by Beth Moran
‘Not everybody here is supportive. And I don’t trust most of them.’ Right now, I didn’t feel like I trusted Nathan much, either, and that showed in my voice’s bitter crack. ‘I’m not going to sit here while they ogle me like the post-run entertainment.’
Nathan was stern. ‘This group is not like that, and you know it. Who’s been ogling Selena and Audrey, or gossiping about Bronwyn’s hitman boyfriend? This is your team. We’re sitting here with you, and watching the sunrise. Whether you like it or not, we’re in this together.’
‘Well, for the record, I don’t like it.’ That wasn’t quite true. I got the team part, I had lived by those rules, once. I knew that being part of something – a team, a tribe, a community, a family – was everything. And expanding my team beyond my son and my old coach in the past few weeks had changed my life beyond recognition. What I didn’t like was how the sky just kept on getting paler, causing my heart to thump increasingly erratically, and how I didn’t really know where I was, or if I was going to tumble into a full-blown panic attack. Being part of a team had been great when I was the strongest member. Letting everyone see that I was the weakest felt about as pleasant as stripping off naked in front of them all.
In the end, everyone stayed.
‘Larks forever!’ Mel chanted, until she noticed that I was crying, so instead she jiggled her chair right up close to mine and gave my shoulders a squeeze.
So, what else could I do but stay with them? I had ranted on at myself that it was time for several days now. I could either put up or shut up – or run home and hate myself even more than I had three months ago. Instead, I pressed myself into the back of the chair, one hand clenching a mug of tea, the other enclosed perfectly inside the loveliest, safest hand in the world. I focused on a tiny tractor chugging across a distant field, and I breathed in the crisp, clean air, and by some miracle, despite the fact that my internal organs felt on the brink of liquification, I kept on breathing out again.
‘A lark!’ Bronwyn whispered, as a lone bird began cheeping in the trees behind us.
‘Chiffchaff,’ Marjory said.
‘Well, there’s no need to be rude!’
‘No, that’s the name of the bird, it isn’t a—’
‘Shhhh!’ Dani interrupted. ‘Look.’
And there it was. The light had been getting brighter for a while now, as pinks and reds mingled with gold along the horizon. But now a slither of deep orange crested the brow of the hill. We watched, in silence, no one slurping their coffee or scraping their bowls any more, as the shadows fled and the glorious sun rose to meet us, streamers of light celebrating the arrival of the new dawn with a spectacle that outshone the greatest of human endeavours in every way.
A new day.
‘My God, it’s amazin’,’ Mel sighed, and it was a prayer not a blasphemy, as we all silently echoed our ‘Amen’. ‘Which reminds me,’ she whispered, ‘I’m on refreshments rota at chapel this morning. Best get home and jump in the shower, sort the kids out.’
The enchantment broken, the rest of the group started collecting up the plates and divvying out the leftovers, gradually drifting off in twos and threes down the trail.
‘How are you going to get these chairs back down?’ Dani asked, one of the last to leave. ‘And for that matter, how did you get them up here? Were you camped here all night?’
Nathan grinned. ‘I stored them in an old bird hide in the wood along with the food. Only took me three trips. Carried the flasks up first thing.’
Dani raised one eyebrow at me, and I knew full well what it meant: what a lot of effort, all to help you face the morning.
‘Do you want help carrying them back down?’
‘It’s fine, thanks.’
‘Right then, I’ll leave you to it.’ And with that, she blew me a kiss and disappeared into the wood.
I stayed in my chair while Nathan put everything back in the hide. Not because I was still annoyed at him, or feeling lazy, but because I couldn’t take my eyes off the view and was gulping in the grand, sweeping beauty stretching out below me like it was oxygen. There were copses of trees dotted amongst the brown winter fields. A flock of birds wheeled across the far end of the valley, their shadows chasing across the earth below. Next to a stream, a blip of yellow bobbed beside a black and white dog splashing through the sparkling water. A procession of cows swayed across a meadow, and as I watched, my heart slowed to their gentle cadence. The crisp air flowed deep into the far, neglected corners of my lungs, my stomach sighed and settled, and I couldn’t even cry, because my soul was soaring over that valley, carried on a gust of hope and untarnished happiness.
