Johnny Doesn't Drink Champagne

Chapter Four

Okay, now I’m in panic mode. I’m in a fast car with a strange man and I have no idea where he is taking me. I glance across at him, but he stares straight ahead as the motorway signs flash by. We are leaving the city of London far behind us. I am shaking inside, and I’m trying to hide it.

“Where are we going?” I say, with a quaver in my voice.

“You said you’d like to see the Corvette,” he says, with a slight frown. “It’s no distance.”

Obviously his concept of no distance and mine are not the same. I swallow, trying to calm down. He’s showing me his Corvette. That’s the pretext, anyway. And technically, I agreed to this.

I am suddenly overwhelmed with a strong feeling that Mrs. Bertorelli would not approve of my decision to get into his car. My mother wouldn’t like it either and my dad would be on red alert.

“Maddie. Is there anyone you’d like to call – to tell them that you are going to be a little late?”

I nod and fumble for my phone. I drop it in my anxiety and have to lean down into the foot well to retrieve it.

“Let me guess,” he says. “Your screen saver is bright blue, and you have a picture of you and your best friend in there?”

This guy is unbelievable. It’s like he’s been spying on me my whole life.

I pretend this isn’t as weird as it feels. “Predictable, huh?”

Then there is a long, long pause.

“I keep my cars at The Grange,” he says – as if I ought to know it.

“Where’s that?”

“In Kent.”

I nod.

“I have an apartment in London, of course.”

Of course. The guy has everything – except a sense of humor and the ability to put seventeen-year-old girls at their ease.

“The Grange is bigger, and it has land around it. More space for the cars.”

I am so out of my depth. Come back Tony from my photography class – the first guy I ever kissed. He lived above a convenience store.

“Maddie, are you okay?”

I notice he’s calling me Maddie now, like he wants to be one of my friends, though I never invited him to. I give him a worried glance. “I didn’t realize it was going to be so far.”

“Sorry. It was a little presumptuous of me to bring you out here.”

“It’s okay.”

“And it was trusting of you to come along,” he says, with a slight smile. “I might be a cold-hearted killer.”

I pretend to laugh. Cold-hearted killer. OMG – he’s got a nerve!

He asks me a couple of questions about what I’m studying and what I want to be. I give him the bare minimum. No need to tell the guy my life story.

We drive on through the English countryside. He takes an exit off the motorway that leads to a small town with the picturesque name of Swanley.

We drive on past, eventually coming to a leafy little village clustered around a beautiful old stone church. Johnny takes a turning marked ‘The Grange’. He noses the car down a long driveway.

A beautiful house comes into view. Half-timbered and so old that the roof seems to sag under the weight of time. Johnny wheels the car round and comes to a stop. He parks in a patch of deep shadow beside the barn. He releases his seatbelt and gets out, and this time he goes around and opens the door for me.

I step out onto the gravel and look around. He seems to be waiting for my reaction, so I tell him I love the house.

“And the barn?” he says, meaningfully.

We both stare for a moment at the barn, covered in dark-green ivy. Huge curved beams hold up the walls of the ancient building. Beams that are dark and weathered with age.

“The barn’s cool.”

“You’ve seen it before?”

“Of course not,” I say, and look up at him, in all innocence.

He studies my face for several seconds longer than is really polite, and then he leads the way over to his converted barn.

“The barn is even older than the house,” he says. “Medieval, in fact.”

“The age of chivalry isn’t dead,” I say, risking a teasing smile as he opens the heavy barn door for me.

He has several cars in there – not just the Corvette, with its sinewy curves and gorgeous, cherry-red paintwork.

I ask him what they all are and he tells me. There’s a classic Jaguar, an E-type, and a World War Two jeep. An old Aston Martin – a beautiful shiny Lagonda – dating from the nineteen twenties. The guy even has a Model T Ford – black and shiny, like the day it left the factory. One hell of a restoration job.

“You like collecting old cars?”

He laughs. “No. I buy them when they’re new, and I never sell them on.”

His laughter isn’t warm and friendly – it’s hollow and bitter. The sound echoes up around the barn ceiling, with all its exposed v-shape beams. Echoing around in the darkness.

He’s crazy. I’m in a barn with a crazy guy.

“You really don’t understand, do you, Maddie? You don’t know who I am, or what I am?”

“No. Please tell me what’s going on, Mr. De Vere.”

“Johnny. You knew my name before.”

“I only met you today, Johnny.” He’s scaring me now, and I get flustered. “I mean yesterday! I met you for the first time yesterday.”

“Yesterday and today. It’s all the same,” he murmurs. “Oh… Madeleine—”

“I am NOT Madeleine. Look, I want to go back to the hostel now. My friends will be worried.”

“You don’t like it here?”

“No. I have no idea why you brought me to this place, other than to impress me or scare me, or both. Why did you bring me here?”

“It was an experiment,” he says icily. “And it didn’t work.”

“An experiment? Great.” I march towards the barn door. “Well. Johnny. Would you please stop experimenting on me and take me back to London? Right now!”