How Not to Be a Loser

by Beth Moran

  Stop Being a Loser Programme

  Day Forty-Nine

  Thursday evening, Joey had a one-to-one training session with Nathan in Brooksby pool. I’d skipped a run that morning (no, I hadn’t bothered with a cool-down, and yes my muscles were indeed making me pay for it) and was antsy after a day slumped in front of my laptop proofreading health and safety policies for a homeless charity. I decided to stretch both my physical (better late than never, right?), and my courage muscles, with a night-time stroll to the leisure centre. Arriving there nine minutes later, after the fastest stroll known to woman, I sidled up to the huge window that ran alongside the swimming pool and peered in, confident I’d go unseen due to the terrible outside lighting this side of the car park.

  I hovered there for a minute, my eyes fixed on the body carving through the near lane only a few metres away, tantalisingly close, while frustratingly hampered by the steamed-up glass. I so wanted to see him clearly, to be able to make out his expression, admire his technique, be the proud mum marvelling at this incredible person I had made. But even the blurred sight of the pool was enough to cause my heart to pitch and toss like a tiny boat on the ocean of anxiety. I couldn’t hear the echoing splash, or smell the chlorine, but my senses burned with the memories. I knelt down, huddling on the hard concrete, gripped the icy window frame, sucked in some sharp October air and tried to console myself that, for this evening, the window was a new personal best.

  A few minutes before the end of the session, Nathan and Joey suddenly appeared right in front of the glass. I shrank back into the shadows and watched as Nathan, his back to me, used arm movements to demonstrate what looked like Joey’s turning technique. Joey nodded, both of them gesticulating now, as they discussed whatever the issue was. As they appeared to reach a decision, Nathan ruffled Joey’s hair, a gesture I’d stopped doing about four inches ago, and they burst out laughing before jostling each other back towards the changing rooms.

  I slowly heaved my aching muscles up to a standing position and stared into the now empty pool, ignoring the cold seeping in through my coat. I felt blindsided. Blindsided by a ruffle. A jostle. A shoulder slap. Knocked sideways by the realisation of a thousand, a million, tiny interactions missed. Had another man ever ruffled my son’s hair? Play-wrestled him to the ground? Thrown him over his shoulder and carried him up to bed? Errr… no.

  Never.

  I thought Cee-Cee and I had done okay. Joey was, as he said, awesome. Happy, more often than not. Well-rounded, with a healthy dollop of self-esteem – didn’t that say it all? Since those first few dreadful months, I’d never felt the lack of a father figure in his life. But now, when he had the potential for one in the form of his actual father, did I have the right to deny him the chance? While he might not need one, wouldn’t anyone benefit from having an extra person in their life to love them? Someone else to cheer them on and pass on their wisdom? Laugh with them and ruffle their hair, in a way that says, ‘I’m with you, I’m here for you, I believe in you and, no matter what, I’m on your squad’?

  ‘Mum?’

  Oh, poop.

  I hastily swiped away the tears that seemed to be collecting on my face and sprang away from the window, summoning up a smile.

  ‘Were you watching?’

  ‘I had a quick glance, but it was too steamy to see much. I only got here a short while ago. But from what I saw, you looked brilliant.’

  ‘Why didn’t you come in? You could have sat in the viewing area.’

  ‘Yeah. Well. I’ve not been that close to a pool since I stopped competing. One step at a time.’

  We started walking, my thighs protesting at Joey’s easy long stride.

  ‘You never told me why you stopped.’

  ‘It’s complicated. There were lots of reasons.’

  ‘And? I’m amazingly smart, remember? I think I can keep up.’

  ‘I have no doubt about that.’

  ‘Was it because you got too anxious to swim?’

  ‘No. If anything, it was the opposite.’ I thought about it for a few more paces, trying to get some sort of hold on the choices that were made. I looked at Joey, his white blond hair glinting in the street light, and allowed myself to remember the man who had given it to him but chose not to stay and discover that for himself. ‘Okay, let’s get home and we can talk about it then.’

  So we did. Episode one of how I got from there to here…

  ‘Mmm.’ I snuggled deeper into Sean’s chest, rubbing my face against his shirt. ‘I wish I didn’t have to go.’

