“That fairly revolutionary, isn’t it?” Steve said after Entwistle had disappeared back to his spread sheets and ordering.
“But great!” Jo said.
“Yes, I think it’s great too,” I said.
I walked back into the flat to find it full. Quinn, Daisy, Tanya and Roger. Coffees, laughter. The second I walked in, Roger picked up his camera.
“Is there something I should know?” I asked acidly.
Quinn looked a bit sheepish. “Daisy’s looking for a flat share, so I invited her round to take a look at the set-up here.”
“Right,” I said, a bit put out. There was Entwistle telling us we could all have a veto, and here was Quinn inviting in a flatmate without any consultation whatsoever. I could just leave it, or I could say something. If the cameras weren’t here, I’d say something. In which case I ought to just say it.
“You should have asked me first,” I said sharply.
Quinn bit his lip. He’d been doing his looking for an instant plaster thing, I could tell.
“You know Daisy though, right?” Tanya established.
“Yes, Daisy is one of Quinn’s occasional shags,” I said.
Daisy looked taken aback. She was a tall, attractive, leggy girl whose dress-sense regularly included cloche hats and lace fingerless gloves and who often stood as she did now, with model style deliberate awkwardness, toes turned in, head tipped to one side, hands tucked into the opposite sleeve.
“Um, well, yes, I suppose I am…” She agreed cautiously.
“Which might not be a bad thing,” I thought aloud. “It might be much more restful for us all if Quinn has an occasional shag installed in the next door room…”
Quinn was looking a bit horrified, and Roger was succumbing to his fatal tendency. I looked him in the eye and he started to quiver desperately.
“Well you’d better see the room,” I said to her, and led her to the centre door. I threw it open, then walked across and pushed open the window. “I’m sure you’ll manage to rid it of the boy smell eventually. They do like to mark their territory you know…”
Quinn was hovering at the door along with the camera. “He wasn’t pissing in the corners like a tom cat, Ginty!”
We emerged again.
“So the walls are quite thin,” I continued. “So I’d prefer you to move along to his to do the shagging, and if it isn’t you doing the shagging then I recommend ear plugs, or the radio turned up loud or both.”
“Ok,” she said uncertainly, as though she were taking the rules of the house very seriously.
I looked at Quinn. “Are you sure you want to live with two girls?”
He looked blankly at me.
“Because that cleaning rota,” I pointed at the wall, “is about to get a whole lot more rigorous, and it’ll be loo seat down from now on in the toilet.”
He began to look a bit worried.
“And you won’t have anyone to have burping and farting contests with – in case you haven’t noticed, girls don’t do that.”
“He doesn’t, does he?” Daisy’s face wrinkled up in distaste.
“They don’t grow out of it you know,” I informed her. “Don’t you have any brothers?”
“No,” she admitted.
“Oh well, it’ll be a big learning curve…”
Roger was making small explosive noises in the background. Hastily muffled.
“Ok Quinn,” I said in martial tones, I looked down at my watch. “You’ve got sixty seconds starting from now to make up your mind…”
I kept my wrist out in front of me, my eyes fixed on it. The silence lengthened. I glanced up. “You too, Daisy. I warn you, you have to put up with a lot of singing.”
“Well he’s got a gorgeous voice,” she said in a rather soppy tone, “so I won’t mind that.”
“Ok,” Quinn said at last.
“That’s agreed then,” I said firmly, dropping my wrist. “So from now on Quinn, it’s no pants in the fridge, shower or down the back of the settee…”
“Fridge..?” Daisy echoed faintly.
While Roger recovered himself in a fit of coughing, and packed up the camera, I took Tanya aside.
“Nasim’s run away to Rajesh’s parents to get married,” I said. “I want you to get the message to Sasha as soon as possible as I think you should be following all this.”
“Too right!” Tanya said enthusiastically.
“I’m going round there now, so I’ll set it up for you shall I?” I offered.
Nasim opened the door to me, glanced anxiously up and down the street and snapped the door closed quickly behind me. “I’m in Raj’s old room,” she said.
We went up.
“I waited till after my birthday, because all the family were coming round and I’d feel too guilty. But that night, Mum came to my room and said that I needed to pack because we were going to leave the following morning for the airport to go out for the summer to visit our family in Pakistan. She was avoiding my eyes and looking a bit weepy. I mean, they didn’t even pretend we weren’t going to Pakistan!”
“So what did you do?”
“I meekly started packing, in a soft holdall that I knew I could carry easily, but really I was packing to come here…and then I waited till they’d gone to bed and I tried my bedroom door and they’d locked me in! So I climbed out the window and got a taxi to here.”
“You’d have thought they’d have learned from last time and put bars over your window!” I joked.
“Well thank goodness they didn’t!” She exclaimed, looking horrified at the thought.
“So did your father come round here?” I asked.
