‘And something else. If there’s one thing you should know about my family by now it’s that we keep our promises. And we don’t like it when people break promises they’ve made to us.’
He shook his head.
‘What?’ she asked.
‘Nah, nothing.’ He sipped the iced coffee. ‘Just you and Clarkson. It was your main goal to set yourselves as far apart from your families as you could. And look where you both ended up. I never thought I’d see the day you used them to threaten me.’
Nella turned away. ‘Goodbye, Oliver.’
Max didn’t ask what she’d spoken to Oliver about. Nella would probably tell her, eventually. Just like she’d have to admit to Felix she was a nerd who’d completed the homework he’d set her by planting seeds about owning stories and absolving herself of any guilt she’d harboured over that night. But right now, all she needed was the quiet, steady breathing of a friend beside her while she drove back to the Barbarani Estate.
The sky was orange bleeding into pink by the time she’d dropped Max back at Grey’s cottage, the poor woman none the wiser that, inside that house, her boyfriend was sweating like a Christmas turkey, practising four little words over and over again in the mirror. Nella would have to drive through the night, stay in a motel and then go to her destination in the morning. It was thrilling, really, the feeling of being in control of the car. Alone and silent. It was one of the many things she was realising for the first time, much too late in life.I can drive. My father respected my job. Jett was there all along.I should have chased after him. I should have ...
Felix’s wise, dopey voice filtered into her ears at that.‘Should haves’ don’t make lives. You need to act on it, or move on.
So that’s what she was doing.
The next morning, she arrived at the street name she’d scribbled on a green sticky note, courtesy of her inhouse soon-to-be-engaged PIs, pulling up neatly next to the kerb. There was something satisfying about following hand-written directions instead of the obnoxious voice of the phone-dwelling woman. The more Nella drove, the more she realised how much she’d been missing. She liked having part of her brain concentrating on the road but with the rest of her mind free to wander – a kind of tethered aimlessness.
As soon as she got out of the car, she realised how stupid this was. There was every possibility he wouldn’t still be here after all this time.
A girl with tiny black braids and a gap in her front teeth pedalled past on her bike. The glittery beads between the wheel spokes rattled like the ones Nella had hated on her own bike when she was the same age (she’d wanted a sleek black and red bike called the Red Back Spider that Tom had).
‘Excuse me?’ Nella cleared her throat. The girl watched her warily. ‘Do you know if a man named Nigel lives anywhere near here?’
The girl seemed pleased to be tasked with imparting such important information and dumped her bike across the mint green lawn. ‘He lives in the red-roof house.’ She pointed a sparkly-blue-painted finger at the modest red brick house to their right. The lawn wasn’t as green as at number 56 but it was trimmed and lined in thick rose bushes just starting to bud with tiny white flowers. ‘Nigel is my best friend Maisie’s grandpa.’
‘Thank you,’ Nella said. Any minute now the Neighbourhood Watch would be reporting a stranger trying to lure a little girl off her bike. Distancing herself as much as possible from an abduction accusation, Nella strode up the garden path to the fly-wire front door.
The garage was on the left, about the same width as the house, with a cream door and three vintage model cars parked down the driveway, each in various states of repair. Her heart spluttered cold, desperate warnings through her bloodstream that this was all for nothing, that after all this time, he wouldn’t have kept it.
She ignored it and pushed the doorbell. Instinct taking over.
The sun beat down on the back of Jett’s neck as he took his first sip of water in what felt like a year. The ice-cold liquid soaked the cracked channels of his throat, bringing him back to life.
Or, at least to the half-life he’d been existing in these past six months. It was a great job, working for Kevin. Exquisite cars, less-exquisite teenagers, but teenagers with stories and issues Jett didn’t have to fix or drive them away from. Instead he taught them how to change brake pads, disconnect spark plug wires, and that the function of a tyre iron was to assist in changing a tyre, not as an opportunistic assault weapon. This was the kind of place where he could settle for a year or two before getting that burning feeling of needing a change. But it was like he’d fractured his leg and kept forgetting about it. He’d go about his day, not putting any weight on it, not thinking about it and then one sudden movement would send him into a sickening spiral of pain.
He’d never felt that pull back to somewhere before. To someone. But it would pass, he knew that. The break would heal. And it was nothing compared to the pain he would have felt, staying behind, watching her marry someone else – someone suitable, who Tom and the rest of the family would embrace like a brother. Someone they’d all be proud of. It was also nothing compared to the pain he would have caused her, dragging her away from her family, because of his own issues. He would break his own heart again and again before he became a burden to her.
Jett crushed the water bottle in his fist and lobbed it into the yellow recycling can (Kevin was a religious recycler; Jett had witnessed him chase down the twenty-year-old graduate turned assistant manager of Kev’s Rev Shop with a wrench when he didn’t wash out his iced coffee cup before dumping it in the recycling, even though Kevin claimed he’d forgotten he was still holding the wrench). Jett was finishing early today to drive a group of old women, including Kevin’s aunt Ingrid, to a bingo evening in the next town over. Restless, with his evenings free and finding himself driving round aimlessly anyway, unable to sleep, Jett had become the unofficial town Uber.
The extra cash was nice. He got to drive. He didn’t think about Bindi Bindi as much when Ingrid was shouting at Laura Nottingham from the backseat about the absolute abomination that was Gertrude Smith’s pavlova. (‘Kiwi fruit and no strawberries, Laura, can you believe it?’)
‘I’m off,’ he said to Alex, the graduate who’d made the grave iced coffee mistake.
Alex nodded solemnly, probably grateful Jett wasn’t threatening him with the work tools. But they both turned at an unmistakable rumbling in the distance.
‘You expecting someone?’ Jett cupped a hand against the sun, but he couldn’t make out the car.
‘Nope. Butshiiiit.’ Alex whistled as the car drew closer.
Jett’s heart stopped at the sound. V8 engine. He knew those were aluminium-silicon alloy block and aluminium cylinder heads with cast-iron wet cylinder liners. Exclusive half-wheel covers with a stainless-steel trim. That sleek, classic long front with the flat nose. The queen of cars. Rolls Royce.
The Corniche I. Classic beauty, complex and intricate workings, easily misunderstood. Only someone who truly understood the Corniche truly deserved to own her, to drive her, to love ...
Bloody hell, it was a dead ringer for the one he’d worked on with ...
No.
