The Way Back (Not Quite Eden Book 6)

by Dominique Kyle

  I grinned at him.

  “And what will you be doing while I’m driving my bollocks off on the track and polishing up my halo?” He teased.

  “Oh, I expect I’ll just be lounging around washing my hair and painting my nails and occasionally getting up off my pretty fanny to punch a mechanic or two,” I informed him sweetly, while attempting to flutter my eyelashes at him.

  Back in my hotel room I texted Rob. Had a think bout wat U sed & just invested in a dog whistle.

  I arrived back to my flat in Wantage very late on Sunday night to find Quinn’s car parked outside. He was sitting in it, listening to music and doing something on his phone. I got out of the taxi, paid the driver off, and Quinn got stiffly out of his car and stretched ostentatiously.

  “What time do you call this, Ginty?” He complained.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked irascibly.

  “Waiting for you,” he informed me with an engaging smile.

  “What if I hadn’t been going to come back till tomorrow?” I challenged acidly.

  “I s’pose I’d have had to give up and go round to Nish’s,” he worked out.

  I rolled my eyes. “If I wasn’t coming back tonight, quite likely Nish wouldn’t be either!”

  He looked blank.

  “Don’t you follow our race schedules at all, Quinn?” I snapped, annoyed.

  “Hmmm… I put my feet up and watch the highlights most weeks I guess, and google you both occasionally…” He supplied.

  I got my keys out. “You’d better come in, I suppose.”

  Inside I yawned and filled the kettle. “I’m completely knackered, Quinn, this better be good!”

  He stood watching me and waited until I turned round and met his gaze at last. “I’ve finally made my decision,” he announced portentously. “Took me a while, I admit. But now I’m asking you out.”

  I wrinkled my brow. “Asking me out where?” I demanded. “It’s bloody one in the morning! After last time I’m not up for going anywhere with you, Quinn!”

  He stared at me. “Asking you to be my girlfriend, you muppet!” He responded irritably.

  I ignored the bubbling kettle and stood stock still, staring back at him.

  “Well, don’t look so shocked,” he said with a slight laugh.

  Finally I got my breath back. The audacity of the guy! “You ignore me for a whole year apart from one thirty second encounter where you turn your back on me, and one trip to party where you promptly abandon me for another girl – and think you can just turn up here out of the blue and ask me to shack up with you?” I launched furiously.

  “Surely it’s not out of the blue?” He said winningly. “And anyway I’m not asking you to move in with me, just be my regular partner…”

  “Your regular partner?” I echoed blisteringly. “You mean as opposed to all the occasional shags you sound like you’re intending to indulge in between the regular part?”

  He started to struggle to keep his head above the water of the conversation. “No, don’t twist everything, Eve. I’m just asking you to be my girlfriend, that’s all! Jeez, what’s so hard to understand about that?”

  “Everything!” I exclaimed angrily. “Absolutely everything! This has been the most momentous year of my life in every possible way and you never made the slightest effort to support me through it. I could have really done with a friend!” My eyes suddenly filled with tears.

  He looked uncomfortable. “I came to help you when Nish got taken hostage, didn’t I?” He pointed out.

  I stopped short. Yes, to be fair, he had, and at considerable cost to himself no doubt as he was in the lead up to their first ever US tour, which was a huge big deal for them. Jamie had probably flayed him alive for disappearing, and he’d have lost a week’s wages from Entwistle’s too.

  “Ok, yes you did,” I admitted abruptly. “Thanks,” I added.

  “I always make a hash of things, don’t I?” He summed up miserably.

  “Yes, you do,” I condemned brutally. “And you’ll just make a complete hash of being my boyfriend too, no doubt. For the second time running. So, no thanks, Quinn. Go and work your insecurities out on some other poor sucker.”

  He stood there, his hands hanging loosely, looking like a kicked puppy. “I’d better go then, had I?”

  I hardened my heart. “Yes, you had,” I told him bluntly, allowing no sign of a chink in my stone-wall.

  “Will Nish be home do you think?” He asked pathetically.