She nodded. “Very early in the morning with my Uncle and Karim.”
“Well we’ve had that combination before, haven’t we?”
“But Raj’s Dad had his brother round too, so it evened out and because I’m eighteen they couldn’t do anything about making me come with them. And then Sahmir texted me from Manchester airport. They’ve only gone off to Pakistan anyway without me!” She smiled in relief. “So we’ve got at least a couple of weeks without them around to get on with everything. Sahmir’s promised to text me as soon as he finds out a definite date for their flight home. He says Dad’s mad with rage but didn’t want to waste the money he paid for the tickets.”
“Nasim!” It was Raj’s mum’s voice.
“We’re having a meeting,” Nasim explained. She took my hand. “I’d like it if you could be there too.”
Downstairs in the living room was Mum, Dad, Rajesh, Chetsi, and sister number two, the environmental engineer.
They didn’t seem too put out about my presence. “How’s it going?” I asked.
“We’re going down the registry office tomorrow for our interview,” Rajesh said with a smile at Nasim. She smiled shyly but joyously back.
“And is that the only ceremony you’re having?” I asked.
“Well that’s what we have to decide,” Raj’s Mum said.
“Thing is,” I pointed out. “Now you’re not going to have to persuade the parents or the Imman, you can do what you want, can’t you? Have the civil ceremony and then have a mini version of what you would have had, with which ever bits of what you normally have that aren’t offensive to Islam?”
“Yes, we could consider that,” his Mum agreed.
“You can make her beautiful and they can have flowers and music and stuff can’t they? You will make her really beautiful won’t you?” I urged, putting an arm around Nasim.
I could see Raj’s Mum was beginning to realise the mammoth task before her of being mother of both the bride and the groom.
Chetsi glanced at her mother. “Yes, don’t worry, we will. What do you think Mum? It makes sense. Just the closer family in a small venue? We’ll go really carefully through all the rituals to see which ones Nasim’s comfortable with.”
A tear slipped down Nasim’s cheek. “Mum will be so upset she missed it,” she explained with a catch in her voice.
Raj’s second sister was staring fascinated at me. “She’s like a mini white Suki isn’t she?” She said to her Mum.
“Yes,” her Mum said with a sigh. “I’m afraid it looks like she is.”
Chetsi folded her arms defiantly. “Nothing wrong with that!” She said on our behalf. “At least we make things happen!”
I’d seen Jo at work on Tuesday, but when I walked into the barn after hours she was just bouncing. Pete and Paul were smiling as well.
“The official points are published for July!” She announced. “And you’ve made it! You’re number twenty! So you’ve been issued with an official invite to take part in the European Championship! So you’ve got to accept it immediately!”
“Ok,” I said. “So are we both in it?” I looked at Pete.
“You’ve not been keeping up have you, Eve?” She said impatiently. “You’re miles ahead of Pete in the national points – because he’s only bothered about the World Championship this year.”
That felt weird. Being way ahead of Pete in the table.
“So it’s the Skeggie Speed Weekend with the UK Open, then a weekend where you’re booked to race at just one venue on the Sunday evening, and then the weekend after that is the European Championship so we might want to scratch the weekend in between…”
“Skeggie?” I said vaguely.
“Yoo hoo!” she waved a hand in front of my eyes. “Anybody home? You haven’t forgotten that we’ve both got the end of the week off work because we’re all off to Skeggie to be there for the Thursday evening races?”
She saw my expression. “Honestly Eve, you had, hadn’t you?”
I had of course. “Um…ok sorry. I need to go and talk to your Mum.”
I saw Jo turn to her father and brother, shake her head and spread her hands despairingly, while they both just laughed at her.
Sue was down in the stables. She smiled at me and carried on mucking out.
“Sue, will you tell me what Pete said? I need to know before we all spend four days together at Skegness.” I just couldn’t spend three nights sleeping in the Beast a few feet away from him all the time thinking that this was where it all started and wondering if he might just use this as the moment to reach out a hand to me again while walking along the seafront in the dark.
She put the pitchfork down on top of the pile of straw and dung on the wheelbarrow, stripped off her gloves and went and washed her hands at the sink. Then she took off her most hairy outer layer and picked a more respectable quilted waistcoat off a hook.
“Let’s go for a drive shall we?”
We got into her four wheel drive and drove up the road that led across the moor. She stopped us at a muddy pull-over spot where the moor was unfenced.
“Let’s go for a walk shall we?”
It had been a long time since I’d been for a walk just for the sake of it. But it was a beautiful evening. I let her lead the way up a heathery peaty path. Finally she sat us down on a rocky outcrop overlooking a long view out across the valley. The old mill chimneys stuck up tall and thin, black and phallic, from the folds of the hills.
“So sweetheart, I did talk to him. A long talk.”
My heart began to thud in my chest. I couldn’t help it.
“What he said was that he’d realised that you weren’t for him.”
