The Love Shack by Jane Costello Read Free Book Online

hiss.
    ‘Which would you prefer?’
    ‘Under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t do things on the cheap, but given that the object of this exercise is saving money, the latter. You could turn up in a baked bean can and I’d be pleased.’
    ‘Great,’ he replies. ‘Just remember those words when you see it.’
    That evening, as we sit in the living room of the flat surrounded by boxes, he shows me the advert that Pete’s friend of a friend of a friend had listed on eBay. There’s no picture, but what it lacks in photographic evidence, it makes up for in descriptive prose:
    1999 ALFA ROMEO 145 T-SPARK 16V SILVER
    A hero of a car.
    Gutted to lose her due to shitty 12-month driving ban.
    Guaranteed Fanny Magnet.
    £195.
    To call the monstrosity parked outside our flat the following morning ‘a car’ pushes every boundary of the dictionary definition. It is a rusting, backfiring, filthy lawnmower with windows – except that one of them is covered with the box from a 24-pack of Carlsberg, held on with duct tape. It possesses no passenger seat, just a gap where one once was. The other seats are brown – but not a good brown, like taupe or caramel. These seats could originally have been any colour of the rainbow, but have turned this shade due to a plethora of dubious-looking spillages. I can’t even look at them without wanting to scrub myself with a wire brush.
    ‘You asked for cheap and you’ve got to admit it was cheap,’ says Pete triumphantly.
    ‘This isn’t going to last five minutes,’ I tell Dan.
    ‘It’s not great, is it?’ he concedes. ‘But it was cheap.’
    ‘A hundred and ninety-five quid isn’t cheap if it’s not drivable. How did it pass its MOT?’
    ‘There are six months left on it, believe it or not,’ Dan says. ‘The seller admitted it has suffered some wear and tear since it passed.’
    ‘ Wear and tear ? There are vehicles that have done a tour of duty in Afghanistan that look better than this.’
    Dan shrugs. ‘Well, it’ll do for now and if I need to sell it on as scrap, I will. Although we had no problems getting here in it. You never know, Gemma,’ he grins, ‘we could be lucky enough to end up with this for years.’
    It takes longer than expected to pack up both cars, even with Pete’s help. Every inch of available space in the Fanny Magnet is taken up with bin bags of clothes, boxes of kitchen utensils and holdalls containing more stuff than I dreamed I owned. I had a clear-out before the move, but still found it difficult to throw a lot away, even the old CDs I know I’ll probably never play again, the three or four diaries I’ve accumulated over the years (though never get the time to write in these days) and, of course, my shoes.
    Dan opens the door gingerly and, as Pete and I strain to hold back a bag of bedding, my boyfriend squeezes himself into position. He turns the key, and is rewarded with a noise like an exploding Spitfire crashing into the side of a mountain. The engine ticks over for several seconds and, deciding not to tempt fate by hanging around, I leap into my car.
    I follow Dan, letting him set the pace. But the pace, it turns out when you’re driving a sixteen-year-old skip, is S-L-O-W. I register the looks of grotesque astonishment on other drivers’ faces as they overtake us.
    We finally reach the country roads that lead to Buddington and, when forced to negotiate their narrow, winding contours and hills, it becomes very apparent that Dan’s car is not overburdened with suspension, judging by the way it’s jiggling up and down like the boobs on a Las Vegas showgirl. He gets round this issue by speeding up ahead of every bump in the road, so that the Fanny Magnet actually leaps in the air in a manner that I’m convinced must have shifted several of his internal organs.
    We arrive at the imposing gates of Buddington Hall in a toxic cloud of smoke and frayed tempers.
    The oldest surviving part of the house was built at the end of the sixteenth