I was here. I had made it. And I had stayed.
Somewhere, during the past twenty years or so, I had forgotten the sheer beauty and the wonder of being alive, in a world teeming with life. I promised myself in that moment that I would do my utmost never to forget that again.
‘While I don’t want to intrude on the moment, if you end up frozen to the chair, it’s going to be a pain getting you back down the hill.’
I blinked, took a couple of seconds to come back to myself, and realised I was stiff with cold, my fingers grey claws. ‘What time is it?’ I sounded like a bad ventriloquist – my whole face was numb.
‘Just after nine-thirty,’ Nathan grinned.
‘Why didn’t you say something?’ I scrabbled off the chair, nearly ending up on my backside as my limbs struggled to get working again.
He shrugged. ‘This was the whole point of us being here.’
‘I’ve taken up half your morning. It must have totally messed up your plans.’
‘Nope.’ He folded the chair and swung it over his shoulder in one deft move, starting to walk towards the path back to the village.
‘Don’t pretend you don’t have a whole day of productive, meaningful activities scheduled.’
Nathan paused to allow me to catch up with him. ‘Oh, I do. But I allowed some flexibility in the schedule, given that I’ll be doing them with you.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘Did I forget to mention? Breakfast was only part one of the challenge.’
I was speechless as I kept walking, the brilliant after-effects of my hour in the sunshine haemorrhaging onto the muddy path behind me.
‘Don’t panic.’
‘Then tell me what the hell you’re talking about.’
He reached out and grabbed my hand, face serious, but those crinkles betraying his excitement. ‘A whole day, sunset to sunrise, out.’
‘Urr.’
‘Come on, you’re here now, might as well keep going for a few more hours. And once you’ve finished, you’ll be ready to conquer anything.’
I stopped, fighting the urge to bend over and retch into the bracken. ‘No, thank you.’
Nathan took my other hand, ducking his head to look me in the eye. ‘You can do this.’
‘You don’t know that.’
‘You didn’t think you could eat breakfast out here in broad daylight, and you smashed that.’
‘And that was really, really enough for one day. I know my limits, Nathan, I am freaking out right now. Just getting myself through the village, into my house and under my duvet is challenge enough. How the hell am I supposed to manage a whole day?’
‘One minute at a time.’
‘That sounds like a very long day,’ I virtually screeched at him. ‘Can I at least know what’s going to be happening?’
‘First, we need a shower.’
Well, my anxiety was somewhat bamboozled by that statement.
Nathan’s mouth fell open as blood flooded his cheeks and neck. He dropped my hands as if they were electric eels. ‘That came out wrong.’
I actually laughed. ‘I should hope so.’
‘Crap.’ He tugged at his hair in agitation. ‘I had planned on us getting… changed… at mine, but now it seems… inappropriate.’
‘If I was a football mate, or another personal trainer from the gym, would it be
appropriate?’
‘Yes. But I don’t let my clients even know my address.’
‘So, we’d better make a decision.’ What a bizarre conversation to be having on an ice-cold Sunday morning, the words echoing through the woods around us. ‘Am I your client, or a friend?’
Nathan hesitated, looking around as if the answer lay buried in the brambles or swinging from a branch. ‘What do you want to be?’ he asked, haltingly.
‘Right now? I really want a shower.’ And I really NEED to get inside a solid building. ‘Maybe we can temporarily suspend our client-coach relationship until we’ve left your house again. I’ll pretend I don’t know where you live and forget it ever happened.’
He frowned at the path, then up at the clear sky, before his non-crinkled eyes settled on me. ‘I suppose it’s no worse than spending the day together in pyjamas.’
We resumed walking.
‘You could always make some amendments to the rulebook, draft a new contract or whatever, for clients who also happen to be friends,’ I said, a few minutes later.
