by Tara Jones
I crossed the park by the library and saw her before she saw me. She was leaning against her car, reading. It made me smile.
Of course she’s reading! I thought to myself.
She was wearing a deep red, perfectly tailored knee-length cashmere coat that matched her hair. It enhanced her feminine hourglass body and nearly covered the edge of her grey tweed pencil skirt. Although the skirt reached a couple of inches below her knees, it still managed to look sexy, perhaps because of the way it moulded itself around her curvy hips and enhanced her sensual legs, together with her grey high heels. I would bet anything that she was wearing a matching grey jacket with suede elbow patches underneath her cashmere coat.
I let my glance linger at her legs and the edge of her skirt, unable to stop thinking about last time, when I had hitched her skirt up to her hips and she finally, breathless and sweaty, had ordered me to take her then and there on the library counter. I bit my lip, deciding to get carried away by the memory.
The truth was that she had a timeless beauty and a sensual body that would look highly attractive wearing anything or nothing. Somehow she reminded me vaguely of a red-haired Marilyn Monroe dressed in tweed. She had braided her hair into a thick braid that fell down her shoulder, but a couple of loose strands of her red, flaming hair had escaped and were dancing in the wind.
She was leaning against the cream-coloured Porsche convertible that I was still surprised she drove, since it seemed like an unusual choice of car for a librarian.
For me convertible sports cars were, in general, owned by short men that needed to compensate for something and not by curvy women dressed in tweed.
It added to the fog of mystery that surrounded her and the only conclusion I could come up with was that she must have borrowed it from a friend.
But what kind of friend did a librarian have who owed a Porsche? The logical part of my brain wondered, but I had no answers to that.
She heard me when I came closer and looked up. Deliberately slowly and with a small smile that made my heart skip not one but several beats, she returned the worn leather book mark in between the pages of her book.
“Well, well...” she started to say.
And then everything happened very quickly.
It was only pure, dumb luck that I happened to look behind her and saw the dark blue car with turned off headlights creeping slowly forward, towards her.
“I think–” I started to say.
Then suddenly, with a roar, the dark blue car accelerated and drove directly towards her!
I reacted instinctively. Lacking any finesse or gentlemanly delicacy, I ran straight towards Eleanor and roughly tackled her over the low edge of the convertible car door.
The other car missed her by only a few inches. The fender of the car hit my ankle, which instantly went numb, and I felt slightly nauseated as the pain slowly started to bloom and spread along my leg. We tumbled down in the front seat, together with the roses and the shopping bag and all.
“What the fu–” Eleanor started to say, but then she saw the car.
As I watched, the dark blue car was turning around and was coming towards us again. Clearly the driver’s intention was to ram the car against the side of Eleanor’s Porsche. I could only guess that the result would be... viciously efficient and possibly quite messy. Small sports car weren’t really famous for being sturdy.
Eleanor, however, reacted much faster than I did and tried to push me over to the other seat. Before I knew it, she had turned the engine key and stepped hard on the gas pedal, making the tyres scream.
“Go, go, go!” I shouted very close to panic.
Eleanor clenched her jaw, and with a sharp U-turn that would have made any formula one driver proud, we tore away from the car park with the other car in close pursuit.
I forgot all about the pain radiating from my ankle, as my first priority suddenly became to put the seat belt on. As I struggled with the seat belt frantically, it suddenly occurred to me that there was a very logical reason why this woman would own a sports car: She liked to drive fast.
And she really drove like all hell was loose behind us! The small sports car was almost airborne as she drove up on the A40 motorway, leaving screaming pedestrians and a swearing delivery cyclist behind.
I’m willing to admit that I lost count of how many near-death experiences I had during that mad trip. Eleanor must have broken at least half of all of the traffic rules that were ever invented and it was a miracle that no one got harmed and that we weren’t stopped by the police.
Her car number was most likely photographed God knows how many times, and it was crystal clear that she was going to lose her licence after this and could look forward to hefty fees. Or worse.
That, however, didn’t really seem to bother her at all at the time.
She focused only on the driving and the only thing she did, aside from clenching her jaw until I saw the muscles work under the skin, was check the back mirror repeatedly. The other car was still pretty close, although the driver didn’t seem to have the same reckless knack for cutting in between the traffic. Eleanor’s willingness to drive up on the hard shoulders had earned her an increasingly lead.
It wasn’t that she was bending the highway code a little. In fact, I can’t even describe it as that she was breaking the rules. She was simply ignoring them.
“What the hell is going on?” I demanded to know after another razor-close collision with a small, red Honda.
“Can’t talk right now,” she said, her eyes never leaving the road and then she added, “Okay, hold on now!”
The seat belt locked itself immediately and dug hard into my shoulder, as she turned sharply and mercilessly crossed the grass-clad median between the lanes.
The Porsche made a strangled mechanical sound in complaint that merged well together with my swearing protests, but Eleanor didn’t care. She ruthlessly drove on.
