into them like a child would and as she hugged me tight and rocked me and said my name over and over again, I found myself beginning to cry. Once I started I couldn’t stop. I sobbed and sobbed and sobbed, my shoulders heaving and my chest wrenching. She sat us both down on a hay bale and kept an arm around my shoulders.
“I’m so sorry about my son, Eve. It’s just not my son at all, honestly it isn’t. We can’t understand it! We are so angry with him! I used to watch his face as he looked at you and have to restrain myself from asking you not to break his heart. It never occurred to me that it would be the other way around! And he won’t even talk about it, so we can’t even find out why he did it… To the point where we don’t even understand why he was in bed with her on that day you found them. He knew you were coming over that night, and you didn’t leave work early so surely he must have been expecting you to turn up about then?”
I rubbed roughly at my face and tried to regain some control. I thought back to Siân walking through the living area naked past him. Was that part of the campaign to get him, or were they already sleeping together? Was that why he didn’t want to have sex with me in the next door room? Had she already started some sexual practices with him that she’d been up to with Kes? Was that why he took me out on the moors for the first time and tried to have semi-public sex with me? Was I a disappointment when he found it stressed me out and I wasn’t enjoying it? Siân, almost certainly had arranged things so there would be a likelihood of me finding them at it, but had he been complicit in that? She’d been secretly seeing Kes for some time before she picked the most potentially painful moment to make him come and split up with me, so maybe she’d somehow convinced him that it was the best way to end it with me, for me to find out without him having to explicitly tell me?
It was only as I followed through this train of thought that I had a sudden sick sensation. Was she taking selfies of him and her copulating as well? Maybe with the intention of getting them into the media now they were both starring in Thrills and Spills?
Sue saw my face change. “What?” She said nervously.
“We need to go up to the house,” I said.
We picked Jo up from the barn on the way and both Satterthwaite women followed me into the kitchen, glancing at each other.
“Do we need a cup
of tea for this?” Sue asked.
“Yes,” I said.
“What is this about?” Jo asked impatiently.
“I need to tell you something about Siân,” I said. “Cos I think you need to warn Pete…”
Sue looked anxious and I could see she was squeezing the teabags extra vigorously to get them done quickly.
When she’d sat down with us, I got out my tablet and connected to the internet via their house wi-fi.
“Firstly, I just need to recap with you what the history between me and Siân has been, which at least may help you understand why she’s targeted your Pete, even if none of us can understand why he’s succumbed…”
I repeated to them the information that they would have already heard courtesy of Quinn’s mouth shooting on the TV, but went into more detail about her relationship with Beck, the way she’d manipulated Kes, the way she’d set me up for two physical attacks and her declaration that she liked watching Beck beat people up and would have come to watch them doing me over if she could.
Sue kept murmuring in shock and putting her head in her hands. Jo looked sort of harsh. Her fists were clenched as they lay on the table.
“And then the other night, Quinn and I found this online blog that she’s been posting on for goodness how many people to access...” I scrolled to one of the more shocking pictures of her and Kes and passed the tablet over to Sue and Jo. They leaned over from either side and stared in disbelief.
“She’s got hundreds of them. Pictures of them having sex all over the place – libraries, hospitals, a primary school, her own mother’s church. Kes is in bits. He had no idea. You don’t have to look at any more,” I said firmly, taking it away from them. Jo might well cope but Sue wouldn’t. “I only showed you that one so you have some idea what I’m talking about and how serious it is.”
“And this is the girl who has her claws into my son?” Sue said faintly.
I nodded soberly. “And with all the interest spawned by the documentary, these may well hit the newspapers. And now I’m really worried that she might be doing the same to Pete. You know, taking him places and photographing him in compromising positions that she might have some plans to use later on…”
“Pete would be too sensible!” Jo reacted violently. “He wouldn’t let her do that!”
I shrugged. “Kes is a sensible, lovely bloke too. He had no idea what she was doing with the photos. She implied it was just for a bit of a laugh. But actually she was blogging every detail and someone out there must be reading it…”
“Has she put anything up about Pete already?” Sue said urgently. She was ashen.
I went to the latest updates. No, nothing new on the blog. And all it said on her Facebook page was Watch the Thrills and Spills episode this coming Wednesday. It was clear that she had been planning to announce the successful coup in front of the cameras, which she achieved on target. But she must have been gutted that my accident turned the episode into it being all about me instead of her.
“No, apparently not,” I said cautiously. But it didn’t make me feel any easier.
Mother and daughter looked at each other.
“We need to tell Dad when he gets home,” Jo said. “I think he needs to be the one to talk to him.”
“I’ll give you the password we’ve been gaining access to her blog with. You two don’t need to look at any more, but I think Pete needs to take a real close look because he needs to be on his guard big time, and if he doesn’t understand properly what she’s like, he’ll dismiss all your warnings…”
By now it was getting on for midday and Sue suggested she make some early lunch so we could all get on with our work for the rest of the afternoon. While she did that, I went up to Pete’s room to recover all my things. I felt sick when I walked into the room. How I’d loved this room. This had been my haven. The place where everything always felt better. I glanced around for signs of Siân. Nothing obvious. I cleared all my clothes out of his cupboard and collected my toiletry kit out of the bathroom cabinet. Nothing left to show I’d ever existed. We loaded them into Jo’s car so she could bring them into work on Monday as I couldn’t get them back home on my bike. Sue looked heart-broken as I walked by with all my things.
