by Daisy Tate
‘As discussed, they don’t make much in the way of cool cycling gear for big girls like me. Particularly ones on a budget. That being the case and the “team t-shirt” being mandatory … I am forced to accessorise.’ She pulled another face to let her viewers know she was being ironic. Of course she was going to accessorise. That’s what Big Boned Goth Girl did. Particularly today, given she’d already caught a glimpse of the t-shirts they were being forced to wear. A rather startling shade of yellow. YELLOW! Who suited yellow? No one apart from maybe Michelle Obama, that’s who. ‘After great amounts of reflection and limited make-up supplies, today’s eyes will feature … flames of glory! If you look the part, it’s easier to become the part. That’s your top tip for today. But, shhhhh.’ She flicked back the covers to reveal the dark guesthouse room. ‘We have to be very, very quiet.’
She tip-toed past a lightly snoring Flo and a curled-up Sue who looked more like a kitten than a full-grown woman. Raven quietly closed the bathroom door behind her and put her phone on the little shelf above the sink in the teensy-tiny attic toilet that was more slanted ceiling than room.
Raven grinned at her phone and brandished her favourite eyeliner. ‘As ever … once the false eyelashes are on, we start with my favourite colour … black.’
Chapter Forty-One
‘It’s here, Sue!’ Flo made large pointy gestures at the continental buffet. ‘That yoghurt you were after.’ She was surprised how quickly the dining room where riders were gathering for a ‘team spirit breakfast’ was filling up. For some reason, she’d only pictured herself, Sue, Raven and Kath riding along, Fola weaving between the four of them, cheerfully calling out encouragement.
But no. By her latest headcount, there were at least fifty of them. The small coastal hotel had only been big enough to fit Kath and her rather vast television crew overnight, so the rest of them – the riders – had been parceled out amongst the guest houses dappled along the one and a bit streets that made up Ravenglass. (Raven, naturally, had been thrilled by the name and that the smattering of buildings made up a hamlet rather than a village because both Hamlet and Ophelia were apparently ‘proper goth icons’. That girl could put two and two together and come up with seventeen).
‘Sue?’ Flo held up the bowl of fruity yoghurt pots when Sue failed to rise. ‘They hadn’t put it out yet. Apparently there’s only the one poor girl on today.’ Raven leant in from beside her and made a can’t quite hear you face so Flo took matters into her own hands and brought the entire bowl over. Sue quietly thanked her as she selected a raspberry flavoured one from the handful of pots resting in ice then fastidiously went about opening and decanting it into her bowl.
Flo frowned. Sue was very quiet this morning. Nerves, most likely. She was feeling them too, but they were obviously manifesting themselves differently. Whenever she was nervous, she got very ‘helpy’. After she’d woken to the sound of Raven talking to herself in the loo, Flo sorted herself out in her usual expeditious fashion and in a matter of minutes had busied herself out on the street directing folk to the main hotel, back to the dining room, pointing out the long row of bicycles they’d be assigned after breakfast (no one was allowed to bring their own for some strange health and safety reason she hadn’t quite grasped) and all sorts of other things she would’ve imagined the ‘team organisers’ would’ve been all over but weren’t. All in all it had been a very busy morning. For her and the poor girl at the front desk, anyway.
‘I’m loving that eye make-up, Raven.’ Flo tapped the side of her own, more modestly adorned eyes, wondering if she’d gone with her more natural look a bit too soon in life. ‘You look like Cleopatra as one of those Marvel Superheroes.’
‘Cleopatra would’ve been an epic goth,’ Raven grinned a surprisingly toothy black-lipped smile as she dug into her bowl of Frosties.
Flo basked for a minute. A smile from Raven was one of those truly rewarding smiles. Rare. Like sightings of a white hippo. Perhaps not the best of similes and one she certainly wouldn’t share, but they were rare and lovely and Flo was pleased to have elicited one. Endorphins, she was guessing. The thrill of something new? Whatever it was, Raven had been quite the cheery little goth lately. Lovely to see. Just lovely.
