How Not to Be a Loser

by Beth Moran

  We picked up the pace a bit, in response to Nathan’s hand gestures from a few hundred yards up the track.

  ‘Well, you were in a tough place, and…’

  ‘And I had three kids at home, who depended on me as their only parent, and had no right getting smashed out me face on vodka shots and going off with a strange man, riskin’ a whole lot worse than a baby. I was in self-destruct mode.’ She pumped a few more hefty strides. ‘I had no right. But nothin’ to be done except do me best today and tomorrer.’

  Wise advice.

  Of course, it would help to know what my best actually was.

  ‘But you want to know about your lad. Whether he should meet his dad or not,’ Mel said.

  ‘He lives in America, so that’s not currently an option. It’s whether he contacts him at all that I’m freaking out about. And whether that might end up with him wanting to go and meet him. I mean, he’s not dangerous or anything. But, well…’

  ‘Far as I can tell, danger comes in a lotta different disguises. A word here, broken promise there. ’Specially hard when there’s so much at stake, every bitty thing counts when you’ve all that catchin’ up to do. You’ve done the hard work, now you’re worried this fella gets to swanny in and suddenly his opinion’ll count for everything, Joey’ll be tryin’ to impress, prove his dad wrong for ignoring him all them years. Dad’ll be offering the moon, no matter if he can follow through or not. And where does that leave you? The boring, always there, rule-enforcing, reality-checking, taken-for-granted, must-be-partly-to-blame-for-all-the-years-of-absence, mum!’ Another few huffs and puffs. ‘Well, listen to me, bletherin’ on, it’s your lad, your ex-fella, what do I know?’

  Um, everything, it would seem?

  Nathan was waiting for us around the next bend, jogging on the spot, his sleeveless T-shirt revealing rock-solid arms that almost succeeded in distracting me from fretting about the subject in hand.

  ‘If you can make conversation, you aren’t pushing hard enough. Save the gabbing for the Cup and Saucer, and get those legs moving.’ He trotted backwards as he spoke, the flash of a grin as he turned to sprint back up the hill lessening the telling-off.

  ‘I can think of worse incentives to get me up this mountain,’ Mel sighed, as she made a token effort to increase her speed, for about six steps. ‘Like a greyhound after a rabbit, following that fine specimen. Now, what was we talking about? Oh yeah, Joey’s dad. Well, I’ve said all I’ll say, except this: you’ve spent thirteen years loving that boy, helping shape him into best he can be. Nurturin’ him, body, mind and soul. All that input, that’s what’ll last when the whizz-bang of speakin’ to his dad has fizzled out. This is a scratch he has to itch, a missing piece needs fillin’, and who knows, with the grace of God, it might end up brilliant – I’m all the proof you need, people can change for the better – but if not, he’s a good lad, mostly thanks to you, and he knows that.’

  ‘Thanks, Mel.’

  It’s quite a challenge, running with your nose blocked with snotty tears, and a much shorter woman’s arm gripping your waist. Timewise, it was not my best run. But it was absolutely my favourite.

  ‘Coming in?’ Dani asked, gesturing to the café with her neat afro as Mel and I reached the gaggle of runners already waiting outside the door.

  ‘Um, not today. Joey will be up for training soon, he’ll be wondering where I am.’

  ‘Send him a text then,’ Bronwyn chirped, head between her impossibly long legs.

  A faint sheen of watery blue pushed at the darkness above the buildings surrounding the square. My anxiety peered out at the increasing visibility, the lessening shadows, revealing the vast, unpredictable, complicated world stretching out with a squillion terrifying possibilities.

  ‘Maybe next time,’ I managed to squeak out between chattering teeth.

  Yeah, or maybe in the dead of winter, when I’ll have time to knock back a cup of tea before the sun comes up.

  Quickly turning to go, I saw the last woman home trudging towards the square, Nathan alongside her.

  ‘Come off it, Audrey!’ I heard Selena screech behind me. ‘Have some dignity! At least pretend like you have some!’

  Audrey continued walking at the exact same pace, head down, shoulders slumped, her feet scraping along the pavement with each step.

