Girl on the Run Page 9

  ‘Go at your own pace,’ says the sales assistant.

  I resist the temptation to inform him that my own pace would be not moving at all.

  He leans in, scrutinising the screen as my feet prepare to make their cinematic debut. I decide to go slowly, so I don’t risk breaking a sweat and showing myself up. The numbers on the treadmill creep up until they reach 7.2 kilometres an hour.

  I know this isn’t fast, but it’s enough for me. If they’d only stuck to this level at the running club I’d have been fine. For at least the first ten minutes. I’m happily jogging along, when – out of the corner of my eye – I realise I have an audience. I turn and glare at four kids, aged between about seven and eleven, standing there like the von Trapp family about to launch into song.

  ‘She’s not very fast, is she?’ one boy says to Jess’s son Jamie, who clearly wishes he didn’t know me. ‘My mum did that last week and she went at twelve kilometres an hour.’

  I bristle and tell myself to ignore him. Then I change my mind. I press the buttons in front of me until they reach an exhilarating 13 kilometres an hour, determined to make Jamie proud.

  It feels comfortable for approximately half a second. After that, despite my arms and legs pumping, my heart and lungs working at full hilt, it feels something a long way from comfortable.

  I realise my absolute necessity to stop within seconds, but I’m in such a heightened state of physical exertion and have slipped back so far on the treadmill that I can’t even reach the red emergency button.

  I decide to focus on the mirror ahead to try and move close enough. But the image I’m confronted by – an asthmatic, red-faced hippopotamus-woman fleeing a tidal wave – is so distressing that my determination evaporates into a cloud of desperation.

  Then the sweat on my forehead feels suddenly ice-cold, and a wave of blackness creeps over my vision.

  ‘What happened?’ I ask as it registers that I’m lying down, my head throbbing as my eyes battle against the glare of bright lights.

  ‘Abby! Oh my God, you’re conscious.’

  I recognise Jess’s voice immediately and realise where I am. In hospital.

  ‘Jess,’ I manage. ‘Oh my dear Jess.’ Tears well in my eyes as my heart starts hammering.

  ‘You’re going to be okay,’ she replies, clutching my hand, and I get a flashback to a film I watched last year on the True Movies channel in which a woman awoke from a coma she’d been in for two years with her best friend at her side.

  I close my eyes again briefly and wiggle the fingers of my right hand. I can tell that it’s been a while since I’ve used them. My muscles feel stiff and unused, as if there are cobwebs inside me that are suddenly being brushed away, allowing me to live again.

  ‘How long have I been like this?’ I murmur. ‘Unconscious, I mean?’ I feel sure I’ve lost days, weeks even.

  ‘About four seconds,’ Jess replies as she grabs my hand and hoists me up. ‘You got to point three of a mile and keeled over. You must be dehydrated. Where did you go last night?’

  I sit up and register the surroundings of the running shop. My bum hurts. ‘Oww,’ I say, reaching down the back of my jeans.

  ‘You were lucky you landed there,’ says Jess.

  ‘I’m serious, it hurts,’ I insist.

  Then I realise that the von Trapps are still hovering.

  ‘Yes?’ I hiss. ‘Can I help you?’

  The nine-year-old ignores me and turns to his elder brother, who’s wandered over to find his mum. ‘She’s not dead, after all,’ he announces, sounding mightily disappointed.

  Chapter 18

  August is when I get fit.

  Actually, that’s not strictly true. August is when I get to a level of fitness that teeters on something comparable with that of an average twenty-eight-year-old. Only then will I feel ready to tackle the slow group at the running club.

  In many ways, it’s an unexciting month. At work, I win a new client – a recession-busting property firm constructing swish apartments in the docks – and successfully chase up half a dozen invoices, satisfying Egor and giving our cashflow a well-needed boost. The team are nicely, but not ridiculously, busy and Heidi seems to cope by putting the issue of her health completely out of her head. Which somehow dictates the way the rest of us start acting, because soon it’s as if her announcement about the multiple sclerosis never happened.