It was just what she’d needed to see as, over the past week or so, Flo had been increasingly worried she’d bullied the pair of them onto the ride. She’d long had a habit of cajoling her fellow cabin crew into ‘little adventures’ away from the pool at the crew hotel. Adventures which eventually got her the nickname Fearless Flo. She’d taken it as a compliment at the time, but now that Jennifer had schooled her otherwise as regards her family adventures, she wondered if, in actual fact there hadn’t been a bit of an edge to it. A note of warning. ‘Join fearless Flo at your peril!’ As if it were her fault the tyres blew on the bus bringing them back from the rather excellent elephant polo match some forty miles outside of Delhi three hours before call.
As she watched Sue and Raven, cycling clothes on, exchanging quiet observations about their fellow riders, Flo was gripped with a desperate need for this to have been the right decision. Convincing Sue and Raven to ride with her. More than anything she hoped they were here by choice. Not force, or obligation or, even worse, guilt. She’d be horrified to discover they’d only come because they didn’t want the jobless, busy-body, old woman who’d all but commandeered their lives over the past couple of months, feel bad. They’d been like the perfect economy passengers for weeks now. Riding, collecting donations, doing the interviews with Kath though they’d both recoiled at the first mention of it. They’d proverbially accepted that they were getting sour cream and cheese pretzels rather than dry roasted peanuts and a glass of real champagne from the off. Not at all fussy like the Premium Economy passengers. Inventing allergies to Prosecco that didn’t extend to the champagne they happened to know was available in the First Class Cabin. Asking for a duvet from Business because they were feeling unwell. A baby to stop crying.
She’d found the door-to-door debt collecting quite fun. The second they answered the door Flo could assign the person to their cabin, their pre-booked dietary needs, their utter helplessness now that they were strapped into a seat ten thousand miles above sea level. Her favourites were the cheery sort who tended to sit back near the loo, flicking through Heat and Grazia and having a bit of a laugh, settling in to watch the latest Romcoms, eyes glittering with excitement when she pulled up with her trolley, whether or not she’d run out of the green peppercorn steak. They were the types who made sure they said something lovely about Gary. Who made Sue’s eyes glitter with tears of pride.
Feeling too restless to sit, Flo carried the yoghurts round to the other early bird cyclists already eating their Wheaties or Bran Flakes or tapping the table impatiently waiting for coffees or hot breakfasts that clearly wouldn’t be arriving anytime soon if the recent arrival of the chef and the queue at reception were anything to go by.
Honestly. All of these people and only the one poor girl running between reception and the kitchen like a headless chicken. Why wasn’t anyone helping her?
‘They’ve put you to work, have they?’
‘Oh, hello there, Trevor.’ He was a fifty-something chap Flo had met at the pub last night during the ‘Riders Social’ now looking the tiniest bit worse for wear. Silly man. Downing pints like water the night before their big ride. She’d met him a thousand times over on the airlines. Economy exit row-type who never slept. Not even on the long hauls. Always awake, always hungry and always knew something about everything. Regularly offering little tidbits about their destination – I’ll bet I know something about Buenos Aires you don’t. (It was founded twice and yes, she had known.) – or, worse, the airplane. Did you know the Boeing 737— Yes. She did. She flew on one for a living.
‘Need something nourishing to take on the world?’ Flo jiggled the two yoghurt pots in front of her.
Trevor laughed a loud attention-grabbing laugh. ‘Watch how you go, love! People will think you
’re flirting with me and if I’m not mistaken, you’re a married woman.’
