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Permanent? What the hell?
I swallowed, staring out of the window as the grey streets of London slid past the glass.
Why was I thinking that? I didn’t want permanent. I didn’t want deep and meaningful. My passion I kept for the cars, because machines were easy to love. They weren’t like people who could simply ignore you whenever they felt like it, who didn’t seem to care no matter how hard you tried to please them. They simply accepted whatever you wanted to give them.
Yet the silence settled around us, deeper and darker, and I tried desperately to think of a joke or some mundane comment that would ease the growing tension.
And then I noticed something.
This wasn’t the way back to my flat.
‘Where are we going?’ I asked, glancing at Ash.
‘You’ll see,’ he said shortly. ‘I wanted to show you something first.’
That something turned out to be an old brick warehouse in Hackney.
Ash drew up outside and turned off the engine.
His eyes had gone electric, the way they did when he was aroused or angry or excited. This time it was excitement. As if he had a secret he was desperate to share. ‘Come on. Time for one last surprise.’
‘What surprise?’
But he wouldn’t answer and I was left with no choice but to trail after him as he got out of the car and walked to the entrance of the building, pausing to tap a code into the keypad on the door.
The lock clicked and he pushed the door open, gesturing at me to go in, his eyes glowing.
Mystified, I took a hesitant step inside.
It was an open white space full of what looked like workshop benches. Computers were set up on various desks and there was a hydraulic jack for a car in the middle of it. A whiteboard stood in a corner, along with a stack of tyres. There were also rows of shelves full of boxes and tools and lots of other fascinating-looking bits and pieces. Familiar bits and pieces.
Car parts. And car tools.
I stared, suspicion clenching hard inside me.
Behind me Ash hit a switch and the lights came on, illuminating the workshop space.
Because it was clearly a workshop space. A car workshop space very like the ones I’d been around all my life. Except cleaner and newer.
The suspicion became certainty and my eyes filled with sudden, sharp tears that no amount of blinking would get rid of.
‘This is yours.’ Ash’s voice was a deep rumble behind me. ‘Your workshop, Ellie. You need to build your prototype. I took the liberty of getting a team together that will help you—I hope you don’t mind. I’ll give you the list of specialists and you can add to or subtract from it as you see fit. They’re good, though. And if everything goes smoothly, you might even have the prototype ready for Monaco.’
The tears overflowed, rolling down my cheeks, and I couldn’t stop them, my heart an aching ball in my chest.
My workshop. My team.
‘But I have no funding,’ I croaked, keeping my back firmly towards him, not wanting him to see what this meant to me. ‘Please don’t tell me you paid for this.’
‘You have the funding. Some of it is mine because I like your ideas and I want a stake in them. But the rest is from some other contacts in the club that I gathered over the past week. They liked your ideas, too, and your vision.’
I didn’t know what to do. For so long I’d put this passion of mine away; ignored it because it didn’t fit with Dad’s. And he’d thought it had no future and so I’d thought it didn’t either.
Of course that hadn’t stopped me playing with it, putting little touches on my plans here and there. Investigating workarounds with various engineers, drawing and redrawing designs. Always fiddling with it, always tinkering.
But I’d been realistic. There was no way my dream could ever be a reality and I’d told myself I was fine with that. I didn’t care. It wasn’t a big deal.
Except I did care and it was a big deal. And that was why I was standing there with tears rolling down my cheeks, feeling as if Ash had broken open a cage inside me and let the powerful, intense creature out.