  ‘Let her be, Selena,’ someone said. ‘Nathan knows what he’s doing.’

  ‘Not enough for her to have lost any weight in the past four months,’ Selena snapped. ‘Not enough for her blood pressure to drop, or her blood sugars to get out of the screaming danger zone. Not enough for her to be able to fit…’

  Thankfully, Selena’s voice disappeared, presumably due to someone shoving her inside the café before her daughter came within earshot. I wondered if Audrey would buy a massive, fat, squishy cake and eat it one deliberate mouthful at a time while Selena tried not to choke on her hot water and lemon.

  Part of me hoped she did. The other part felt sad that Audrey allowed herself to be dragged along with the Larkabouts at all. Then I watched Nathan, his slow pace matching hers as he made sure all his team were home safe, and I thought that maybe, two hours a week spent with non-judgemental, uncritical, respectful people who put it all out there, in every sense of the word, made the hour of hell worth it.

  Maybe Audrey was the one doing the dragging, because she hoped it might end up changing Selena. In two sessions of the Larkabouts, I already suspected that the work being done here was as much to do with the inside as the outside. Which suited me just fine.

  I allowed myself one glimpse back at the warm lights of the Cup and Saucer, nestled between the dark frontage of the shops either side. Saw the silhouette of an arm gesturing madly, heard a hint of raucous laughter in the brief second Audrey opened the door to enter. One day, I would sit and drink tea, eat a wholemeal blueberry muffin or an egg on rye toast. Gossip and joke and maybe even tell a story or two. The wide-open space would be an invitation, not a torment. The world wouldn’t tip and sway and there would be no clanging in my ears or erratic thumping in my chest. I would dig a deep, dark grave for my anxiety and bury her there, along with my shame and my guilt and the wasted, wretched years that these three tyrants have ruled over me.

  But first, home, a shower and a conversation with my son.

  ‘Amy!’ Nathan called across the square, jerking me out of my contemplation. ‘Hang on a minute.’

  I pointed at the hint of sunrise on the horizon, not bothering to turn around. ‘No time.’

  I wasn’t surprised when he caught up with me. ‘If you want to stay for a drink, I could walk you home afterwards.’

  ‘I think I’ll pass on you somehow manhandling my sweat-drenched, retching, panic-ridden jelly of a person home in broad daylight on a Sunday morning, thanks.’

  His eyes grew startled. ‘Okay. Fair enough.’

  At some point, we’d stopped walking. Nathan appeared to have been frozen by the image of me as a retching jelly. My anxiety snickered in the background. I really had to get home. ‘Was there something else?’

  ‘Oh! Um, yes.’ Nathan held up the gift bag in his hand, as if he’d forgotten it was there. ‘I brought you this. Just in case.’ He offered it to me, wincing a little bit, as if he was afraid I’d throw it back in his face. ‘I’m an optimist.’

  ‘I guess you have to be, in your line of work.’ I took the bag. Was I supposed to open it now? While I was growing to genuinely like Nathan, and my heart had done a double flip in response to being given something, my churning stomach and trembling legs had other priorities right then. ‘Thanks. I’ll look at it when I get home.’ The press of panic grew strong enough to override my attempt at a normal conversation, wrenching me across the road.

  ‘After your cool-down!’ Nathan shouted after me.

  ‘Yes, yes, after my cool-down,’ I muttered, hoping he wasn’t stood there watching the sunrise bounce off my wobbling backside. Unsure about how much my impressive pace was due to the frantic need to get
home safe, and how much my desire to see what he’d given me.

  Cool-down be damned, I fell onto a kitchen chair and yanked open the gift bag, pulling out a sky-blue T-shirt. Size medium. I examined it for a moment, feeling a mix of I don’t know what at the realisation that Nathan had thought about what size clothes I wore. He’d written on the bag’s tag: Welcome to the Larkabouts. Great to have you on the team.