“There’s still the spare room you know,” she said.
“Maybe one day in the future when all this is water under the bridge,” I said roughly. “But for now I couldn’t bear it.”
Sue started weeping a bit. “Well that young woman is never going to set foot in this house again if I can help it!” She said angrily.
On Sunday I thought I’d better start getting fit again. But my neck still hurt and I was still getting headaches – although whether they were caused by my neck being out or my head injury, I didn’t know.
The personal trainer at the gym came straight out to me. She took me to one side and advised me not to do too much. “I’ll get the physio to look you over first and she can advise you what exercises are safe for you to do.”
I hadn’t expected them to look after me so well.
On Monday morning the men took me solemnly into the workshop to a workbench on which they’d laid out twenty different sorts of tools.
“So Ginty, what is this one?” Dewhurst lifted it up.
“Reversible ratcheting combination wrench,” I said obediently.
“This one,” Bolton pointed.
I put my hands on my hips. “Dounle ended offset hexagon socket wrench.”
They continued pointing. I sighed. “Swivel end ratcheting combination wrench, open and offset ring ended combination wrench, torx screwdriver, long needle nose pliers, vice grip, ball pein hammer, breaker bar, pry bar, multimeter, T-handled flexible head socket.”
They sucked in their cheeks looking terribly serious.
“Oh come on you two, give me a break! I wasn’t that bad last week was I?” I said ruefully.
“This one?” Dewhurst held up something I’d never seen in my life before.
“Come on now, you’re just taking the piss aren’t you?”
“No Ginty, I don’t think we can tell Entwistle you’re fit for work if you can’t get this one…”
“Still got a few holes in her brain methinks…” Steve teased.
“Medieval torture equipment?” I hazarded.
Dewhurst tut tutted. “And what’s that?” He pointed at the bench.
“An egg?” I said.
“And what can we use an egg for in motor mechanics?” Dewhurst prompted.
I stared in a bewildered way at him. “Um, wait for a hot day and fry it for breakfast on an overheated radiator?”
Dewhurst shook his head sorrowfully. “The youth of today…they know nothing! You break it into a leaking radiator and the egg white blocks up the holes as it cooks in the heat…”
“Now you really are taking the piss!” I threw at them.
Dewhurst held up the weird bit of kit towards the back of the workshop. “Answers on a postcard please!”
And it was only then that I noticed the camera tucked away discreetly in a dark corner. “Are you lot filming this?” I accused. “You absolute-” I changed tack swiftly, “rotters,” I concluded.
Tanya hopped out. “So how are you now, Eve?”
“Still got a stiff neck and an occasional headache, but otherwise ok I think. My gym is being fantastic to me, sending me to their physio and their sports injury masseur,” (I thought I’d better mention that on camera as I knew that the physio and the masseur normally cost an arm and a leg and I wouldn’t have been able to afford it, but they were giving them to me free). Then I looked straight at the camera. “And also I’d like to thank everyone who’s sent me flowers, but please can you stop now as the boys are complaining that the flat looks like a funeral home and Entwistle’s getting hayfever locked up in the office with them!”
“And have you worked out what caused the accident?” She enquired.
“Nope, I still can’t remember anything past the green flag, and we didn’t
find any major mechanical failures.”
“And you weren’t attempting suicide?” She asked.
“Not my style,” I refuted. “And none of those ridiculous attempted murder conspiracy theories are true either!”
Afterwards she apologised for having to ask about the suicide thing, but said she was giving me a chance to publically refute the rumours. After that they went away and we got on with our day.
“Now seriously Dewhurst, what is that?” I demanded.
He smiled mysteriously and tapped the side of his nose. “That’s for me to know and you to find out…”
At lunch I asked Jo whether they’d spoken to her Dad about what I’d told them.
“I left Mum to do that – thought it was better I kept well out of it. I suppose she’ll report back to me eventually when Dad actually speaks to him.”
On Tuesday, Jo told me that she’d established that Pete wouldn’t be around, so would I come up to work on the car please? I called my Dad and he was happy to come and help with the welding so he picked me up in the car and we went together, and Paul came down too, so we made a lot of progress, and the presence of Dad meant we didn’t have to talk about anything difficult.
At one point Paul said jokingly to my father, “I don’t envy you having to bring her up,” he jerked his head in my direction. “Sounds like she’s been a handful!”
“Why do you think I’ve got grey hair before my time?” Dad quipped, running his hand through his coarse grey curls.
Wednesday’s episode was something and nothing as far as us younger participants were concerned. They had the bit about me coming back to work, a few seconds showing Pete doing well in a world qualifier. And a few seconds of Siân, saying, “Oh yes, me and Pete are still going strong but his mother says she won’t have me in the house, so we can’t meet up at his place.” The tone of scorn and disrespect that she referred to Sue with made me very angry. Dissing the Satterthwaites on camera wouldn’t help her cause any, I thought. The rest of the show was about the older ones. Horrocks, the current silver roof holder had a three year old with Downs Syndrome and they were following him taking him to nursery and discussing the extra challenges involved in pursuing the heavy time commitment needed to become the National Points Champion at the same time as having a special needs child.
Thrills and Spills Page 23
