When Good Friends Go Bad Read Online Free PDF Page A

curve. There was a bang, the sound of crumpling metal, and a momentous impact that threw her back and forward against her harness.
    Bugger! She was only at the third corner, the very first lap, and she'd crashed the bleeding car. More of Ollie's instructions filtered into her ringing skull. ' Whatever happens, don't get out until the race is over, or until the marshal tells you to. You'll probably get run over. Unless the thing's about to blow up, of course. If you're hurt – God forbid – or there's smoke coming out of the hood, someone will come to help you.'
    Oh fine! No problem there, then. All she had to do was choose between getting run over or being fried to a sizzle in an explosion of flames. Wonderful options. She was so so incredibly glad she'd been talked into this.
    She scanned the car anxiously. The bonnet looked like a wrecking ball had hit it but she couldn't see smoke. The marshal came running to the barrier and she gave him a shaky thumbs up. Remembering the protocol, she found the fuel pump and switched it off before staring out in stunned shock, her ears reverberating from the collision.
    So much for her moment of glory, such a short time ago. Sitting behind the roll bars on the back of car No. 53 in full get-up, deafened by the roar of engines, breathing in petrol fumes, she'd waved proudly as Ollie drove her round the processional for the Ladies' Race. She imagined with dread how very soon he'd be staring in disbelief at what she'd done to his precious motor.
    A pain shot through her knee as she shifted position. Well, at least she wasn't paralysed and her coveralls were reassuringly free of blood . . .
    The car shook violently as No. 9 took the corner and put another dent in her Fiat's rear fender. Not fair. Her newly acquired mentor had been quite clear on that point. ' This isn't a banger race, you're not supposed to hit anyone.'
    Right – so where was the black flag then? Apparently that lunatic was getting away scot-free with vehicular assault, and so were the others who evidently found it hard to miss a large non-moving target sticking out alluringly into the track. With only the occasional shuddering sideswipe to occupy her until the race ended, she found herself reliving the unfortunate sequence of events that had brought her to being a punchbag for premenstrually violent speed freaks.
     
    Was it because of her beloved Mini, Mickey Finn? (Jen had decided that if boats were female, cars were definitely male. Noisy, smelly, easily overheated and perpetually full of gas.) She'd arranged to meet her flatmate Helen in a pub on the edge of Hampstead Heath. And, late as usual, she'd driven like a maniac into the car park with a screech of tyres because she was twenty minutes past what Helen had said was the absolute limit she would wait.
    As she ran to the pub door, a young man – a kid really, barely drinking age – had held it open, grinning, and said, 'Nice wheelie,' and she'd flashed back, 'Kamikaze parking – it's the latest Olympic event,' and stalked past him.
    Later Helen, dressed to score in a shiny new top and scolding Jen for turning up in well-worn jeans and scruffy trainers, suddenly nudged her with a big smirk and said, 'Don't look now, but someone's checking out your booty.' Automatically Jen spun round to find herself staring into very blue eyes and quickly looked away, blushing.
    Then, to Helen's great amusement, the blond kid who'd held the door joined them, introducing himself as Ollie. Transfixing Jen and Helen with those incredible eyes, he proceeded to spout forth a load of gibberish in which the words hot saloons, street stox and ladies' night popped out. At first Jen thought he was inviting her to some sort of drinking den – she had a vision of dancing girls, small medieval torture devices and two-for-one Martinis – until her brain took in the words banger and racing cars and everything clicked.
    Helen was chortling openly into her glass of Shiraz. At the bar a small