His eyes glinted naughtily back. “You know which time, Eve. And it was bloody brilliant!”
I narrowed my eyes at him and frowned queryingly. I assumed that he was referring to the time he’d achieved hole in one with Miriam, but I couldn’t be quite sure from that still cryptic answer.
He sighed and glanced quickly around to make sure there was no-one near. “When we were skiing, the day I heard I’d been promoted to driver?” He reminded me.
Yes, I remembered it. A bit too vividly. I shook myself out vigorously to stop my reaction. He raised his eyebrows at me. “What happened there?”
“You know what happened then,” I said abruptly. “If I were a bloke it would be all too obvious…”
“Yeah, I’d better stop thinking about it myself,” he grinned suggestively.
“Yeah, and don’t ever think about it when you’re in one of those paper thin revealingly tight race suits,” I teased.
He smiled and gave me a deliberately smoking hot look from under his lashes. I turned and walked quickly away. Later I wondered why he’d brought it up. He’d been really good about never indicating our past liaison by either word or action. Guess he just needed to feel a special connection with me after such a momentous race. But if he was telling the truth, then it was pretty flattering, I guess. But more likely it was bathed in the euphoric feelings of the whole day. I could have been anyone.
Quinn finally moseyed back into my life a few days later. To be fair he’d been texting me most days with snippets of news. That was a big advance after the past year’s radio silence. I’d given up getting cross when he just turned up expecting me to rejoice in his random re-appearances, but I hadn’t quite got around to killing the fatted lamb for him just yet. He smiled winningly at me.
“How about coming on our tour with us?”
“Where are you touring?”
“Just around England,” he said. “Jan, Feb.”
“I’ve got to work, Quinn,” I pointed out. “Just cos the season’s finished, doesn’t mean I’m sitting around twiddling my thumbs…”
“Nish’ll be with us for most of it,” Quinn tried to tempt me.
I raised my eyebrows. “Really? Singing or playing?”
“Both, hopefully,” he said.
“Well, I’ll certainly come and see at least one show,” I promised. “Depending on where you are, and when you’re on, but the whole tour is out of the question…”
Back at work, the new car had been in development for at least seven months. Finally, in one of the envisioning meetings, I piped up for the first time. I’d been hanging around all the different departments, especially aerodynamics and now, in the midst of a heated discussion, I suddenly said, “I know the computer programmes have probably crunched every possible different combination, but has anyone tried…” and I suggested a new data set that could be fed in.
Everything I’d ever heard about women in the board room had led me to believe that if one of them opened their mouth then they were ignored and talked over, so I was a bit embarrassed when the conversation skidded to a sudden verbal halt and everyone turned and stared at me, like a leprechaun had just appeared in their midst.
“Sorry, was that a stupid idea?” I apologised quickly.
My old aerodynamics boss looked around the table. “Has anyone tried that?”
There was a big fat silence in response.
“No, it wasn’t a stupid idea,” he said at last, and scribbled something down on the pad in front of him. “We’ll try that.”
Heskett looked across at me and smiled slightly. After the meeting, I spoke to Hugh. “Was it ok to speak?”
“Course it is,” Hugh said, frowning as though he was surprised at me even asking the question.
“It’s just that when I was in Alan’s department, he told me very strictly to button it in there,” I explained.
“Well, you’re in my department now,” Hugh pointed out robustly. He waited till I was turning away. “As long as you never use the C word in there,” he added.
“What C word?” I asked, looking back, puzzled. “What’s wrong with discussing carburettors?”
He sighed. “I think I might issue Gilbraith with that Taser, after all…”
Another ring on the doorbell later that week. I expected it to be Quinn again. But when I answered it, I found Roderick Gilbraith standing there.
I felt sick and the blood drained away from my face. “Nothing’s happened to Nish, has it?”
He looked startled at my assumption, then maybe realised that it was a reasonable conclusion to leap to under the circumstances.
“No, he’s fine,” he reassured me. “I’ve just been with him. I got your address off him actually. Can I come in?”
“Course.” I stood back and let him in. “Do you want a cup of tea?”
He hesitated, and glanced around the flat with the same expression on his face as Nish had had when he first saw it. A bit basic I guess after what they were both used to.
“Yes, that would be nice,” he accepted politely.
I got the impression that he was just agreeing to it for us to have something to do. “Sit down,” I suggested.
He glanced around again. There was only one place to sit, the settee.
I went to put the kettle on. “Sorry, I’m still in uniform.” I was just saying it for something to say, because I wasn’t sorry. If I wasn’t going out then I usually couldn’t be bothered to change. Now I was in such a clean job, I didn’t need to pull everything straight off like I used to.
I stood waiting for the kettle to boil and directed a querying look at him.
He waited for a moment, then realised I was stopping over by the kitchen work surface and opened up the subject on his mind. “I’ve come to apologise for the way you’ve been treated by our family…” he said.
I shrugged. “I’ve barely met your family. Why should you apologise for them?”
He frowned. “I was watching the Formula One highlights when I got home and I saw the interview that you and Nish did. And I suddenly realised that I had no real idea about what went on when he was held hostage. When he got out of hospital and came home to recuperate I asked him once if he was ok, and he said he was and didn’t seem inclined to talk about it, so I backed off-”
“How do you have it?” I interrupted.