Flo’s smile froze a little. The reminder made her heart cinch more that it normally did at mentions of Stu. Like the stalwart he was, Stuart had driven her and the girls (and Captain George who still wasn’t his usual self) to the studio in Birmingham yesterday after weighing their bags on the bathroom scales (no more than 15kg each), checking their helmets for cracks, noting down their emergency numbers and, of course, blood types (O+ for Sue, B- for Raven, both of whom had donated at a recent, in-house drive at the call centre). He’d also given each of them a set of pocket hand warmers “just in case.” All of which had driven her to distraction until Stu, Captain George by his side, along with the other rider’s families, had waved them off until they’d disappeared from sight, at which point she’d missed them more than she could have ever imagined possible. Missing Stu in this way simply wasn’t like her. Throughout their entire married life, they had spent countless nights apart, what with her flying to one end of the world and Stu flying to the other, tag teaming one another for school runs, the electrician/plumber/builders coming at nine, the telly man fixing the aerial on Sunday as a special favour, making sure the milk wasn’t rancid before pouring it into the children’s cereal because another trip to A&E for food poisoning was out of the question. No, this felt more like a separation. As if the lies she’d been telling him about heading off to work these past few weeks had driven a wedge between them only she could see. Stu, you see, wasn’t a liar. He was the most loyal, reliable, honest man she’d ever met. Up until now, Flo had been the occasional bender of truth, more to expedite things that to actually deceive, but this was different. A slippery slope of deceit Stu didn’t deserve to be a part of.
She stared at Trevor, vaguely tuning in as he asked ‘did she know’ that there was genuine quicksand out on the beach which, by the way, was a tidal estuary composed of three rivers, not the sea as most people thought. Right now Flo didn’t care what most people thought. She only cared about Stu, no doubt innocently sitting at home finishing his puzzles, perfectly satisfied that his wife would never ever tell him anything that wasn’t true. A complicated knot of regret and frustration formed in her throat. If she’d been honest in the beginning she’d most likely be in Portugal now, with Stu, preparing for another sunny day of avoiding the speed-walking golf widows and their decaf coffee mornings.
A surge of injustice rushed through her. Why did it feel brazen to want to participate in life despite the fact she had to take joint supplements? The Paralympics was all about triumphing over adversity. Ageing should be the same. Judged on a case-by-case basis. It wasn’t as if David Attenborough was being forced to hang up his hat despite an inability to yomp through the jungles of the Amazon anymore. Quite the opposite in fact. The world was desperate to squeeze as much out of him, Judi Dench, Maggie Smith and Clint Eastwood as possible! No one was jamming them into cabbage scented care homes in a pair of adult nappies. She was exactly the same as she had been ten years ago. Better if she had any say in it. So! It was society’s fault she’d had to lie to Stu. Not hers. She’d been doing her very best to be a contributing member of the United Kingdom’s economy and door after door was being slammed in her face. Despite some rather heroic efforts down the local library and even, on one particularly bleak day, the job centre, it became remarkably clear that no one wanted to hire seventy-two-year-old woman who’d just been fired from their call centre position for using plain old common sense. No one apart from mobile care centres looking for ‘paid companions for the elderly’ – a job she would never take in a million years because a) old people and b) it was plain wrong to be paid to chat nonsense with someone over a cup of lukewarm tea and a packet of Rich Teas when they should have family there to talk and reminisce. All of which made her wonder if her own children would come back home and talk to her when she didn’t have teeth and could no longer remember the name of the Prime Minister. Jennifer might. Jennifer always liked being right.
Anyway. It was all much of a muchness now. She’d come clean to Stu when she got back. That, or start volunteering down at the local RSPCA centre and slip it into conversation as if she’d been working there for ages and Stu was the one who didn’t remember.
She primly readjusted the yoghurts. ‘Well, if you’re not interested in the yoghurt Trevor, perhaps you’d like something from the cold buffet.’
‘Trying to get yourself a job, are you?’
‘Ha!’ She sniffed and turned, making a dramatic display of pouring herself a bowl of muesli and milk before returning to her seat by Sue and Raven. A few minutes later when she couldn’t bear watching that poor girl from reception who was now also trying to be the waitress run herself ragged, she wrangled the two of them into helping her serve the hot dishes whilst the girl took the rest of the orders. Whenever she passed Trevor, she pretended she was hard of hearing. For him, the cold buffet would simply have to do.
