Chapter 8
? Car drama
‘STOP! DON’T START THE ENGINE!’ Tom Brinton screamed, his delicate
eyebrows contorted in panic.
What-in-the-forecourt-flip was happening? I froze and slowly moved my hands away from the steering wheel, the keys dangling from my right thumb.
Tom made a gesture for me to lower the window. Which, of course, I couldn’t do without my keys in the ignition, so I opened the car door a couple of inches instead and angled my head in the general direction of the gap.
‘Umm, hello?’
‘Hey, oh God, I’m so sorry for acting like a lunatic here, but I promise you this will all make sense. Eventually. It’s Amelia, right? You might not remember me but we were in the same year together at school. I’m Tom – Tom Brinton?’
‘Oh yeah – Tom – of course. I knew you looked familiar at the checkout.’ Just give me the Best Actress Oscar now .
I was acutely conscious that not only was this the first time I’d ever spoken Tom Brinton’s name to his face rather than round and round in my head, but it was also the only time I’d not followed ‘Tom’ up with ‘Brinton’.
To me, Tom Brinton had reached household-name brand status, like Sugar Puffs or Cillit Bang.
‘Okay, so please don’t turn the engine on. I realise this whole scenario is, well, ridiculous on many levels, but I’ve got a bad feeling you might’ve just put petrol in your diesel car.’
‘Diesel car? I… oh… fuck!’
This was so bloody typical of me. Stupid, idiotic Mally.
The first time I’d ever done something even vaguely rebellious when it came to my parents and I’d flung myself into a steaming pile of manure at the very first hurdle.
I remembered getting detailed, typed-out instructions from Dad the first time I’d borrowed his car, which had said something along the lines of: NEVER fill it with unleaded fuel by mistake.
This will COMPLETELY ruin the engine. You have been warned!
‘Huh, I don’t think I’ve ever heard you swear before,’ Tom said.
‘Huh’ indeed. Because it was true – I don’t think I had ever uttered a swear word back at school.
I added ‘phenomenal memory for useless information’ to my mental list of Tom Brinton’s qualities.
A list that, come to think of it, had probably once existed in top-secret physical form back in my school days.
‘I guess that’s what a decade and a half in London does to you,’ I replied.
‘The corrupting capital.’
Did he just…? Yes. He’d winked at me. I felt my insides threaten to melt into a puddle of serotonin. There was no doubt that my outsides were blushing furiously. And, by the looks of his be-dimpled face as he examined the ground between us, he’d clocked as much.
‘Anyway… um, yeah, as you probably know, petrol doesn’t tend to make diesel cars very happy. I noticed you filling up while I was sorting out my tyre pressure…’
He gestured towards a gleaming vehicle in the corner of the forecourt.
‘…and then I saw the make of the car so I made a dash for it. Sorry, banging on your window was probably one of the weirdest things I’ve ever done but, with any luck, I might’ve just saved you a fair amount of money. Once that key gets turned and the fuel flows into the engine…’
He drew his finger in a horizontal line over his neck and stuck his tongue out of the side of his mouth.
Stop staring at said tongue, Mally.
‘Shit, yeah, thanks. I’m not normally this scatty but it’s my dad’s car and I was on autopilot.’
I’m not sure I could’ve chosen a more inappropriate analogy. Autopilots were in control. I was already flying by the seat of my pants, and I’d only been back a couple of hours.
‘Ah, I see. You’re here with your family, then?’
‘No, it’s just me. My parents are abroad for a couple of weeks.’
I noticed a flash of surprise cross Tom’s face, as if he was trying to compute something in his mind.
‘Anyway, thanks for alerting me. I’d better get on to the AA.’
Lol, as if I had any roadside assistance to call on. I briefly thought about disguising my voice as my dad’s in order to utilise his account and defraud their helpline, but the idea unravelled as quickly as it appeared.
‘No worries. But, hey, if you’re happy for me to make a quick phone call I might have a faster solution than the AA. My mate Ryan – you might remember him from school, actually – Ryan Seldon?’
Woah, that name was a blast from the past. Ryan had been the mainstream heartthrob figure in our year group with his David Beckham-inspired mohawk, obscenely long, dark eyelashes and athletic physique.
He and Elle had even had a day-long ‘thing’ in Year Ten.
The three of us had been assigned to work together on a field trip to the local wetlands centre.
Inevitably, I’d spent the entire day on lookout duty for teachers while they snogged among the bullrushes, leaving me to single-handedly search for wildfowl habitats in order to complete all three of our assignments.