  “No doubt he will,” I agreed.

  With a last long spaniel eyed look of appeal at me, that I had learned to successfully ignore on my stepmother’s pooch, he ignominiously retired.

  Tuesday morning in the simulator department, Nish came in yawning.

  “Quinn knock you up at one this morning did he?” I surmised dryly.

  “Yes, he bloody well did,” Nish said crossly. “Since apparently you sent him off with his tail between his legs and a flea in his ear.”

  “Ah, diddums, let’s ask Miriam to get her violin out, shall we? He’s unbelievable that guy!”

  Mizo sighed. “Can we save the social calendar for lunch please? You two clearly don’t see enough of each other outside of work.”

  “We can’t,” I explained. “You know what the rumour-mill is like…”

  “Think we better had this time,” Nish agreed with Mizo. “Only not in the canteen because I don’t want you starting to throw crockery at my head in public.”

  Mizo eyed us both severely and tapped his watch significantly.

  Nish grinned at him. “Hashtag GettingHerABoyfriend,” he hinted.

  I glared at him. “Hashtag InYourDreamsBuddy,” I retorted.

  Mizo pointed wearily at the simulator seat. “Hashtag DudeWeDon’tHaveAllDay.”

  That night we went for a run a bit further along the downs than usual, and dropped in on the way home at a cosy Cotswold pub, all golden stone and colourful hanging baskets, and installed ourselves outside. Nish brought me two double whiskies at once, to save on queuing time, he claimed. I was merely exercised by fact that he thought I was going to need them. As soon as the sun went off and the gnats began to gather, we retired from the beer garden to a dark corner inside.

  “Ok, Eve,” Nish plunged in. “I’d better come clean. During the summer break I told Quinn he’s a complete bastard and he deserves to lose you for good except you’re just so bloody loyal that nothing he does seems to break your faith in him…”

  I stared gobsmacked at him. “Why the hell did you say that?” I demanded.

  Nish gave a secretive smile. “Because he got all het up about those photos in Hello!, and started interrogating me as to why I was carrying you about, and I was forced into a choice of physically slamming the guy’s head into a wall, or verbally slamming the guy’s head against the wall.”

  “You could do both?” I suggested hopefully.

  “Might have to at this rate,” he agreed. “What on earth did he say to you? His version was that you were just impossible and you were determined to punish him…”

  “He waltzed up,” I snarled, “announced in congratulatory ‘aren’t you a lucky girl’ tones that he was asking me out, then informed me that he wasn’t asking me to shack up with him, just be his regular shag – or words to that effect!”

  Nish looked dumbfounded.

  “Yep,” I agreed. “He’s a complete shit. And somehow he always manages to turn it into being the other person’s fault!”

  Nish sat back in his seat and pulled a face. “I’m beyond words, Eve.”

  “I’m not, and most of them consist of four letters,” I declared vengefully.

  “Ok,” Nish concluded with a sigh. “I don’t think I can help anymore…”

  “I don’t need any help,” I snapped irritably.

  “I’d like to see you happy with someone,” Nish said with a concerned look, reaching out a hand and just lightly touching my wrist.

  I pulled my wrist away. “I’m pe
rfectly happy as I am,” I told him sharply.

  Two weeks later, at the end of his next interview after another good race result, DC and Steve finished up with a joking, “So go on Nish, is she or isn’t she?”

  “Is she or isn’t she what?” Nish echoed blankly.

  “Your race engineer - is she or isn’t she going to succumb?”

  “To what?” Nish repeated with a frown.

  “A certain mighty Quinn of Full Frontal fame, is tweeting that he’s currently attempting to storm the fair citadel…”

  Nish’s jaw dropped and then he clamped it tight. “Remind me to slam that guy’s head into a wall sometime soon,” he said grimly.

  He saw their raised eyebrows and wry smiles. “Let’s put it this way – the last time I went round to her flat it looked like it had been done over and there were shards of crockery exploded all over where she’d thrown half a tea-service at his head. And there were pools of blood on the floor that she seemed rather vague about whether they were hers or his. So I reckon his chances are fairly slim at the moment!”