  She and Priya have also come up with a fundraising idea: to organise a charity ball. Which is undoubtedly a brilliant idea because it will raise a ton of money and is keeping Heidi’s spirits up, but does confirm one rather scary fact: I’m going to have to go through with this half-marathon.

  I still spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about Doctor Dishy and dreaming about the next time I’ll see him. This obsession is fuelled by regular updates about him from Jess, ones that she considers mundane but which brighten my life no end.

  In the second week of August, I get an email from Tom that makes me feel slightly warmer towards him than I did after posting him a cheque for a thousand quid.

  Dear Abby

  First, and belatedly, thanks for the cheque. I haven’t heard from Joan for nearly two weeks, which I can only take as a sign that she’s left to pursue her life of grandmotherly dotage. So it’s a happy ending all round because my bike is running like a dream (not that you’ll approve of that).

  I also wanted to drop you a line with a contact for that accountancy company which is looking for a web-design firm. They’re called Gellings, based in Victoria Street, and you need to speak to Ian Bond. He’s expecting a call.

  Best wishes,

  Tom

  I phone Ian Bond immediately, but even I can’t imagine quite how quickly it will pay dividends. I make an appointment to see him at the end of the week, and am with him for less than twenty minutes before he agrees to put us on a trial contract. I email Tom straight away.

  Dear Tom

  River Web Design has won a trial with Gellings, so sincere thanks for the recommendation. If we end up winning it permanently, it’d almost make the fact that you carelessly wheeled your motorbike into the path of my vehicle worth it. ;)

  Thanks again,

  Abby

  This minor triumph, however, fails to take my mind off what’s proving to be one of the most difficult periods in my life. I question daily – no, hourly – why I ever agreed to this running lark. I mean, me. Of all people.

  It’s been so long since I dieted that I’d genuinely forgotten how dull and unyielding the whole thing is. I start off on the Fastslim milkshake diet, but find myself drinking both shakes – meant for breakfast and lunch – before 10 a.m., eating my two ‘healthy snacks’ at 10.30 a.m., then scavenging from other people’s lunches for the rest of the day.

  Then I read an article in Grazia about a new dieting technique that involves photographing all food before you eat it. The idea is that it makes you more conscious of what you’re consuming and therefore more in control.

  It’s going swimmingly until day two when I have a lunch meeting with Bob McHarrie, the chief executive of a marketing company based in Manchester. They’re technically competition, but we’ve remained friendly since I set up and they’ve even pushed work my way when they’ve been short on capacity. Bob was – I thought – fully ensconced in conversation with the waiter when I subtly whipped out my Canon and took a quick snap.

  I’d have got away with it if the flash hadn’t gone off.

  Instead, Bob and the waiter whipped round their heads in shock, leaving me bumbling some crap about the camera belonging to my grandmother (who is dead) and the flash going off because I was trying to change the batteries. Needless to say, it didn’t wash.

  We continued with the lunch, but Bob spent the whole time looking at me through narrowed eyes as if I was a shifty double-agent trying to get inside information on his company by taking pictures of . . . something – he clearly couldn’t work out what. I didn’t feel able to say I was only after phot
ographic evidence of my Caesar salad.

  I am now a member of my local Diet Busters group. It is a fascinating experience. The leader, Bernie, is a short and – to be brutally honest – not particularly slim woman in her early fifties. She dresses in floral frocks and pastel cardigans and at first glance appeared as conservative as they come – until I noticed a small tattoo of a parrot on her ankle that I haven’t been able to take my eyes off since.

  The other notable thing about Bernie is her rare and remarkable talent for talking.

  Bernie can take a subject you’d think it impossible to discuss for more than thirty seconds and stretch it out over an entire half-hour class. Take last week’s topic: pasta.

  Bernie took no less than thirty minutes to demonstrate, essentially, that you get more pieces of dried spaghetti in fifty grams than you do if you opt for fusilli.

  She used flip-charts, Venn diagrams and a frankly astonishing number of props. She had the group in thrall as she teased us with what ten grams of spaghetti looked like on the scale . . . then twenty-five . . . then – at last! – fifty! Twenty minutes in, I thought she must have exhausted the issue, until – genius – she announced we’d do a role play.