  He gently tugged at a strand of my hair. ‘Then stay.’

  ‘Don’t tempt me.’ I half-heartedly pulled myself upright on the sofa, making a show of scanning about for my shoes. ‘If I miss training with only two weeks to go, Cee-Cee would probably handcuff me until we land in Athens.’

  ‘No.’ Sean spoke softly. ‘I mean stay.’

  Something about his voice made me look up. ‘You mean… stay the night?’

  His eyes shone as a smile began to creep across his mouth.

  I stared harder. ‘What? What did you mean then? Longer?’

  The smile broke into a grin.

  ‘It’s going to be bad enough when I plod in fifth or something as it is, but I need to at least look like I’ve tried.’

  Sean sat up quickly, taking both my hands in his. ‘If you can’t win a medal, why put yourself through that? The pressure of the build-up, the disappointment, having to answer stupid, obvious questions live on TV. Cee-Cee and your parents acting like you’ve let them down. Let the squad down. The whole country! This is your life. You’re the one who’s made all the sacrifices, put in all the work… just because you wanted it before, doesn’t mean you have to go through with it now.’

  ‘Ten years, Sean. I’ve got two weeks left. I can’t throw all that away.’

  ‘You were a kid then. You’re a woman now. Dreams change. People grow up, want different things.’ He stopped smiling. ‘Don’t you? Isn’t this what you want?’

  ‘Yes. But it can wait a few weeks, can’t it? If I bomb the Games, then I’ll have the perfect excuse to retire…’

  ‘But why go at all? Right now, this situation is making no one happy. Going to Athens and coming in last won’t make it any better.’

  I had to admit there was some truth in his words. Although I still cared enough to feel riled at the suggestion I’d come last, it would be an understatement to say that all was not well behind the bright smiles and clichéd sound bites of Team Amelia. While doing my best to alleviate suspicion by turning up on time and nodding my head in the right places, my heart had left the pool and firmly set up home in Sean’s grotty student digs. And this, along with the guilt, the embarrassment, of my slipping times, the arguments, the scrutiny, the strain of constantly lying, the pressure of supposedly carrying the hopes of a nation (who, looking back I can see mostly weren’t all that bothered), feeling like a total fake: all this combined into a swirling cauldron of resentment and anger and hurt that only found peace inside this house, in this person’s arms.

  I was buckling. Drowning. Heading for certain doom.

  Could I really just walk away? Just not go?

  Okay, I’d given ten years to this. One goal, one hope, one dream. But did that mean I had to go through with it for the sake of it? For everyone else’s sake?

  It took another week of agonising. The lack of sleep and monstrous inner turmoil didn’t exactly help my training times. One day, a local news reporter was waiting outside the pool for my comment on a local man who had got a life-size tattoo of me wearing an Olympic gold medal on his back. I blurted something about how amazing it was to have such fantastic support, then barely managed to make it back inside before dissolving into tears.

  I was eighteen years old. I had no one to talk to about this except for a business student I’d known for three months, who was more than a little biased. While I dithered and panicked, ranted and cried, as everything I’d known, the person I thought I was,
began to crumble, he planned a future for us that sounded idyllic.

  In the end, I didn’t walk away because of anything as selfish as my own happiness, or anything as pathetic as a teenage infatuation. It had become a choice between getting on a plane to Athens, or keeping my sanity. It was the only way to protect my mind and body from full-on implosion, to save my poor, tender self from a force I was not equipped to handle.

  Would I have been okay, had I not got on that bus and met Sean? Would I have made it through all the pressure and the intense build-up intact, and brought home the gold? Or at least the pride in knowing I gave it my all? Would I have gone on to have a glittering career, smashed it at Beijing, even London? Ended up a sports pundit, appearing on Strictly Come Dancing or gone on to train the next British champion?

  With the benefit of hindsight and maturity, I can safely say I haven’t a clue.

  What I do know is that I wouldn’t have Joey.

  So it’s no contest, obviously.

  I gave Joey the PG version: pressure got to me, lap times started to drop, fell in love, ran away.