‘No point,’ Nathan replied, two steps behind me. ‘I’m not planning on this happening with anyone else. And any rules I come up with, you’ll just bend to suit you anyway.’
I looked over my shoulder, about to throw a witty, unbecoming retort back at him, but before I had a chance to think one up, my body, still mainly facing forwards, stepped out of the treeline onto the main road and simultaneously oofed into another person.
‘Watch it, you idiot!’
My brain decided that now would be a good time to succumb to the cold weather and freeze completely solid.
Ten minutes – an age, an epic expedition later, with numerous pep talks and pauses to steady my breathing and bone-crushing grips of Nathan’s hand later – I finally reached the sanctuary of what turned out to be a tiny cottage on the edge of the village. About as functional and staid as I would have predicted a Robo-Coach’s house to be, I collapsed onto the leather couch, and immediately sprang upright again, rubbing my arm.
‘Okay?’
‘You really need some cushions in here. What kind of person buys a sofa with metal arms?’ Focusing on Nathan’s house rather than the dissipating panic helped reassure my scrambled head that I was now safely indoors.
‘The kind who doesn’t slob out or pass out unless he’s in bed, at the intended time.’
‘Or watching cheesy Christmas films in the middle of the afternoon,’ I smirked. ‘Maybe you should get a cushion in case a friend comes round and wants to be able to sit comfortably.’
He ignored me, holding out something that looked suspiciously like Joey’s old sports bag. ‘A change of clothes, and… ahem… whatever-else-you-need-I’m-sorry-this-is-still-weird-for-me.’
I took the bag. Weird for him? This was so off my radar, I was in need of a search party. I steeled my shoulders, made a feeble attempt at wrestling whatever hormones were making my nerves thrum back into whichever gland they were gushing from, and reminded myself that we were client-coach-friends. ‘Is the bathroom upstairs?’
‘Um. Yes. Yes, at the end of the landing.’
And for reasons of personal pride and general dignity, the less said about me being naked in Nathan’s shower cubicle, the better.
The best day of my life was when I was twelve years old. I know it’s supposed to be the day my son was born, but after sixteen hours hoping and praying that my mum would turn up, being yelled at by Cee-Cee about focus and self-discipline, on top of the pain and effort required to push out a ten pound baby, by the time Joey arrived I had no energy left to feel much at all.
But at twelve, on the day of the Regional Championships, I hit the side of the Ponds Forge Olympic pool in Sheffield, turned to see my arch-rival, Georgie Bannister, a good three seconds behind me, and in that moment, dripping, exhausted, lungs raw, I knew I had what it took. The confidence and the drive that won me a gold medal took root that day, as my squad, a mixture of envy and pride, argued about who got to sit next to me on the bus home. My coach patted me on the shoulder (which is more affection than she offered me in labour). A blushing Benji Simons gave me his Snickers bar, and my parents gushed the whole evening about agents and sponsorship, my mother drafting a resignation letter for her joke of a job as an entertainment consultant.
It was a milestone of a day, as I left one era behind and stepped boldly into another. In my mind from then on, there was only before and after. When I was just Amelia, a girl who was mad on swimming and loved the Sugababes, and Amelia Piper, future world champion.
My day out from sunrise to sunset was something like that day.
First of all, Nathan took me to the Grace Chapel in Brooksby, where I’d been for the carol service. It was a different place in the daylight – light and warm both at the same time, full of colour and energy and smiles and children running about chasing each other with catapults (which apparently was a one-time thing, linked to their Sunday school class, and definitely not happening again after a muffin from Mel’s refreshment stall was catapulted into the face of an elderly gentleman with cataracts). I hummed along to songs I didn’t know and cringed while the minister spoke about the power of forgiveness, including forgiving yourself, and how mistakes from our past can hold us back from our future. I didn’t dare glance up at Nathan, who seemed to be sniffing more than is socially acceptable for someone who hasn’t even got a cold. While at first a room full of strangers made my bones quake, I soon spotted people I recognised from the carol service and my school-gate days. Joey’s friend, Ben, was there with his mum, Lisa, who came over to chat, and, to my surprise, Marjory was right in the thick of it. Even those I didn’t know smiled and said hello, most of them presuming, for an awkward, lovely minute or two, that Nathan and I were a couple – understandable, given that he was holding my hand when we walked in.