He stopped abruptly, mid-sentence. “Black, no sugar,” he supplied.
The only mug I had out hadn’t been washed for days as I kept re-using it, so it was stained to buggery. I rummaged around in the cupboard for the only other intact mug. I only had a few pieces of crockery left over after my plate spinning stunt at Quinn’s head. I’m not a complete idiot though – I’d made sure to only throw the ones that were already chipped.
I brought the mug over to him then perched myself awkwardly on the far arm of the settee rather than sitting down beside him. I didn’t normally have strangers in here and I hadn’t noticed that the settee was too small to allow for enough personal space if you didn’t know the other guy. I tried to make it look natural by curling one leg under me.
“I remember Sappho laughing and saying he’d done a really funny interview for the press where he’d said hilarious things about you and she thought he was just trying to deflect attention from himself, so I didn’t take any notice. Didn’t see any of the interviews myself.” He sipped his tea and just about managed not to pull a face. I don’t know what sort of tea he usually drank, but clearly not that sort. Just as well he hadn’t wanted milk as I was fairly sure the milk was off. My mind went off at a tangent. I wondered if he didn’t drink cow’s milk because he had too close an acquaintance with their orifices.
He was continuing, oblivious. “And I guess you realise that there was quite a lot of upset around the fact that we’d not previously been told about Mum’s history or family connections, so we were all of us a bit sensitive for a while. Anyhow, after you tore me off a strip in Abu Dhabi, I felt a bit shocked for a while. But finally I
got around to wondering if you were right about how Nish might be feeling, so I went round to see him this afternoon…”
When I said nothing, he stared blindly down at the mug in his hand and frowned again. Nish smiled more than he frowned, Rod frowned more than he smiled. “Anyway, suffice it to say that I was somewhat shocked when I found out what a bad way he’d been in the whole of last year. I should have been able to guess, I suppose, but he kept away from us and kept quiet, so I figured he must be fine. And I didn’t see it as my responsibility to look after him. After all, he’s an adult. But when you said that he’d sobbed his heart out because Dad wasn’t there, and because we didn’t seem to care, it brought me up short.”
I nodded.
He sighed, and reached out to abandon the mug on the much be-ringed varnished coffee table to his side. “And today I got him to tell me about what happened when he was being held by those men, and I was shocked. And it really rammed it home that you’d been such a tower of strength to him this last eighteen months, and I realised that we’d treated you very shoddily. You saved my brother’s life and we’ve never even thanked you for it…”
I shrugged again and looked away. “He saved mine too,” I told him. “He persuaded the youngest guy to let him lower me out the window once we knew the soldiers were outside, and he stayed in there on his own with the men in the full knowledge that they had every intention of blowing the whole place up rather than be taken by the soldiers.” I paused, suddenly jabbed in the gut by a moment of re-lived intense fear. “I didn’t want to leave him there, but I had to get word out to the army about the house layout and the linked suicide belt situation. He was really brave…”
Rod looked a bit distressed. “Anyway, I just wanted to say thank you on behalf of the family for all you’ve done for Nish.”
I nodded.
“And you’ll always be welcome if you ever want to come over for a visit…”
I gave an amused smile. “I don’t think I will, Rod. Your mother hates me and Sappho’s been behaving in a really condescending and competitive fashion.”
He bit his lip.
“Just be kind to Miriam,” I suggested. “She’s really good for Nish. Makes him have to think about someone else rather than number one for a change. But she’s very shy and sweet natured so you need to be careful not to scare her off between the lot of you…”
He pulled a slight face in acknowledgement of my last remark and then stood up to indicate that he was ready to leave now. “Nish has really matured.” He added suddenly. “I realise now that I’ve never bothered to get to know him. They’re both so much younger than me that they’ve always been the two babies, and he was just Dad’s ambitious little driving project as far as I was concerned. All that karting and so forth merely seemed like an obsessive hobby. I never realised just how good he was. Cars and music. It seemed so pointlessly frivolous to me, I guess. Thought he’d grow out of it eventually and do something more useful…”
“Sorry, but I can pretty much assure you that that ain’t gonna be happening,” I responded confrontationally. “They’re both vocations in their own right and he’s really talented at both of them – especially at composing music by all accounts, so I figure his destiny is pretty much fixed.”
Rod raised his eyebrows at the mention of him being good at composing.
“And although Formula One may look to outsiders like it’s just a rich boy’s playground, and seem to be pointlessly wasting obscenely large amounts of money – it’s more analogous to the space programme,” I followed up passionately. “You have to be continually pushing the boundaries of engineering to see what can be achieved. And in the process, all sorts of new materials and systems and concepts get developed that eventually feed their way back down the manufacturing chain into products for ordinary people that either make their lives better or improve the environment. And Nish is just like the astronaut, or fighter jet test pilot that puts new designs to the test on behalf of the rest of us. So it’s not a completely wasted life I can assure you!”
Rod smiled slightly. “I’d never thought of it like that before. I’ll bear it in mind.” Then after shaking my hand, he left.