“You mean I’m not right for him?” I established miserably.
“Well more the other way around. He felt he wasn’t the right man for you – he feels you need someone more exciting.”
“Well, he’s wrong,” I said fiercely. “I’ve got more excitement in my life than I can possibly bear – I need less exciting. I need predictable and kind and stable.”
She took my hand. “Eve, sweetheart. I’m not saying that it wouldn’t have been much better for you to have another year of stability with him, but I don’t think he thought he could bear it if he left it that long and then you moved on.”
“Maybe I wouldn’t have,” I said stubbornly.
“Eve, darling, you will eventually. You will need more than Pete has to offer…”
I blinked back some tears. And to think I’d been so mean and impatient with Nasim last year every time things went wrong with Rajesh. Now I was finding out how truly gut wrenchingly visceral it was. At least Nasim was now having her fairy tale ending. It didn’t look like I was going to.
She put an arm around me and pulled me against her. “I’d have loved to have you as a proper daughter in law, but you’re still part of the family without that aren’t you? You said you were willing to pretend that the Siân event hadn’t happened and go back to how it was before, so now you have to think back to how it was before you went out with Pete and we were all just friends, and pretend the bit in the middle never happened.”
I sat limply silent.
“He didn’t exactly say this explicitly to me, but I think he deliberately slept with Siân to drive you away. Because otherwise there was no earthly reason he could give as to why you two needed to split up.”
“Because there is no earthly reason!” I said fiercely.
“Except he didn’t want to grow to love you too much,” she explained. “He had to stop it before got to a point where he’d be completely devastated when you left. This way, you’ll both get over it and you can stay in the race team and stay as part of the family for the rest of your life if you want, whereas by a year or two’s time, if you’d split up then, you’d have never been able to work together again…”
She pulled me close. “Would you like me to come to Skeggie with you?”
We burst back into the kitchen to find the other three there trying to sort out the meal. Paul seemed to have it in hand so Sue sat down at the kitchen table and left him to it.
“Sue’s coming to Skeggie with us,” I bubbled enthusiastically.
Everybody turned and stared.
“My God Mum, just give me a moment while I faint!” Jo responded disbelievingly.
“Well it’s a lovely forecast, I haven’t any training sessions booked this weekend and I can leave the horses with the girls, and you won’t be racing all the time. There’s the whole of Friday off for instance.”
“What will you do while we’re racing?” Jo asked.
“Oh, I thought I’d come in for some of it, after all I’ve had to sit through endless race footage on that programme and I’ve been made to watch Eve have two dreadful accidents, but already knew she was ok, so I’ve got a bit more hardened now! I’m sure I’ll cope with some earplugs – and a novel,” she added, “–and a decent picnic.”
“She’s going to take me onto the beach and make me one of her sand horses,” I announced proudly.
“Oh, yeah. I remember those sand horses!” Jo said. “But I can go one better. I’ll take you onto the beach and make you a really good sand car! And you can sit in the back seat pretending to be a passenger while I drive. Just like Mum and Dad used to when really they were just using is as an
excuse to sit and read their newspaper or their novel.”
“And do you decorate it with shells?” I inquired eagerly.
“You can do if you want,” she said. “In fact,” she continued enthusiastically, “we could have a sand car making competition and Dad could judge it, just like he used to when we were little!”
Pete put his forehead down on the table surface with a thump. “Oh ga-a-wd! Dad please save us!”
Paul just laughed.
“And someone has to take me on the funfair,” I announced. “The really big rides…”
“I’m sure I could manage that,” Paul volunteered.
“Hey – don’t imagine I’m missing out!” Jo muscled in quickly.
“Don’t any of you expect to be able to drive after,” Pete warned them. “She screams blue murder and clutches your hand so hard you think it must be broken!”
“You can hold Dad’s,” Jo instructed. “No on second thoughts Dad, you sit in the middle in case I need your other one.”
I saw Sue’s eyes meet with Paul’s over our heads, and they smiled at each other.
That night I got back to the flat late. I got ready for bed and then I stopped outside Quinn’s door and tapped quietly.
“Yes?” He sounded awake.
I went in, navigated across his dark room by the faint street light coming through the drawn curtains and got into bed with him.
“I need a cuddle,” I said in a small childlike voice.
He reached out his arms to me. “Oh good, cos so do I.”
“I expect you’re missing Dubetskoi,” I sympathised.
“I am,” he agreed and added a theatrical sniff.
I snuggled a bit closer into him. “It doesn’t seem right without Kes here, does it?”
He rested his forehead against mine. “It’ll work out with Daisy here won’t it?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“And you won’t mind if I succumb to the occasional shag with her?” He established.
“Nah,” I said.
We lay curled up together in silence for a bit.
“You know that cheesy John Denver song you sing me?” I said eventually.
Thrills and Spills Page 30