I think I’d even gone as far as using a different pen for each worksheet to ensure the deception was as convincing as possible.
He’d been pretty smitten with her from what I could remember. But she’d made some loud comment about his bad breath at school the following week and that was that – just one fellow in a long line of heartbroken chaps that Elle had casually discarded over the years.
‘Ryan? Yeah, of course.’
‘Cool, well, he owns a garage not far from here and can probably give you as decent a quote as you’re going to get. I’ll give him a quick call now if you like?’
‘That would be amazing, but only if you’ve got nowhere to be?’
Tom ran his hand through his thick, wavy hair, which still had an underlying sheen of auburn, albeit with a new smattering of silver here and there. The gesture afforded him a quick glance at his watch. It was sweet of him to disguise it.
‘It’s no problem at all; I need to get this shopping back at some point but that can wait for a bit.’
‘Thanks so much, this is so kind of you. I’ll let the petrol station person know.’
As Tom walked back to his car to make the call to Ryan, I took a moment to review my appearance in the sun visor’s vanity mirror.
Reality mirror, more like. I concluded that, yes, I definitely should’ve put some make-up on today.
I popped some lip salve on, and even went as far as smearing a little on my eyebrows to smooth them down, as if the lack of rogue micro-hairs might suddenly make Tom Brinton – or Tom – see me in some new, revelatory light.
I put the hazard lights on and placed my dad’s reflective triangle thingy behind the car to give off the impression I’d been in this kind of situation before and knew exactly how to handle it, and walked towards the small payment booth.
The teenage employee just shrugged and pointed towards a traffic cone, which I placed next to the triangle, just as Tom wandered back over.
‘Wow, I reckon the rear of your car is definitely safe from harm now.’ He looked down at the myriad of plastic safety measures.
I covered my eyes with my hands, shaking my head in cringy amusement.
‘Any luck with Ryan?’ I asked.
‘Yes, he—’
The rain had eased but it was getting increasingly cold in the fast-fading December light, so I attempted to wrap my scarf around my neck a couple more times as he spoke. The tassels caught Tom’s left eye on the second rotation.
‘Argh!’
‘Oh my God, I’m so sorry. Are you okay?’
‘I’m fine, just wasn’t expecting any scarf or debit card-related injuries tonight. That’s a really long scarf by the way.’
‘I bought it from Lenny Kravitz.’
What on earth were all these phrases that were coming out of my mouth?
‘Sensible. The bigger the scarf, the less likely it is to “Fly Away”.’
A Lenny Kravitz pun? Okay, this conversation was taking an interesting turn. A pleasing turn.
‘I can fetch you my emergency foil blanket from my boot if you like,’ Tom continued. ‘You’ll match your reflective triangle, that way.’
I couldn’t help but emit a very loud snort. ‘I think I’ll survive under the protection of Lenny’s knitwear.’
‘Ha ha. Anyway, Ryan lives in one of the new-builds nearby so can be here in a few minutes.’
‘Amazing, thanks again. I’m fine to wait for him here so there’s no need to hang around.’
Please hang around.
‘Nah, you’re good. I might as well wait until he gets here – been meaning to catch up with him for a while. So, London, then?’
‘Yeah, after sixth form I went to Cardiff Uni—’
‘With Elle, right?’
‘That’s right, we ended up in the same halls, which was nice.’
I still had no idea how Elle had managed to wangle us adjacent rooms in the same block.
I’d been a bit miffed at the time – going to the same uni as her was one thing, but living in such close quarters had somewhat dampened my hopes to mingle and meet new people.
But, in the end, the relief of having her next door the day it’d mattered most – the day I found out about Livvie – had overridden all of that.
‘Did you live with Elle throughout?’
‘I did. We studied different degrees – she did media and journalism and I did English literature – but there were a couple of modules that crossed over so we got to spend quite a lot of time together. It was nice to have a familiar face around.’
‘Yeah, I can imagine.’
There was a pause. I took a deep breath and continued. ‘Yeah, so, um, while I was at uni there was obviously that… stuff with my sister.’
‘Yes, of course, I’m so sorry.’
‘Thanks. So, yeah, by the time I’d finished my degree my parents had moved away and I could kind of start afresh wherever I liked, so I ended up heading to London with Elle.’
‘The Big Smoke. Do you like it there?’
‘I guess. But it can be quite intense and just a bit…’ I didn’t quite know how to finish the sentence. But Tom did.
‘…much?’
‘Exactly. But I don’t have any connections anywhere else so it was as good a place as any. And it’s been great for my career so I can’t really complain. Anyway, how about you? You still live around here, then?’