  Not my proudest moment, telling my son that I bunked off the Olympic Games at the last minute. Cee-Cee missed the plane waiting for me to show up. My parents reported me missing to the police. Thanks to all the recent cringey publicity stunts, the press went bonkers: had I been murdered by a rival, kidnapped for ransom money, held hostage by a crazed fan? One of my commercial sponsors offered a ridiculous reward for news of any sightings, adding to the frenzy.

  Hiding away in Sean’s family’s holiday cottage in Devon, it was five days before I realised what was going on.

  Unable to face calling Cee-Cee in my current state, I made a hideous, horrendous, heart-breaking phone call to my parents.

  In response, my mum and dad, or should I say my manager and agent, wrote and published a book, filed a lawsuit and publicly disowned me, their daughter.

  They never spoke to me again.

  Joey stretched out on the living room carpet, taking a few moments to think about this before coming out with the inevitable question:

  ‘So, this Sean is my dad?’

  When this subject had come up in the past, I’d gone for a brief explanation about how his dad had needed to work in America when he was a baby and hadn’t been able to come back yet as he’d been really busy and plane tickets were so expensive. Lame, yes, but the truth was even lamer. How do you tell a child that his father abandoned him, fleeing to another continent and choosing never to return?

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You gave up swimming for him?’

  ‘No… I think I would have had to do that anyway. Sean maybe sped up the process. Or helped me realise? He also gave me a safe place to go. My parents were really, really angry and I couldn’t stay with them.’

  ‘So, what happened? Why didn’t you stay together?’

  ‘We were very young. I’d never had a serious boyfriend before and kind of rushed into it because I was looking for an escape. Then, as time went on we just realised it wasn’t going to work long-term.’

  Sort of true. If time actually referred to the moment I told him I was pregnant. And, to be fair, him disappearing off to America a month later did help me realise that things weren’t going to work.

  ‘Has he never tried to contact us? Or did you stay in touch, but things fizzled out, like with Fenton’s dad after he went to Scotland?’

  Whew. Can this wait until morning?

  I looked at my son, trying hard to balance a cool, casual mask on top of a lifetime’s accumulation of desperate hope.

  I guess that’s a ‘no’ then.

  Telling him that his father had got in touch with me a whole seven weeks earlier was one of the toughest things I’ve ever done.

  Answering the stream of questions: why now, where did he live, why didn’t he ever call or email or visit before, what was he like, was Joey like him, did he have any other children… that was even tougher.

  Joey understood why I hadn’t instantly responded to Sean’s emails. I tried to keep my answers based in fact, brief and to the point, not filling in gaps with assumptions or attempted explanations. Even if that made half of my replies ‘I don’t know’. But if I didn’t know, there was only one man who did.

  So, the crunch question:

  ‘Can I speak to him?’

  ‘Look, this has been a huge amount of information to take in. Can we sleep on things, take a couple of days to process before we make any decisions?’

  Joey propped himself up on his elbows, all the better to glare at me. ‘How is there any way in this universe that I would come up with the decision not to contact my dad?’

  I took a deep breath. ‘Okay, but I want you to have considered some of the potential outcomes, so you’re prepared.’

  ‘Seriously? You don’t think that in the past thirteen years I might have considered every single possible option, Mum? You think I might just have considered, in one of the endless, infinite variations I’ve imagined, the strong possibility that a man who hasn’t got around to contacting his son in all this time might be a total loser? Or that he might make a great show of being the world’s best dad and then disappear again as soon as he gets bored, or spooked about the responsibility, or a more important phone call comes along? Or he might try to buy my affection with stuff, or scam me for stuff because he’s a waster? Or that it might hurt you for me to start a relationship with him? Or might end up really, really hurting me?’ Joey fluffed up his hair, so like Sean’s, with vigorous hands. My heart was being wrung inside out. ‘I don’t need a dad who’s been nothing to me. But I deserve to decide if I want to know him. Considering he’s not, like, a serial killer or a terrorist or anything.’

  I blotted the tears currently streaming down my face. They were instantly replaced with another torrent.

  ‘Can we take some time to at least think about how we do this?’

  I offered Joey the soggy tissue, but he swiped at his eyes with his sleeve instead, before nodding.