  Steve grinned delightedly.

  “And when I ventured to put in a word for the guy she eyed me meaningfully and informed me that she had a couple plates still intact and her aim was pretty good, so I beat a hasty retreat lest the threat of a disciplinary didn’t bother her any once she was off the Williams’ premises!”

  DC smiled. “She knows how to keep you two in order, doesn’t she?” He teased.

  “I’m just left speculating if she’s a silently furious plate thrower, or a screaming like a banshee one?” Steve suggested naughtily. “Maybe someone who knows, might like to tweet in?”

  “The last conversation I broached with her about it,” Nish added, “she was wistfully wishing she’d managed to kill him off when he was still small enough for her to do him some real damage, and she now seems worryingly convinced that she’d get off in a court with justifiable homicide if only it was explained to the Judge just how truly annoying he is…” They grinned at him. “So, no, I don’t think she’ll succumb any time soon unless he does some serious grovelling!” Nish looked straight at the camera. “You listening, Quinn?”

  “Goodness, I’ve been told we’ve had seven tweets in already,” Steve announced with a laugh, “and all supplying basically the same information with most of them choosing to remain anonymous.”

  DC and Nish looked expectantly at him.

  “They say, silently furious and if she gets that dangerous look in her eye, Gilbraith needs to learn to duck fast. Some good career advice for you there, methinks!” Steve finished up in Nish’s direction.

  I spent days fiercely sifting through every friend and acquaintance in my head and texting them about it, but not a single one owned up.

  A few days later, Nish asked me out for a run again.

  “Quinn turned up again,” he told me when we stopped at the half way point to turn round. “Asking me my advice as to how to win you round…”

  “He doesn’t give up, does he?” I sighed. “I’m getting déjà vu here… What did you say to him?”

  “I remembered all that advice you gave me about how to treat Miriam, and told him that.”

  “I hope you didn’t tell him to invest in a tube of KY gel!” I exclaimed scandalised.

  “Course not!” Nish said impatiently.

  “Nor how to make me come?” I checked.

  “Honestly, Eve! Conversation with you is like walking through a morass! No, of course I didn’t! I just told him to treat you right, that’s all.”

  I glanced at him. “You’re so sweet with Miriam. It makes me think so much better of you.”

  “Your compliments are always so backhanded, Eve,” he complained with a sigh.

  I smiled slightly. “She absolutely adores you. Looks up at you as though you’re her sun and moon and guiding star all rolled into one,” I told him.

  “Does she?” He said, eyeing me uncomfortably.

  “So you’d better live up to it, hadn’t you?” I warned.

  He sighed.

  “He’s such a coward,” I remarked, taking the conversation back to Quinn. “He doesn’t dare come and see me in person to sort it out, does he? He’s always been like that. When he was sixteen he got my dad to ask me out for him!”

  Nish looked amazed. “And what did you say to that?”

  “I hit my head repeatedly against the wall and called him a mental idiot,” I informed him. “Only if he pulls a stunt like that again, I am definitely beating his head against the wall this time and not my own,” I warned, “And you can pass that message on to him with my compliments, if you like…”

  A huge bouquet of flowers arrived for me. I sent a text to Quinn. U did all this last time around+then U shat on me. Why will it B any different this time?

  And then I flew out to Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia and met up with Sahmir as promised. He seemed to be doing ok. We hugged. “Are you making friends?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “It’s very international here, so I’m not short of English speakers.”

  “There are a lot of Muslims here,” I observed. “Does that make a difference?”

  He hesitated. “In one way it means that I’m not an alien species like you sometimes feel in Britain, but on the other hand, back home, most people who attended our mosque were from a Pakistani background. Here, they come from so many different backgrounds that I’m beginning to realise that a lot of what I thought was my faith, was actually just my culture, and a lot of things I just took for granted aren’t even practiced here. I feel as alien here as a Pakistani Muslim as I did sometimes back home. But at least back home I felt British as well…”

  Yeah, I could understand that. There was a short silence.

