Page 36 of Of Socialites and Prizefights

“A few times, yeah. Same as I've taken them around to watch my fights a few times before. It's got the same appeal, I think.”

“Physical competence?” Deepa guessed, letting the sheet fall away as she went searching out something suitable to wear. “Watching you work with your hands and outperform every man they've ever been with?”

“Keep talking,” Roz encouraged, lounging against the door to watch Deepa dress. “I like this.”

“This is as dressed down as I’ve got,” Deepa announced of her outfit. It was an older dress, still fashionable, but no longer cutting edge, and without a single enchantment to raise its worth.

“If you get any grease or motor oil on you, you’ll have to borrow some of the clothes I keep in the office.”

“You look like you’re enjoying that thought rather too much. I don't want any grease, oil, or mess of any kind touching me.”

“Understood. I'll make sure to get you back for tea with your mum all in one piece, without a mark on you.”

“You’re welcome to join us, if you like,” Deepa offered spontaneously.

Roz hesitated.

“Cherie will be there,” Deepa added. “My mother is very social; she’s always wanting to meet new people. I think she’d like you.”

With a gentle smile, Roz leaned over to press a kiss to the side of her head. “If you want to introduce me, lay the groundwork,” she suggested. “I've been introduced as a friend enough times to know how it works. Now,” she said, changing the subject before Deepa could respond, “have you got any food in the flat that I can make you breakfast?”

Deepa shook her head. She didn't know how to respond to Roz’s assumption that they would be introduced as friends instead of lovers, so, like a coward, she let it go. “Put the kettle on while I do my makeup, and then we can pick something up from a café on the way to the garage?”

“Sounds perfect

???

Deepa had never been in a garage before. Having no car herself, there was little cause for it, and certainly none of her previous dates had ever supposed she might be interested. That was fair enough. Prior to Roz, she’d never supposed there was anything about the art of car repair to catch her eye.

Of course, none of her previous dates had likely set foot inside a mechanic’s shop themselves, either. They all owned and drove motorcars, but they had people to keep such tedious appointments on their behalf. They certainly weren’t the sort of men interested in getting their hands dirty, so they weren’t interested in the sort of woman who dirtied her own hands. Or rather, it simply never occurred to them that any woman might want to try.

“You ever driven a car before?” Roz asked, as Deepa lingered in the shop entrance, taking it in.

There were two cars parked in the bay, both of them quite stylish, though Deepa couldn't say any more about them than that. The cars each had a man working on them, and a light further inside the shop suggested a third person working in an office. The whole place smelled sharply of metal and petrol, which wasn’t necessarily unpleasant. Deepa felt very much like she was stepping into someone else's world, as surely as Roz’s dream garden had been its own separate world.

“I’ve never driven, no,” she said, looking about with keen interest.

“Want me to teach you?”

Deepa laughed before realising Roz was serious. “What, here and now?”

“Maybe we won't borrow a paying customer’s car for it. I can take you out someplace less busy, with fewer pedestrians for you to mow down.”

If it were a man asking, Deepa would have brushed aside his offer with a blush and a giggle. Because it wouldn’t be an offer, not sincerely. Women like Deepa were expected to be chauffeured around. Driving one’s own car was unbecomingly independent.

“Yes,” she said decisively. “You should teach me sometime.”

Roz gave an approving nod. “When I was your age, the thought of a woman driving her own car was impossible.”

“Had cars even been invented yet, when you were my age?”

“Cheeky! You shut your mouth.”

“Oi, Roz!” The nearest of the two men straightened up from under the hood of his car. “You going to come take a look at this, or are you standing around chatting up birds all day?”

“Keep your hair on,” Roz returned peaceably. “My brother, Joey,” she explained to Deepa, striding up to the man. Deepa could see the resemblance: both of them stocky and dark-haired, though Joey was older and rougher around the edges. “Joey, this is Deepa. I’m just showing her around. And that’s my cousin, over there,” Roz added of the man in the second bay, who didn’t so much as glance up, his head under the car’s hood.

“Pleased to meet you,” Joey said brusquely, his expression suggesting that Deepa was wildly out of place.

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