  I can’t decide whether this makes Bernie the greatest public speaker since Martin Luther King or the dullest woman I’ve ever come across.

  Still, it’s finally working. I have started to lose weight. Only a few pounds, admittedly. But it turns out that all the booze, fat and sugar I was throwing down my neck really wasn’t doing me any good, and eating more vegetables, and less crap, is having an effect.

  The exercise is more of a mixed bag.

  After my experience on the treadmill, I decide to vary my regime before I get onto hardcore running. So, at Bernie’s suggestion, I took up Hula Hooping, foolishly convinced by her claim that she lost five pounds in one week by doing it while she was ironing. The only way this could possibly be true is if she was responsible for the laundry of a 500-room hotel or if she had the agility of a trapeze artist.

  According to Bernie’s Diet Busters Exercise Workbook, Hula Hooping is the ideal exercise because it develops balance, enhances flexibility and sculpts the thighs, buttocks and arms – all of which sounded good to me.

  Add to that the fact that it burns 306 calories an hour, by the time I sent off for my mail order Hula Hoop and watched excitedly as the postman wheeled it out of his van and down my path, I was completely sold on the idea.

  Of course, there is a catch to this loss of 306 calories per hour: to achieve that, you’d have to do it for an hour. I can’t manage it for five seconds – which by my maths means that I burn less than half a calorie per go.

  Having decided Hula Hooping wasn’t for me, I took up swimming instead. I’ll be honest, I’ve never been a fan.

  You know on holiday, most kids jump off diving boards, pick items off the bottom of the pool and bomb into the water with nothing but joy in their hearts? I was never like that. Even when I was twelve, my breast-stroke was in the style of an old lady, my head held high like an anally-retentive poodle.

  This wasn’t to keep my hair dry, which I know is the issue for the over-fifties. It was to keep my mouth away from the water. I was, and still am, above averagely squeamish about public swimming pools and their grim debris. As I paddled my way to the deep end trying to suppress my distaste, I could never get over the fact that I was essentially swimming in a cauldron of scabby Band-Aids and nine-year-olds’ wee.

  Anyway, I’m not ruling out other forms of exercise and remain open to suggestions – even Bernie’s – but I’ve gone back to the running. That, after all, is what I’m aiming for: to complete a half-marathon, though when and where has yet to be decided.

  It hasn’t been all bad. In fact, I’m starting to enjoy the admittedly very short and very slow run that I take every morning.

  As my return to the club looms, however, I start to get an uneasy feeling. I even briefly consider backing out, when an email arrives in my inbox the weekend before the big day.

  Abby,

  Jess tells me you’re returning to the running club on Monday. Well done! Please be secure in the knowledge that I’ll be there, sick bags at the ready.

  Tom

  Gritting my teeth, I compose a response.

  Tom,

  Thanks for that vote of confidence. I can assure you that no sick bags are required. This time I’ll be with the slow group, which I’m hoping even someone with my level of athletic prowess can manage.

  Abby

  I press Send and bite my thumbnail. That’s it, Abby. An open declaration of intent. There’s no backing out now.

  Chapter 19

  I had mixed feelings the first time I went to the running club. Now, on the day of my return, they are distinctly less ambiguous.

  No longer are my respective levels of dread and excitement the same; now one accounts for 90 per cent of my mental state, the other a measly ten. I’ll leave you to guess which one’s which.

  After a month of jogging round the block every other morning, I am nothing like the paragon of sportiness I’d hoped and feel ill-equipped to face both the club and Doctor Dishy, who has dominated my thoughts for every milli-second of the day.

  Yet not going through with this isn’t an option – a resolution reinforced every time I think of Heidi’s uncertain future, and the thousands of people like her.

  ‘Are you sure you’re up for this half-marathon, Abby?’ she asks me as we walk to a meeting on the other side of the city centre at lunchtime.

  ‘Absolutely certain,’ I tell her. ‘Seriously, there is not a shadow of doubt in my mind about it. Most of the time.’

