Page 34 of Cassian is Getting Out

The retail park off the A4 was perfect. Vast, flat, and at half four on a Wednesday afternoon, empty enough that the only vehicles in sight were a delivery lorry idling near the loading bay and a Fiat Punto so far away it was barely a speck of colour on the tarmac.

Ruari killed the engine and got out. By the time he’d walked around to the passenger side, Cassian was already climbing across the centre console, one knee on the handbrake, the other wedged by the gear stick.

Ruari opened the driver’s door from outside and waited.

Cassian dropped into the seat, pulled it forward until his feet reached the pedals, and gripped the steering wheel at ten and two until his knuckles went white.

“Right,” Ruari said, folding himself into the passenger seat and adjusting the recline until his knees weren’t jammed up to the glovebox. “Mirrors first. Then seatbelt. Then we’ll—”

The Range Rover lurched forward three feet and stalled with a violent shudder that threw them both forward.

Cassian’s hands hadn’t moved from ten and two. He’d turned the key before Ruari had finished his sentence, and the clutch hadn’t been part of the plan.

“Okay,” Ruari said. “So that’s what happens when you skip the clutch.”

“What’s a clutch?”

Ruari started from the beginning.

He explained the clutch, the biting point, and the relationship between the two pedals that had to work in opposition for the car to move without dying.

The Range Rover bunny-hopped forward. Stalled. Bunny-hopped again. Stalled so hard the engine coughed like a pensioner with a forty-a-day habit, and Cassian threw his head back against the headrest and laughed until tears tracked down his cheeks.

“I’m so bad at this, Ruari.”

“You’re learning. Your first time behind the wheel’s meant to be rough.”

“Not this rough. I don’t think your car likes me.”

The engine turned over on the third attempt, and Cassian managed a full circuit of the car park at a speed that would have been outpaced by a determined toddler on a tricycle. His tongue poked out of the corner of his mouth, and every gear change produced a grinding noise that Ruari felt in his fillings.

None of it mattered, because Cassian was outright cackling, which was problematic since it meant he wasn’t watching the road.

“Eyes forward, Cass.”

“I can’t help it! The car keeps making the noise and it’s so—” He dissolved again, his foot lifting off the accelerator as his body folded with laughter, and the Range Rover drifted left at a gentle but committed angle towards a concrete bollard.

Ruari reached across and corrected the wheel with one hand. “Bollard.”

“What?”

“Bollard, Cass. Big concrete thing. We were about to make friends with it.”

Cassian wiped his eyes with the heel of his palm, and promptly stalled again. The engine died with a final juddering sigh, and in the silence that followed, Cassian looked at Ruari, his face so luminous that the empty car park might as well have been the Champs-Élysées.

“I need a car,” he said.

“You need lessons first.”

“I need a car for the lessons. I can’t learn in this, Ruari, it’s enormous. I can barely see over the steering wheel. I need a car that fits me.” He patted the dashboard apologetically.

They ended up at a Mini dealership in Chiswick forty minutes later, on account of Ruari’s brain running at a speed where every idea arrived fully formed and self-evidently brilliant. Driving Cassian to a showroom so they could acquire a car that fit him felt as sensible as teaching him to bake cupcakes.

Cassian sat in a Racing Green Cooper with white racing stripes and closed both hands over the steering wheel. His feet didn’t quite reach the pedals, but the seat adjusted, and once it had, he looked up at Ruari with a beaming grin.

“Diwa has a Tesla,” Cassian said, running his palm over the stitching of the leather seat. “Even though he says nasty things about the guy who makes the Teslas. Colin calls it his wanker car.” He pressed a button on the centre console and the radio came on. “He has a wanker shirt too. Wanker coffee maker. Wanker blender. I think he might have a wanker yoga mat, but Colin won’t confirm it.”

“You’re not gonna learn anything in a poncy electric that drives itself,” Ruari said, drumming his palms on the roof of the Mini. “Defeats the whole purpose. You need to feel the road, feel the gears, feel the car fighting you. That’s how you learn.”