  How long could I eke out some time for? I wondered. How long would it be fair to drag this out, given Joey’s been waiting over a decade?

  ‘You’d best get to bed. School tomorrow.’

  ‘Training tomorrow.’ He gave me a pointed look as he clambered to his feet.

  ‘Well, see how you feel.’

  ‘How I feel has nothing to do with whether I train or not.’

  I smiled feebly.

  ‘I love you, Mum.’ He bent down and kissed me on the head as he walked past, this beautiful, wise, compassionate man-in-the-making.

  I hoped he was right, that whatever happened – with Sean, with the Gladiators trials, with the absence of Cee-Cee and my ongoing mental health battle – he would not be destroyed, or damaged. I hoped he wouldn’t get hurt at all, but wasn’t that every mother’s wasted prayer?

  20

  Stop Being a Loser Programme

  Day Fifty-Two

  Sunday morning, I jogged to the leisure centre to join the Larkabouts for the second time. I may have felt a twinge of disappointment that Nathan wasn’t waiting for me at the end of the road, but it couldn’t dent the joy of being greeted by the Larks as if I was an old friend. I powered through the warm-up with a not-altogether unpleasant combination of nerves and excitement.

  Look! Me! OUT! Outside, with OTHER PEOPLE! Pretty much smiling, letting out a giggle every now and then and not all of them faked!

  Inside my brain, I wrestled with the constant current of anxiety that could so easily take over my body, too: Well yes, you might look normal now, but what happens if you start to panic? You can pretend your heart isn’t racing and your lungs aren’t wheezing like broken bagpipes, but I’m still here, waiting to strike, to find the worst possible moment to drag you to the ground.

  What if a car pulls out too fast, a nasty dog jumps out at you, someone asks you an awkward question about where you like to go or what you like to do or if you are the disgraced swimmer Amelia Piper or whe
ther you just look like a sad, washed-up version of her…

  But in another corner of my mind, I lunged and squatted and star-jumped with glee. Two months ago, the thought of jogging across a car park in the freezing dark, surrounded by laughing, chattering women, would have seemed beyond impossible. In this moment, being here, I had a victory. The reams of advice I’d read as part of the Programme research told me not to let fear about what might happen next ruin that.

  During one of the walk-periods (most of us mixed up running and walking, with one notable exception being Marjory, who, at seventy-five, could have lapped us all without breaking into a sweat), I found myself alongside Orange Squash Mel. Or, rather, Cherry Coke Mel this morning, hair piled up like a pineapple.

  ‘Bloomin’ ’eck, I’m strugglin’ today,’ she wheezed. ‘Got next to no sleep. Tate’s got another one of his chest infections. Thought it might be a trip to A&E at one point, but he settled towards mornin’.’

  ‘Maybe you should have stayed at home, got some rest.’

  ‘You kidding?’ She wiped her forehead with a mottled arm. ‘Nights like that, I need this the most.’ A few steps later, she added, ‘But Gordon’s with him, in case he takes another turn for the worse. If he’s still right by the time we’ve finished, I’ll stop and have a brew.’

  Before we had to start running again, I just said it: ‘Do your younger three ever see their dads?’

  The split second it took Mel not to answer was enough to get my anxiety stirring.

  I hastily tried to explain the intrusive question. ‘I’m sorry, I know that’s none of my business, it’s just, well, Joey’s dad has been in touch and I’m entering new territory here, trying to avoid any hidden mines. You don’t have to answer, in fact, please forget I asked.’

  Mel tossed her pineapple hairdo. ‘Come off it, it’s hardly gunna be a secret if my kids see their dads or not. And, to answer your perfectly acceptable question, Taylor sees hers once a fortnight, they go out for pizza or play footie or summat. The man who happened to provide the sperm for Tate, not a chance. Even without all the extra problems, he wasn’t interested. And Tiff, well, she won’t ever get to know who her dad is, thanks to my shockin’ behaviour at the time. I couldn’t pick him out in a line-up. And I’ve got to live with that, which is fair dos, but she has to an’ all, which is disgusting, and a regret I’ll carry until I’m gone.’