After that, we changed pace at a local farm shop. Nathan hustled me round the fruit, vegetables, and delicatessen counters, insisting I squeezed, sniffed or sampled the produce as my anxiety buzzed in the background, as though trapped behind a pane of glass. We then moved next door to the farm café, gamely trying to fit in a huge bowl of parsnip and apple soup on top of all the free samples.
‘Am I really witnessing Nathan Gallagher eating bread, made of actual wheat?’ I asked, spreading my own slice with freshly churned, organic butter, glimmering with salt crystals.
‘Am I really seeing Amelia Piper, out in a public place in daylight, enjoying herself?’ he replied, before ripping a huge hunk off with his teeth.
And if that wasn’t enough, he ordered us both pear crumble for dessert. While we ate, I distracted myself from my anxiety by talking, determined to ignore the taunts that a random stranger would recognise me by focusing on the person right here. I relayed the phone call with my parents, the wise words from the sermon that morning still resonating. And that naturally led on to other things, like what had happened with Sean, and the years after Joey was born, and before I had time to finish my coffee, Nathan had somehow found out everything about me.
‘So, what about your family? I hope your parents aren’t as crap as mine.’
He shrugged, fingers tapping on the side of his green tea (one step at a time, people!). ‘They’re decent enough. Work too much, aren’t exactly demonstrative when it comes to affection. My dad loves sport, when he finds the time, so we always had that in common. Used to go to Trent Bridge for the test matches together, or down to Leicester for the rugby.’
‘Used to?’
He took a sip of tea before answering. ‘When Gill got attacked, I sort of went into survival mode. Head down, spending every day taking care of her, ticking off my lists so I knew I wouldn’t mess up again. Then, once she ended it, I suddenly had all this time to think, and none of those thoughts were good. I didn’t know how to handle the guilt and the shame at failing at something so important. I would cry or lose my temper in the worst places. My nephew’s first birthday party, or a family barbeque. So when I
started staying away more, distancing myself, I think they were relieved. And then, as I built my business, I got busy. It’s easier, I suppose, to keep going as we are now.’
‘The easier route is rarely the best one. I should know. And so should a personal trainer and sports coach.’
He nodded. ‘Hearing about your parents makes putting in a bit of effort with mine seem not such a big deal.’
‘Your next challenge. Maybe you should invite them to the triathlon.’
‘Maybe I will.’
I took another sip of coffee. ‘Interesting how you dealt with your out-of-control emotions by compulsively controlling everything else.’
‘Being self-disciplined when it comes to making positive lifestyle choices has nothing to do with it.’
My BS detector rejected that statement.
‘Pastor Dylan of the Grace Chapel would suggest that if you haven’t done so yet, going back and taking a look at what caused those emotions is the only way to get free of them. He might suggest it’s time you forgave yourself.’
‘What happened back then is not relevant to how I choose to live now.’
‘So, what enabled you to get over it?’
‘I don’t know! I just moved on, moved past it. Gill’s happy with Chris. I barely think about it any more.’
‘Yet it shapes your whole life. Your work, your family relationships. Chasing strange women through the woods to browbeat them into joining your running club.’
‘A terrible thing happened, and I did something positive in response.’ He waved briskly at the waitress, ‘The bill, please.’
‘As long as you haven’t shut down all your healthy emotions, along with the scary ones, I guess that’s fine then.’
Exasperated, he chucked a few notes on the table and got up to leave.
‘And if you can still manage deep and meaningful relationships, with friends, family… people you’re attracted to, people you can’t control, without having a list of rules to ensure a manageable distance is maintained, then fantastic, no problemo.’