  Well. Of course it wasn’t a personal gift, a ha ha! Ha ha ha! Nathan was my son’s coach, sort of my coach now. That would be utterly unprofessional. AND TOTALLY NEVER GOING TO HAPPEN ANYWAY, I reminded myself, catching sight of my drooping reflection when stepping into the shower. Ugh. Please. Nathan spends all day with women who have self-respect. And confidence. And… perk.

  Get over this stupid attraction to Nathan, I ordered my mind, body and emotions, trying to scrub off the growing crush along with the morning’s mud and grime. Being starved of human connection meant I had homed in like a traction beam on the nearest male. Lots of Larks flirted with Nathan, it was natural to be attracted to an attractive man. But those women had other lives going on, maybe boyfriends or husbands or wives. For them, it was a silly bit of fun. I added a new task to the Programme:

  Talk to more human beings. Male ones, in particular.

  Who knows, once I was well again, I might even end up genuinely connecting with one of them.

  What I hadn’t anticipated, and should have been more prepared for, was the next available handsome man I spoke to being the ex-lover, first-lover, heart-breaker, life-ruiner, father of my child.

  A sure-fire guarantee to end in trouble.

  But in the meantime, I had a whole lot of blubbing to be getting on with in the shower about that T-shirt. Putting the giver of the item to one side for a moment (harder than it should have been), I had a team shirt. I was part of a team. For better or worse, in fitness and in health, for fitter for poorer… I belonged to a squad again. I dried off, buried my head in the shirt and wept some more, finally able to acknowledge another layer of the harrowing loneliness that had scraped against my heart like sandpaper for the past thirteen years.

  I wasn’t going to mess it up this time.

  I hoped.

  Later that day, once he’d dissected his training, spent two hours in mortal combat with his friends on the Xbox, eaten his own body weight in cereal plus lunch and dinner, Joey came to find me. I was lying on the sofa, pretending to read while ignoring my muscles wailing and thinking black thoughts about cool-downs and stretches.

  ‘Can we talk about me contacting my dad yet?’

  I tried to sit up, instantly regretted it, lay back down again. Joey waited patiently for me to stop yelping.

  ‘Maybe we should start with me emailing him, work up to a phone call. Take it steady,’ I suggested.

  ‘Why? You sending messages isn’t going to change who he is, or what he wants. Why string this out any longer? I really want to talk to him.’

  I tried to think of a decent reason for waiting, other than everything else was changing, shifting under our feet, and I needed more time, more chance to get my head straight, get strong enough to deal with speaking to Sean again… tried to think of a reason that didn’t revolve around me, and actually put my son’s needs first. I came up with this stunner:

  ‘I just need a bit more time, Joey.’

  ‘Time to do what? Freak out? Change your mind? Watch me suffer?’

  I whipped myself upright, then. ‘That is not fair. Taking a week or so to adjust to this, me making some initial contact can’t do any harm. If he’s serious about forming a relationship with you, he’ll wait.’

  ‘Oh, so that’s it? You’re hoping he’ll give up and move on to something else if you can put this off long enough? Maybe one of his other abandoned kids, which we don’t even know if he has because you won’t let me talk to him.’

  ‘No! I just don’t want you to be disappointed. We don’t know what he wants yet.’

  ‘Maybe he doesn’t know what he wants! Maybe we don’t have to have everything for the next twenty years figured out, either! We aren’t discussing where I’m going to spend Christmas, or whether I go there for my summer holiday! It’s one email! And why does what he wants decide what happens anyway?’

  I took a deep breath. Tried not to clutch at my hair. Christmas! ‘I would feel much better once I’ve spoken to him first about his intentions, what’s made him get in touch now. Then, depending on his reply, we’ll make a decision about the next step.’

  ‘You can’t do this!’ Joey was shouting now. It was the first time he’d yelled at me since his voice had broken, and given the subject matter, it rattled me how much he sounded like his father. ‘He’s my dad. You have no right to stop me contacting him! I’m not a little kid.’

  ‘I’m not going to.’ I tried to keep calm but had to raise my voice to be heard above his yelling. ‘I just want to wait a bit, that’s all.’

  ‘Well, screw what you want!’ he threw back at me. ‘This isn’t about you for once.’