  “Twenty years – that was a turn up for the books wasn’t it?” Sahmir remarked. His expression conveyed a complex mix of relief and guilt.

  I knew how he felt. When Chetsi had rung me with the sentencing verdicts on Hussein and Mohammed, and told me to sit down first before she broke the news, I’d known that I was supposed to celebrate it as a victory – but I just felt guiltily responsible.

  “I hated Paul you know, for sending me away,” I confessed to him suddenly. “But when I came back for the trial, I realised how much of a favour he’d done me, and how lucky I was not to have to bear the fallout, like you have.”

  His dark eyes surveyed me expressionlessly for a moment, then he declared combatively, “I’m not sorry we did it you know. Someone needed to sort those bastards out! And you know what?” He added ferociously, “I wish Tariq hadn’t been safely away in prison. I wish I could have proved he was up to his neck in it!”

  I stared at him.

  “It’s all his fault! Without him, our family would be together. Now Mum’s got no-one! Tariq’s stuck his oar in and told Dad it’s his duty as the head of the family to forbid her seeing Nasim. And I’m in exile out here. If he’d been going down now for twenty years with the rest of them, we’d have been able to get on with our lives in peace…”

  I grimaced. “He’s so extreme,” I commented. “He’s always been like that. You don’t think he’s the sort to get radicalised, do you?”

  Sahmir’s eyes sparked. “See if I care! He’d do us all a favour if he took himself off to some dodgy desert country and blew himself up!”

  I bit my lip. “Sahmir, you do know that you need not to be heard ever voicing that last thought aloud, don’t you?

  Sahmir stared me out for a long confrontational moment, and then added more mildly, “Don’t look so worried, Eve! I’m not going to sound off like that to anyone else but you. I do want to get back into the UK without being under constant MI5 surveillance!”

  I unfroze and started breathing again. I hadn’t noticed that I’d stopped. I smiled slightly. “Far be it from me to get all judgemental about the odd vengeful thought – that would deserve to win the prize for hypocrisy of the century!

  He quirked his eyebrows at me. “Talking about old e
nemies, I heard you were going out with Quinn again?”

  “I don’t know where you heard that,” I exclaimed crossly, “because I’m definitely not!”

  He suppressed a smile. “Just twitter gossip then, huh?”

  I eyed him with a fulminating gaze. Who was shit stirring out there in the ether? “You coming to Sepang for the race?” I asked in forced bright tones, changing the subject.

  He smiled slightly. “Yeah, couldn’t miss that, could I?”

  “It’s a great circuit – a real technical challenge to set the cars up for long fast straights and then tight twisty turns – but lots of room for overtaking – you’ll see lots of action…” I filled him in enthusiastically.

  “Yeah, Eve, I said I was coming – but don’t expect me to understand any of it,” he interrupted with a laugh.

  I got up to leave, and then I hesitated and sat down again. I had an instinct that this might be the last meeting between us for years. We weren’t really friends and there was too much awkward history between us.

  “Sahmir?” I ventured. I’d never dared ask this before because I was too scared to find out that Nasim and I had been constructing a big imaginary drama in our heads and causing agonising family upset for no good reason. But if I didn’t ask now, there’d never be an appropriate time for me to put the question in the future. “I never asked whether once you got to Pakistan, your dad really did have a marriage lined up for Nasim, or was she just being alarmist?”

  “He sure did,” Sahmir confirmed with an eloquent grimace. “And what a fuss there was when he had to let them know that we were turning up without her!”

  “And was it a cousin?” I queried nosily.

  Sahmir’s brow wrinkled. “Some sort of second cousin. Right creepy wet git he was as well. No wonder he couldn’t find a wife from somewhere local! I’m glad Naz ran away. I’d have hated to see her forced into that! Typical wife-beater I’ll bet as well… I don’t know why Dad can’t see it. Raj is fantastic, and they’re really happy, and she’s well on her way to being a lawyer right now – what a complete waste of her life and talents it would have been! I’m never going to do that to anyone! I want my wife to share my faith, but other than that, she can do what she likes, I’m not going to make her do anything.”