Two more uncomfortable bumps later, and we were in the opposite lane, leaving a traffic mess behind us that would take hours to clear up.
“Bugger,” she commented and in the side mirror I saw the dark blue car crossing the lanes too, albeit with a lesser death wish than Eleanor seemed to possess.
The gap between us was larger now, but the other car was still after us.
There was less traffic going in to London, which I first made the mistake of thinking was a good thing. I should have known better, of course.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
I coughed as a reply, trying to figure out how many ribs the seat belt must have broken.
“Sure,” I lied.
She threw me a quick smile. It was a mad grin, filled with promises of certain death.
“Then let’s go really fast,” she said, almost calmly.
In that instant, she actually scared me a little.
The traffic was less intense, so instead of zigzagging in between the docile commuters, Eleanor simply floored it.
And, let me tell you this: After that day I can never watch another ‘Fast and Furious’ movie without feeling both queasy and ridiculously happy to be alive.
She didn’t wait for me to answer, but when the speed meter reached 150 mph, I’ll admit that I started wondering why I hadn’t sorted out my will. Desperately, I bargained silently with any higher deity that may have been listening, promising to leave my IKEA furniture to charity and let the money from the flat go to an animal shelter.
Surely God will not let me die if I’m willing to save abandoned kittens and mistreated dogs? I prayed and closed my eyes, while I mentally reminded Fate that since I hadn’t actually written my will yet, all my money would probably go to my sister in Leicester.
Because–airbags or no airbags–if we crashed now, I knew that we wouldn’t survive.
“I lost them,” she concluded after what seemed like an eternity.
Hesitantly I looked up and realized that I had kept my eyes tightly shut for the last couple of minutes, or hours, or however long w
e’d been driving.
“That’s good,” I said lamely after a while, hoping that she hadn’t noticed that I had been ridiculously afraid. “Where are we going now?”
We were back in inner London, having left A40 behind and she drove–to my vast relief–in accordance to British driving regulations again. It felt almost surreal when she courteously stopped and with a polite smile let an old man with a cane cross the street.
“Well,” she said, “To be honest, we need to go somewhere safe, so I would suggest we go to my place, if you don’t mind?”
“Okay,” I said, without adding that I would be happy to go anywhere as long as it involved getting out of the vehicle and its clearly deranged driver.
Eleanor continued to drive smoothly and legally into the heart of London. I thought she was going to drive straight through London, so when she suddenly turned and stopped by a private garage just after we had crossed the Thames, I got slightly confused.
“I thought you said we were going to your place?”
She reached for a small and sleek remote control from the front seat glove compartment. With a digital ping, the garage doors started to open without a sound.
“Ah, well... we’re, you know,” she said and nodded towards the two guards stationed behind the door.
They seemed to recognize her, because they nodded back.
“You live here?” I exclaimed, unable to hide my surprise.
No one I knew actually lived in the South Bank, an area that was noticeably reserved for the really rich.
“Yes,” she confirmed with a shrug and parked the car. “My poor baby,” she added in a concerned voice after we had stepped out of the car.
“Ah, well, it isn’t that bad,” I said feeling a little bit touched that she had noticed I was limping as I got out of the car. “My ankle does hurt quite a bit, but I don’t think anything is broken...”
The initial pain had diminished when I had been busy concentrating on surviving during the mad car chase, but my ankle still throbbed with a dull pain.
I wouldn’t run a marathon in the following weeks, but then again I wasn’t really a runner anyway. My lifestyle had started to take its toll, I had come to realize lately, and I although I was still somewhat in shape I couldn’t pretend that I had the same fit body as when I was twenty. Or before office life claimed me, for that matter, and had me chained to a desk, feeding me coffee and fast food.
Nevertheless, there was no reason to sit and vegetate in front of the telly while the decline continued, I had decided and the last couple of weeks I had dragged myself to the gym twice a week after work regardless of how tired I felt and during the weekend I took my bike out for a ride.
“I wasn’t talking to you, silly,” Eleanor said and stroked the lacquered side of the car.
I realized that she was talking about her car. Indeed, it did look rather beaten up, especially since she had forced it through the median and well up on the shoulders where no cars were meant to be. It was covered in grass and mud as though someone had decided to drive it through one of the marshes at Dartmoor where I used to go camping.
If cars could get hangovers, this is what it would look like, I concluded and patted the car awkwardly in sympathy while I collected the somewhat manhandled roses and the shopping bag from the passenger seat.
“I am sure that a mechanic can take care about it,” I said and limped after her.
“Yes, perhaps,” Eleanor agreed. “Oh, I can take that if you like.”
She took the roses and the bag from me.
“I like the colour,” she said with a smile and smelled the roses.
Ha! I thought, satisfied. I knew it!
We walked through the underground garage towards the lift. It was an ordinary garage in painted concrete, but rather brightly lit. There were two guards standing on each side of the steel lift. One of them looked at me stonily.
“ID,” he said, without moving his lips.
