‘…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 scarfordebit card-related injuries tonight. That’s a really long scarf by the way.’
‘I bought it from Lenny Kravitz.’
