Dream Guy (4 page)

He shoved her hand away, then jackknifed up, his eyes bleary. “Okay, Mum. I’ll be down in a sec.” He waited and she backed away. She was wearing her power suit. No wonder she had come up. She had one of her meetings with senior management. She’d be chewing the carpet if they weren’t out of the house promptly this morning.

“See you downstairs then.” She turned and went, closing the door with a businesslike click behind her. Joe had the quickest shower ever, threw on his uniform and clattered down the stairs three at a time. He wrenched the front door open and looked in the driveway. There she was—golden, glowing in the dull November dawn. She had been reversed into the drive and the first thing that Joe could see was the twin exhausts, one on each side of the car’s rear, positioned in the grill, and above, the neat cursive signature confirming that it was a Lamborghini. The first surprise was how small it was—low, with sweeping curves and a voracious, snub-nosed front. The second surprise was that the car had no number plates.

Neither at the front nor at the back. He wondered where those should go and how to get them. But for now, he was content to walk around the extraordinary beast in the driveway—wondering, worshipful, awed. It did not take him long to start touching the metal, running his hands over the roof and the bonnet. He walked around again. It was left-hand drive.

Presumably it was legal to use left-hand drive cars in the UK. Tourists from Europe did it all the time. But it must be a little weird. He stood by the driver’s door. He didn’t have a key, but there was no visible lock anyway. Presumably it was one of those flash electronic plip keys. He hadn’t thought about keys last night. He hadn’t thought about anything practical, because who would? He reached down and pushed at the latch. The handle made a solid, substantial sound, and the door eased open a little way then rose into the air. The scent of leather wafted upward and he gazed at the bucket seats with stitching, the bizarre seventies-style swirly carpeting, the handbrake and the range of dials—rev counter, tachometer, speedometer, temperature gauge, fuel gauge, altitude, latitude, longitude. The car seemed to have it all, but he’d have to climb in and check.

He stretched his right leg in then folded himself up and levered his left leg in afterward. He’d have to practice so the maneuver was smooth and natural, a little less like an ostrich taking a seat. He closed the door. It gave a thick, dark clunk. He was enveloped in the black interior, adjusting his posture in the hard seat, stretching his arms out to grasp the wheel, seeking out the pedals with his feet. There were three.

Accelerator, brake and clutch, he assumed. There was no key in the ignition. There was no gearstick either, just some weird additional levers sticking out from the steering column, which must be the famous robotized e-gear. There were buttons everywhere, a satellite positioning system, a CD sound system and really that was it. Not much more than Dad’s standard executive VW. Not even much more than Mum’s old Golf.

The glove compartment was locked. He reached round the edge of the seats and under the carpets, but there was no sign of a key. Then the dream ended and the nightmare began, because Mrs. Knightley opened the door of the beautiful machine then leaning one hand on the roof of the Gallardo, said with quiet menace, “Joe, where the hell did this come from?”

He looked up at her. She did not seem surprised or amazed or awed, just suspicious, verging on furious. He noticed her skinny eyes with wrinkles radiating along clearly defined paths, and she had a lipless mouth, like a lizard’s poised to eat a fly. This wasn’t just a morning mood. She was about two seconds away from a Grade-A tantrum.

“I won it. I won it in that prize draw I entered at the airport when we went to Tenerife in the summer.”

“You can’t have. You had to be eighteen to enter that. And you had to pay twenty quid. You didn’t have twenty quid.”

“Ben entered it for me and I paid him back.”

“Ben’s not eighteen either.”

“He said he was.”

“For God’s sake, Joe, we were in an airport. They were checking people’s passports. And they just drove it here in the middle of the night and left it for you, I suppose?”

“We just said that our group leader had all the passports, and they didn’t care. They just wanted the money.”

“So they just thought they’d drop the car off with no warning—no phone call, no letter, nothing?”

“I guess not.”

“So how did they verify your identity?”

“What do you mean, Mum?”

“They’re not going to hand over a car worth the price of a flat to some snotty-nosed fourteen-year-old, Joe. Give me a break.” She pushed back from the car and stood, hands on hips, elbows out in classic ‘impatient mother’ stance.