  ‘Joey, I know that.’ I stood up, reaching out to take his arm, but he jerked it away, face twisted with fury.

  ‘You’re jealous. Just like with Cee-Cee. You want me all to yourself because you have no one else. However bad my dad is, I bet he’s not a screwed-up, selfish bitch.’

  While I stood there, reeling as if my own son had punched me in the face, which honestly would have been preferable, Joey grabbed his rucksack and stormed out of the house into the frosted sunshine, where he knew his screwed-up mother couldn’t follow him.

  Joey hadn’t come home by dusk. The clocks had moved back an hour that morning, and it was dark enough by five-thirty for me to stop pacing up and down the living room, shrug on my trainers and head out.

  The leisure centre was open for a public swim, and it was easy to spot the extra-fast blur of boy streaking through the water on the far side. I leaned my forehead against the glass in weak relief. Perhaps I knew my son better than Cee-Cee thought. Or, at least, I knew the one place I’d have headed at thirteen under similar circumstances. Any circumstances.

  I also knew me finding the guts and gumption to wrestle my way inside and interrupt him wouldn’t help. I found a bench to huddle on, pulled the old woolly hat I’d dug out from the back of my chest of drawers down further over my forehead and prepared to sit it out. The pool closed at seven, so I knew I wouldn’t freeze to death.

  The cars dotted around the car park gradually disappeared as a group of older men carrying squash rackets, then gym users and most of the swimmers trickled out. One car stayed in the far corner. The shadow behind the wheel was clearly waiting for someone. Probably their kids using the pool, or maybe a staff member. From the lights clicking off around the building, it appeared the centre was shutting down for the night.

  Seven came and went. A family of three children and their dad left on foot, hair dripping. Seven-thirty. Hands and feet numb with cold, I prowled up and down. The car was still here, so someone else mustn’t have left yet. I wondered again about trying to go inside. Changed my mind. Changed it back again. And then, an agonising length of time later, Joey appeared at the main entrance, together with a young guy wearing the centre uniform. I shrank back into the shadows while the guy locked up, unsure what to do next but sure that it didn’t include approaching Joey while he was with someone else.

  Heart thumping, I waited while the staff member wheeled a bike out of the communal rack and cycled off. Joey adjusted his rucksack and turned to where I had so cleverly concealed myself beside a metal tool shed.

  ‘Are you walking back?’ he asked, voice subdued.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Sorry I called you a bitch.’ Not screwed-up, or selfish.

  ‘Thank you. I’m sorry I’ve handled everything so badly. I’m sorry that I allowed my issues to make me act selfishly.’

  He nodded, once, in acknowledgement, and turned for home, hands in his pockets, eyes straight ahead, mouth set.

  I
felt so angry with Sean Mansfield I could have swum to America and strangled him.

  Most of all, of course, I just felt angry at myself.

  And with all that anger, it was only the next day, when we got another text alert about the creepy black car creeping about near school that I remembered the car at the leisure centre car park. Waiting for, it turned out, nobody.

  I shook off a prickle of unease. There were a dozen, perfectly plausible explanations for someone to be sat in the dark in a village leisure centre car park for over an hour. Like, maybe a man was waiting for his secret lover. Or had been kicked out of the house when his wife discovered the secret lover, and he didn’t know where else to go. Maybe he had a nasty wife and a gang of uncontrollable children and he pretended to go swimming every week even though he couldn’t actually swim, just to get a couple of hours’ peace and quiet, finding sitting alone in a cold car park preferable to being in his own house.

  Maybe.

  Maybe I would start meeting Joey from training more often.

  21

  Stop Being a Loser Programme

  Day Fifty-Eight

  I had never been so aware of my feet as during these past few weeks. So many things I had forgotten, tiny things, everyday nothings to the millions of people who open their front door, stride out and go somewhere without thinking twice about it every single day.

  Shoes, for starters. I hadn’t worn anything sturdier than slipper socks for two years until that first evening under the stars. The flip-flops, trainers and work pumps felt like long-lost friends as I dusted them off, tested them out, tried to get used to them again.