“Er, sure…” I said and found my wallet. “Peter Thompson.”
The guards were heavily armoured, I noticed. They looked nothing like normal security guards, but looked more like they belonged to a SWAT team from an American action movie or like the armoured car guards who collected money deposits from banks. Both of the guards were wearing bulky Kevlar armour and carrying some sort of short semi-automatic rifles that looked quite menacing.
Does she really live here? I wondered and glanced over at Eleanor, who pretended that she didn’t notice my inquiring gaze. Who on earth is she?
“Could you step over here, sir?” the other guard said and interrupted my thoughts.
‘Librarian’ my arse, I though somewhat sullenly as the guards frisked me professionally and unemotional, but very thoroughly.
“Please press your fingers to the scanner.”
I looked at Eleanor, confused. “Fingerprint scan?”
“Don’t worry, it’s only a routine,” she said reassuringly.
Yes, but routine for what? I wondered.
The questions were starting to build up. I had the growing suspicion that Eleanor wasn’t quite the person she had led me to believe she was. A creeping feeling that she hadn’t been completely surprised by the assault had started to form in my mind. I also remembered how brutally and efficiently she had pinned me down on the floor the first time I met her, although she was nothing more than a short and curvy girl. Plus she had been carrying pepper spray last time I met her.
And apparently she knows how to drive like a professional stuntman, I concluded and started to wonder if I was dating a missing actor from the latest Mission Impossible movie.
After all, I didn’t really know anything about her.
The guards weren’t satisfied until I had emptied my pockets and showed them my ID, which they held under UV light. I was almost surprised when I was finally allowed to leave without a DNA test or a full-body search, the latter to my vast relief.
“Right,” I said when we entered the steel lift. “I think you owe me an explanation. Or two.”
“Perhaps,” she answered evadingly while she swiped a card at the monitor and entered a long series of numbers before pressing her thumb to the display.
“Welcome,” said a digital female voice that was disturbingly similar to the kind of movie voices that informed the hero or the villain that ‘this unit will self-destruct in 10 seconds’. I was nearly surprised when it didn’t start to count down or tell us to evacuate the building, but instead the same voice said after a short digital pause “14th floor” after Eleanor pressed one of the buttons.
“You aren’t really a librarian at all, are you?” I asked, trying to sound neutral, but it came out slightly accusingly nonetheless.
She gave me a sideway glance, but didn’t answer at first.
“Who are you, really?” I continued.
She sighed.
“Well, my name hasn’t always been Eleanor Marston, to be perfectly honest,” she said at last. “Before I changed it and broke all contact with my family, my name was Eleanor Wyndham.” She gave me a quick glance. “Walter Wyndham is my father.”
I was speechless.
Walter Wyndham! My mind tried to make sense of this new information.
It was like she had told me that her father was Bill Gates or her mother was Lady Gaga. Everyone knew who Walter Wyndham was. The Wyndham family was one of the most powerful and richest families in the United Kingdom, next after the royal family.
“Wow,” I managed to say at last, at the same time as the clinical digital voice from the lift informed us that we had arrived.
No wonder she can afford an expensive car, I thought to myself.
The doors to the lift slide open without a sound and Eleanor step out. I trailed behind her, trying desperately–and failing–not to stare. Although she had just told me her father was Walther Wyndham, I had still imagined we would enter the tiniest flat, so small that it probably would only contain a bed and a wardrobe filled with tweed jackets and skirts.<
br />
I had never ever expected to step into the penthouse apartment of the building.
The apartment was huge. It had an open design with no walls separating the rooms. The ceiling was at least 40 feet up and large, spacious windows offered a breathtaking and spectacular view of the Tower Bridge that was so close if felt like I could almost jump to it from the balcony.
But what really caught my attention were all the books. Along all the walls stood bookcase after bookcase. The walls weren’t enough, so some of the bookcases had been placed randomly around the apartment, so that it almost resembled a maze. All of the bookcases and shelves were completely filled and there were even more books stacked in uneven piles on the floor.
Even one of the large walls in the middle of the apartment, which was clearly meant to display a huge work of art, had instead been decorated with floating shelves all the way to the ceiling, packed with books. About half of the books seemed to be old and leather-bound, but the rest were a mismatch of hardback and pocket books, both new and worn editions.
The apartment was modern with hardwood details, such as the expensive looking parquet, and steel and off-white colours. However, the furniture that filled the room looked quite out of place. Instead of sleek designer sofas and glass tables, it was filled with mismatched, old leather sofas and small, worn tables. I even recognized a couple of IKEA bookcases that tried to blend in.
A librarian and a serious book collector, I added mentally and tried to guess the numbers of titles that surrounded us. And you’re filthy rich or you’re a kept mistress to someone belonging to some branch of the British Mafia. And in that case, I’m bloody doomed.
“Do you really live here?” I couldn’t help but ask, as I followed her to an open kitchen designed in steel and dark coffee colours where she located a crystal vase.