“I just found it here, Mum. I just assumed.” He had a feeling that the innocent tone in his voice was wearing thin. He could see where she was going and decided to forestall her. “I don’t have the leaflet anymore. I chucked it ages ago.”

“So you think that you may have won this car in a dodgy raffle designed to fleece fools in the airport. Well, you’d better get out of there, give me the key and let me get it out of the way and into the garage so I can get my car out and take it to work…where I will then waste half my morning by phoning around, trying to work out how to give the damned thing back.”

“You can’t give it back! It’s a prize. It’s
my
prize.” Apart from the fact that he had no idea who she could give it back to.

“You won it under false pretenses, Joe. You can’t drive it. I won’t drive it. We can’t afford to insure it, and they won’t think it good publicity when they discover that it was handed over under fraudulent circumstances to a couple of daft schoolboys.”

Joe had no answer to this tirade. He just sat there, looking up at his mother. Her hands were shoved deep in her pockets as though she were preventing herself from taking a swipe at him.

“Get out of the car, Joe. And give me the key.”

He clambered out. It wasn’t comfortable or dignified getting out of the car in front of an unsympathetic witness. It was better once he was standing up and able to look down on his mother. “There’s no key.”

“What!”

Although she didn’t swear out loud, her silence was eloquent. Joe took a step back. “I can’t find a key. I thought they would have left it in the car, but it doesn’t seem to be there. Maybe they dropped it through the letterbox.”

“If there is no key, Joseph Knightley, you will be mincemeat. I will turn you into meatloaf for your brother and sister to eat for supper tonight and if there are any leftovers, I will feed you to the cat and the hamster and the goldfish.” Mrs. Knightley turned and walked back toward the door where Ben appeared. Joe didn’t think it was a good time to remind her that the cat was dead and buried in the garden.

“Holy sh…ugar!” He managed to cut off the expletive as he caught his mother’s glare. “Where did
that
come from?”

“You should know, Ben. You helped Joe lumber us with it.”

“What do you mean?” He looked entirely blank. Joe winced and closed his eyes.

“You pretended you were eighteen and you paid the money he needed to enter this stupid draw. Didn’t you?”

Ben caught Joe’s eye and uneasily rubbed his chin. “Yeah, that’s right. Yeah, it’s coming back to me.” He came over to Joe and gave him a big hug. “Hey, man, congratulations! I can’t believe it!”

“Nor can I,” said Susan. “Did you see an envelope as you were coming out of the door, Ben?”

“No, nothing. Why?”

“This car has just appeared here in our driveway, without a key. So my car is trapped in the garage and we have this thing cluttering up the front garden.”

Ben came up with a solution at once. Susan could sit in the car, release the handbrake then the two boys could roll the car a short way down the drive, which would provide enough room to drive the Golf onto the lawn. Then they could push the Lamborghini back into the garage, where it would be safe until the prize draw company came to collect it. It was workable, even when one of the Golf’s wheels ended up in a flowerbed and needed to be levered onto a plank so that Susan could get it back onto the tarmac. She couldn’t wait and had to leave with Liesel still sobbing with laughter at the sight of her two brothers covered in mud, ensuring that at least the females in the Knightley family reached school and work on time.

Ben and Joe waved them off then went back inside. They’d missed the bus for school and walking there would make them even later. There was no real rush. They’d both make it in time for the second lesson. It wasn’t as if they were habitual absentees.

“Do you want the first shower, Joe?”

“No, you go ahead.” He avoided Ben’s eyes.

“So what was all that about me paying for your prize draw ticket?”

“Thanks for covering for me, Ben.” He made to run upstairs, but Ben caught his arm and Joe turned to look at his brother.

“Seriously, Joe, where’d you get that car?”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you. But I didn’t nick it.”

“Of course you didn’t. First of all, where would you find a car like that around here? And second, if you’d nicked it, I don’t think you’d be such a complete tosser as to park it in our front drive.” Joe smiled and Ben let go of his arm abruptly. “Okay. It’s your secret. But Joe, if you need my help, you just have to ask.”

