“What did you do with the old one? Trade it in?”
Jack shook his head just as Dad drove it over the hill, pulling in behind the new car.
“I don’t know, Jackie,” Dad said, getting out and chucking the keys to Jack. “It still rides great, and I miss it, but I think your mum would kill me. You’d better sell it.”
He wasn’t wrong; he had his Jeep, his work van, and his flatbed truck littering the drive.
“How much?” I asked, surprising myself with the question. It would solve a lot of problems for me to have my own car, though I doubted I could afford it; Land Rovers were massively overpriced, even on the used car market. And plus, I’d been saving up to move out, and whilst I had a nice little nest egg going, even a cheap car would all but wipe it out entirely.
“I was gonna give it to Dad for five,” Jack said, and my mouth fell open.
“Five thousand?!”
Jack shrugged. “He sold it to me for not much more, and I’ve driven it like hell since then. I already paid cash for the new one.”
If I hadn’t driven it so much myself over the last ten months, I’d have thought it was falling apart or something at that price. But I knew it was in good condition. The opportunity was too good to pass up.
“I’ll buy it,” I said before I could convince myself not to. “That way I don’t have to keep borrowing yours.”
“Whaddya say, Dad?” Jack asked, smiling. “You’ve got first right of refusal.”
Dad was grinning ear-to-ear, which was a rare sight. “You mean I don’t have to wait for princess to finish her hair to leave for site visits? Hell yes. Sell it to her.”
I rolled my eyes. “That was one time, Dad, and it was because my hair was literally stuck inside Mum’s ancient hair dryer. I couldn’t have gone to work like that if I’d wanted to.”
He held up his hands as if to say, “That’s your business”, then turned and started up the hill again towards the house.
“All yours, sis,” Jack said, tossing me the keys. “Treat ’er right.”
“I’ll try,” I said, already thinking about all the ways I could make the beat-up old car incrementally more comfortable. Some cute seat covers, maybe? Something weird hanging from the rear-view mirror? But that didn’t matter now, because I was free, and that meant I had somewhere to be.
I was going to see my boyfriend.
* * *
When I gotto Phil’s, I was barely out of the car and on the front path before he came through the front door.
“Look!” I said, pointing over my shoulder at the car.
He nodded, looking confused. He’d seen the car countless times. “Jack let you take the car for a bit?”
I shook my head. “Nope, it’s mine now.”
He reeled back. “Wait, really? He sold you the Defender?”
“Yup,” I said, popping the P for emphasis. “I figured it was about time I got a car.”
“That’s amazing,” he said, smiling at me, but he didn’t look as excited as I’d hoped, and I felt instantly embarrassed. Of course he wasn’t excited; he hadn’t been expecting to see me until later. I’d jumped a million steps ahead in my mind, thinking I could spend more time around his without having to wait for Mum or Jack to be free to drive me, whereas he clearly thought we were spending plenty of time together already.
“Is something wrong?” I asked, bracing myself. Phil sighed and smoothed his beard with his hand, and as he stretched his face I could see how deep his eye bags were. He looked exhausted.
“Honestly, I’m just a bit burnt out,” he said, his voice low and gravelly. “I’m buried in these costumes, Ethel has to start doing a second round of physio each week, and I’m trying to take on more work to cover the Manchester trip.”
My heart sank. I’d been spending my time doing tarot readings and putting in extra, unpaid hours for Dad when Phil was drowning over here.
“Why does she need more physio?”
“She’s just not very stable, and they’re worried about falls. She doesn’t help herself by acting like she’s as spry as ever. So they want me to bring her in twice a week now, and we’ve been referred to a water aerobics class.”