Chapter Forty-Two
Don’t panic. Don’t panic. Don’t panic. Don’t panic.
Sue was definitely beginning to panic. What had so recently been an out-of-focus, out there, never-really-going-to-happen adventure, was suddenly a very real, very scary thing.
‘You sure you’re going to be alright in that?’ the man standing next to her asked when the first of what looked set to be a number of raindrops began to fall. Trevor, was it? She vaguely remembered him telling her something about Hadrian’s Wall last night. Or was it about bird migration. Perhaps it had simply been about the weather. There had been so many facts flying about the pub they’d all melded into one big indecipherable blob of information she simply couldn’t digest, so she had adopted her Sunday lunch face, a smile and a nod combo, until Flo finally agreed it was time to turn in. Raven, who was not one for group activities, hadn’t needed any convincing.
‘You know, the forecast isn’t looking very clever,’ Maybe Trevor said.
Sue looked at her light, allegedly waterproof jacket. ‘I should be alright?’
‘Doesn’t look hydrophobic to me.’ He tweaked a bit of the electric-orange fabric on his own jacket. ‘Keeps everything out, it does.’ He began to list the elements: wind, rain, sleet, hail …
‘Lucky you!’
‘It’s not luck, love.’ He tapped the side of his head, his expression turning schoolmastery. ‘It’s research. You don’t know what life’s going to throw at you, so it’s best to be prepared.’
‘Oh, okay. Well …’ She was fairly certain he didn’t mean finding your husband dangling in the stairwell. ‘Thank you?’
He gave her an I see you nod and clacked away in his nylon and fibreglass shoes which, Sue now knew, had a two-way adjustment dial-closing system because he had been detailing the merits of his road shoes over her eBay’d trail shoes for the last few minutes. Trevor’s shoes didn’t let water in. Hers, with a simple two-bolt system, definitely would. Wet feet spelt foot rot and without feet you were useless as a cyclist. Every good rider knew that. All this whilst she’d been silently trying to talk herself out of running to the train station and leaping on the first one, regardless of destination.
She tried to channel her fears into a single question. What was it that scared her the most?
The riding?
No.
Being on television?
Not really.
Kath had been so lovely to talk with, it had been less painful than she thought to admit to the whole of Britain that her husband had killed himself and left her in debt because he couldn’t run his own business. She’d couched it differently, of course, but … facts, she was learning on an increasingly regular basis, were facts.
Many of Gary’s customers had, thanks to Flo and Raven, paid up now. The surprise had been when even more people, having heard her story on Brand New Day, had tracked her down and sent in cheques or PayPal donations to cover those who wouldn’t. Those funds, she sent directly to LifeTime.
What scared her most, she realised, was for the
ride to be over.
Between work and the ‘training/debt collecting’ sessions and shopping for bum-friendly cycling shorts and watching an entire boxset of Tim Burton films with Raven (Frankenweenie being their joint favourite), Sue had been busy and focused and completely bereft of time to think about the fact that when she got home, Gary wouldn’t be there to hear about any of this. Not the daily mileage. Not the poor choice of weatherproof gear. Not Trevor. A man Gary would’ve absolutely loved to mimic. But Gary would never mimic anyone, or laugh appreciatively, or give her a warm hug of congratulations ever again. And for that reason, she was absolutely dreading getting on her bike and beginning a journey that would conclude with the inevitable … acceptance.
She scanned the area for Raven and Flo. Hopefully they were meeting people filled with slightly cheerier tales and a more relaxed approach to cycling gear.
The more she looked, the more she worried she was the only one who’d used Primark as her main outfitter. She had one pair of padded shorts, a reflective vest and one cycling top with a pocket in the back, but the rest was really just leggings and t-shirts.