“Yeah. I know. Give me a shout when you’re out of the shower.”

Joe would rather apply for a place on the
X-Factor
than get any help from Ben. He clumped upstairs to his bedroom, stripped off his muddy uniform then jumped into the shower and whispered, “
I’m a racing car passing by like Lady Godiva
.” As the water pulsed down, he played air guitar and sang, “
Don’t stop me now, don’t stop me, don’t stop me, don’t stop me now…
”

Chapter Four

The Key

Ben and Joe walked to school in their customary uneasy silence. The gates were closed when they arrived, and they had to show passes to the security guard in his little hut. The big security drive seemed stupid and unnecessary, like most school rules, but since a boy who had been kicked out had come back and tried to stab the receptionists as well as his form teacher, the place was harder to get into than the Queen’s knickers.

Which meant any skiving was also quickly picked up. As they crossed the forecourt to the main classroom block, Ben spoke.

“Do you want me to come and explain to Elphick?”

“Nah. I’ll do it myself. It’s all right. Thanks.”

“Okay. See you later then.” Ben headed off toward the sixth form block.

Joe crossed the lobby to Elphick’s office. The door was open, which meant she was there. No escaping it then. He knocked and waited in the doorway.

“Come in.” Elphick, the youngest-ever deputy head of Cosham High School and extremely up herself as a result, was abrupt.

“It’s me, Mrs. Elphick. I’m late this morning. I’ve missed first period.”

“So I see. Oversleeping isn’t a common complaint in the Knightley household. Do you have an explanation?” Elphick leaned back in her chair, her arms crossed.

“I do, but it’s a bit complicated. We got a new car, and it was parked in the drive, but we couldn’t find the key, so we had to move it by hand then get my mum’s other car out of the garage for her, and by then, me and Ben—”

“Ben and I.” She’d been head of English until her promotion the previous year.

“Ben and I had missed the bus. My mum didn’t have time to write a note in my diary, but she said you could phone her to check.”

“Thank you, Joe. I might do that, have a little chat about your recent contretemps in the canteen, perhaps. Or discuss the narcolepsy that seems to be plaguing you in lessons. I don’t suppose you have that problem at home.”

Joe was tempted to give an equally sarcastic response, but he knew that would rile her, and now she was just toying with him like a cat with a beetle. There were plenty of mice for her to sink her teeth into. He just had to wait for her to be distracted by one and accept that she was going to bat him about a bit from paw to paw.

When she saw he wasn’t going to rise, she turned back to her computer and said, “I appreciate your dropping in, Joe. Off to your classes now.”

He was in time for the second half of double geography. He shook himself into an apologetic posture before knocking and entering.

“Sorry I’m late, Mr. Green. I’ve just been to Mrs. Elphick.”

“Fine, Joe. Got your rain gauge?”

Joe had to take a seat near the front, next to Nell Brennan. He found his folder and handed over the work, accepted the worksheet that everyone was theoretically completing and sat down by Nell. She had finished and was curled over the textbook, reading ahead. He was tempted to swipe her completed worksheet and copy it, but he knew the Nell of old, and she’d kick up a bleeding big stink if he tried anything like that. Some girls would have been fine with it or would even have handed their work over as a matter of course, but Nell was afflicted with a competitive streak, combined with general hatred of the opposite sex. She was flinching from him now, hunching farther away, if that were possible.

Joe focused on isobars and wind speeds. The worksheet was straightforward to anyone with half a brain. It took only minutes to fill it in. He looked around. As far as he could see, everyone had finished, but Green was deep in some marking and hadn’t noticed that Donna Pettigrew was texting
War and Peace
to her mate, Liesha Atkins, or that Warren had one hand up the back of Vikki Watt’s blouse and was struggling to unclasp her bra while she sat apparently unconcerned.

Joe dug in his book bag for his sketchpad. He flicked it to a fresh page and began doodling. He penciled a quick line drawing of the Gallardo from various angles. Then Green stood up, stretched and cleared his throat. The class snapped to attention, although it took Vikki a little undignified groping about to resecure her assets.

“Right. Let’s go through the worksheet then. Nell, will you start us off with the answer to number one?”