Doctor Who_ Warchild - Andrew Cartmel [4]
Creed unlocked the car and Eve scrambled in. He bent down to buckle her into the passenger seat. That was when he saw the yellow Fiat cruising past in an adjacent lane of the car park.
Creed swiftly sealed Eve’s belt and slid into his own seat, flattening himself so that at the angle of approach the driver of the Fiat wouldn’t see him.
The yellow car eased past and continued around a corner into the next sector of the parking lot. As it went, Creed saw a flash of short blonde hair and a glint of silver earring as the girl driving checked her mirror. Then she was gone.
Creed let out a long sigh and realized he’d been holding his breath. He started the engine, released the handbrake and rolled forward.
‘Daddy?’ Eve’s voice piped up from the back seat.
‘Yes, honey?’ Creed was squinting as brilliant afternoon sunlight slanted into the car. He polarized the windscreen and slid out into the traffic flow.
‘Why are you hiding from Amy?’ said his daughter.
Concentrating on getting into his lane for a right turn, Creed didn’t reply.
‘She’s nice,’ said Eve.
‘Yes she is, honey.’
There was silence as he found his exit and joined the traffic flow moving sluggishly downtown.
‘Is she too nice, daddy?’
Creed put the radio on, found a classical station and turned it up loud.
Chapter 2
There was something strange about the two women in first class.
Jessica Morrell pondered the matter while she finished collecting the supper trays and, with the help of the Scottish girl, pushed the trolley back into its niche in the stewardesses’ station. They were due to land in London in an hour and a half and there were no more meals to be served, no more tea or coffee. The hardened alcoholics in Club Class were bound to demand a few more drinks, but on the whole Jessica’s shift was over. She would let the new girl do the landing announcement and seat-belt check.
Now she sat down in the small semi-private space allotted for the cabin crew tucked in beside the first class toilets. She eased in behind the curtain, sat on the folding seat, slipped her shoes off and relaxed.
Jessica massaged her aching feet and pondered the matter of the two women in first class. They’d taken the aisle seats on either side of row C and spent most of the flight in low intense conversation, leaning out over the aisle so that their heads were almost touching, easing back in whenever a stewardess passed.
They’d accepted the minimum of hospitality; no drinks, a couple of coffees. The white woman had only eaten one meal, the black woman nothing at all.
They had an odd, slightly hard look to them which deterred Jessica from being too friendly. The black woman in particular had an unwavering no-nonsense gaze. When you met her eyes it snuffed out any attempt at small talk. So Jessica had just poured them coffee and left them to it, leaning out in the aisles, elbows over the edge of their seats, heads almost touching, the serious subdued flow of their conversation ceasing whenever one of the cabin crew walked past. The women would reluctantly bob apart, then back together again. There was a strange kind of intimacy between them. It crossed Jessica’s mind that they might be lesbians.
She finished massaging her feet and quickly slipped her shoes back on as a passenger, a fat Belgian man carrying a folded newspaper, wedged his way through the narrow passage towards the toilets. It wouldn’t do for a member of the cabin crew to be caught relaxed and barefoot. Jessica sighed and stood up, helping the Scots girl scrape the last of the food trays into the recycling container.
‘I hope he isn’t planning on doing the crossword in there,’
said the Scots girl. She nodded to the toilet stall where the Belgian had vanished with his newspaper. ‘We’re going to need them all back in their seats soon.’ The girl’s name was Fiona, Fee for short, and this was her first time on the Budapest—London run.
‘Don’t worry, we’ve got nearly an hour,’ said Jessica.
‘What do you think of the two women in C?’
Fee scraped the last