Phew, I thought, collapsing back into the settee. That was stressful. But good. Ultimately, from the point of view of Nish’s future family relationships, very good.
When I stopped by Nish’s place a couple of nights later, to let him in on some insider information on the new designs for next year’s car, I saw the blue Subaru BRZ parked outside and decided not to bother to go in. But Nish must have been standing at the window and seen me pull up, and he came quickly to open the door.
“You’ve got visitors,” I shouted above the engine that I’d re-started as soon as I’d clocked the car. “I’ll come back some other time…”
“It’s just Sappho,” he shouted back, “come on in!”
I sighed and switched the engine off. Yeah, Sappho. Exactly.
Sappho was looking striking as ever in a little red dress over thick black winter tights with big yellow daisies on them, with little black pointy boots and a silky yellow pashmina flowing around her neck and shoulders. I was in my usual navy blue and white uniform under my scruffy bike gear with my well-worn trainers.
Nish smiled engagingly at me. “Sappho’s having awful problems with her car – I thought you might be able to sort it out for her.”
In the old days I’d have been consumed with rage on the assumption that he’d just asked me in to use me, but by now I was able to take it for what it was, just a sudden idea that had occurred to him that I might be able to help.
“Goodness, yes! I daren’t leave it anywhere!” She reported with an annoyed roll of the eyes. “The alarm keeps randomly going off… I’m having to leave the car unlocked because ten minutes after I’ve locked it up the alarm will suddenly go off! Last week the windows kept opening and shutting on their own as well, so I don’t know if that’s connected?”
I held my hand out. “Key,” I instructed.
She reached into a small, very expensive looking handbag and pulled out the keys. She held them out in expectation of me walking forward to take them but I remained pointedly exactly where I was with palm extended. She wasn’t about to lower her status by crossing that patch of empty floor space between us, so eventually she was forced to compromise by tossing them to me.
Ten minutes later I walked back in and tossed her the keys back. “Sorted temporarily,” I reported. “You’ll have to take it to a dealership garage for them to plug in specialist diagnostics. It’ll probably show one door that’s registering as having been opened hundreds of times more than it should have done and that’s what’ll be triggering the alarm, it wrongly senses a door opening…”
“So what did you do?” Nish asked curiously.
“Took the fuse of the alarm out,” I said. “Means you don’t have an alarm any more, but at least you can lock the door now and the red alarm light is still flashing, so any thief will still assume it’s got one on.”
Nish laughed at the simplicity of my solution. “And there was I imagining something really high tech…”
Sappho put the keys away again without thanking me. “You coming to their gig this weekend?” She asked me.
I frowned. “Whose gig?”
She rolled her eyes for the second time. “Full Frontal of course! Nish’s first appearance too…”
I glanced at Nish who pulled a bit of a face.
“You nervous?” I asked.
“A bit,” he admitted.
“As nervous as before your first F1 weekend?” I interrogated.
He shook his head. “At least on stage you can only metaphorically die if you get it wrong – at three hundred and thirty kilometres an hour you can properly die!”
I looked back at Sappho. “So are you going along to see your brother sing?” I enquired.
She grimaced. “Hell, no! I’ve heard my brother singing enough to last me a life time – all those bloody Christm
as Eve torture chambers dragged along to hear Nish doing the solo! Once in Royal Da-a-v-i-id’s City, O-o-h for the wi-i-ings, for the wings of a dove! Ave Mari-a-a!” She warbled them out in a deliberately high register. “I couldn’t wait for his balls to drop, I can tell you!”
“Ta very much,” Nish put it dryly from the background.
“So no, but I will be there to hear Adam sing…” Her tone of voice sounded quietly confident of a welcome mat being put down for her from that direction.
I glanced at Nish and he pulled a slight face at me.
“Well, obviously I’ll have to turn out to support Nish then,” I announced.
“All the tickets are sold out, so you’ll have to get a back stage pass from the band,” Sappho informed me smugly.
I looked at Nish again. He sighed. “Yeah, I’ll sort it…”
“So what’ll you wear?” Sappho immediately pounced.
I looked blank. “Jeans and a leather I suppose, like I always do.”
She looked appalled. “Really, Eve, you can’t do that!”
I wrinkled my brow. “Why not? It’s just some grimy pub!”
She stared at me. “No, it isn’t, it’s the second largest venue in Oxford!”
I raised my eyebrows and looked for help to Nish. “When did that happen? Last time I saw them they were at the Old Brown Cow in my home town…”
Sappho rolled her eyes. “That must have been absolutely yonks ago! They’ve done two European and one US tour with the Bronx Brothers now. They’re big news…”
I was a bit gobsmacked. With Quinn floating around complaining of needing work and not being famous enough yet, I’d assumed they were still right on the margins. But I guess being a musician doesn’t necessarily equal the money rolling in. With the online digital revolution, musicians were reportedly finding it hard to make a living.
“So what have you got to wear?” She returned like a dog to a bone.
I hesitated.
“Nothing,” Nish intervened brutally. “Zilch, Sappho. Why don’t you take her out on a shopping trip?”
The Way Back (Not Quite Eden Book 6) Page 41