  She laughs, then pauses, clearly thinking about her next words. ‘Well, all I can say is, I’m really touched. I think you’re completely mad, of course – but I’m still touched.’

  I smile. ‘Thank you.’

  That evening, as I drive to the sports centre, it strikes me that it’s not only the charity element and Heidi that are spurring me on. I’ve ignited in myself a desire to prove that I’m not a complete dead loss: that, while I’ll never be a natural, I too can be healthy and motivated if I put my mind to it.

  ‘Abby. What a surprise!’ Oliver’s shy smile is as devastatingly cute as I remembered – his dimples so kissable that ‘Doctor Dishy’ suddenly seems a very low-key nickname for him. ‘An extremely pleasant one, might I add.’

  His boldness clearly takes an effort; it’s obvious that he’s not used to saying something that even approaches flirtatiousness. The fact that he’s trying – with me – has an immediate effect.

  ‘Thanks, Oliver,’ I reply, blushing effusively. ‘I’m not much of a sportswoman but . . .’ I pause, remembering my determination not to convey the image of some hapless loafer. ‘Hopefully I’ll get better.’

  ‘That’s the spirit,’ he says, making eye-contact as my heart joyrides in my chest.

  We head outside to warm up for tonight’s speed session. ‘I hope you’re all right with this,’ Jess says.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well,’ she shrugs, ‘some people don’t like speed sessions. Even I don’t particularly like speed sessions.’

  ‘Oh, marvellous. I’m starting off on a session even Wonder Woman can’t cope with.’

  ‘I never said I couldn’t cope. They’re just not my favourite type of session. But you’ll be fine. Just remember to breathe.’

  I throw her a look. ‘I wasn’t intending to forget that.’

  Jess dutifully sticks with me as the warm-up begins. I spot Tom with the advanced group and he turns and waves. I’m about to wave back, when someone appears at my side.

  ‘Oh. You changed your mind.’ Geraldine is smiling as she jogs on the spot with the grace of a ballet dancer. If I’d thought Jess looked good in Lycra, that’s nothing compared with this woman. She’s a tiny goddess in running shorts, her impossibly slim thighs so bronzed they could’ve been polished with Mr Sheen.

  ‘I thought you were d
etermined you weren’t going to come back,’ she adds.

  ‘I was,’ I admit.

  Then she beams. ‘Well, I’m thrilled you’ve changed your mind. Take it easy though, won’t you?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ I reply.

  ‘You’ll be great,’ she continues, touching my arm. ‘Only, don’t tell anyone, but I could barely get through my first session. Took me a week to recover from it.’

  This is about as convincing as Jayne Torvill claiming she spent the week before the 1984 Olympics on her bum, but I’m grateful anyway.

  ‘By the way, Tom told me you won a contract with Gellings. Congratulations. It must be a real challenge, running your own business.’

  I’m surprised that she knows this; I hadn’t realised I was significant enough in Tom’s life for him to even mention me.

  ‘It is, but I love it,’ I tell her. ‘What do you do?’

  ‘I’m a civil engineer,’ she says breezily.

  ‘Wow.’

  She smiles. ‘Yeah, it was lovely to be involved in some of the big regeneration schemes in the city. It’s been an exciting time so I’m very glad to have been a part of it. I’ll be honest though: I’m ready for a new challenge.’

  ‘Oh?’

  She pretends to look round and check no one’s listening. ‘Babies!’ she whispers, and only then does it strike me that she looks a few years older than me, maybe thirty-two or thirty-three. ‘Don’t tell Tom I’ve said that, though. He gets a bit cringey.’

  ‘Of course.’ I smile awkwardly.

  ‘It’s not like we’re trying or anything,’ she continues. ‘There’s a bit of Tom that still doesn’t feel ready for the whole marriage and kids thing. Yet. He’ll come round to the idea though. We’ve been together for three years and he’s amazing with my nephews.’

  I’m pondering what impossibly gorgeous children she and Tom would have as Jess grabs my arm and leads me to the slow group.