by Daisy Tate
‘Blimey, Kath. There’s someone out there who doesn’t want you to have a good time. We’re slathering on our factor fifty down here, aren’t we, girls?’
Kath glanced at the repositioned monitor and saw a group of female athletes towering behind Kev, all geared up in their Commonwealth Games kit, volleyball nets beyond them and the ocean just beyond again. She pictured a shark roaring out of the surf and gobbling up her husband.
‘You know us Brits, Kev. We always love a challenge.’
‘You’re not jokin’.’ Kev flicked his thumb at the team of highly respected athletes. ‘The girls here have challenged me to a game later. I don’t fancy my chances.’ He beamed at the camera, gave it a knowing wink and, if she wasn’t mistaken, saw the tiniest twitch of panic flicker across his face.
A whisper of something she hadn’t felt for her husband threaded through her. Pity. Somewhere beneath that fame-hungry bon vivant was an incredibly insecure man so desperate to keep his place in the world, he’d belittle a woman, his wife, on the brink of doing a charity ride for her dead, ex-soldier, brother who’d cried out for them to help, only to receive a deposit in his bank account so that he’d take his sorrows elsewhere.
‘What do you want from your trip, Kev?’
He blinked at her. This wasn’t scripted and even she was surprised to hear the genuine interest in her voice.
‘Good tan, good fun, an arm-wrestling match with a lion.’ He answered with his usual Jack the lad panache. ‘Why? What do you want from your trip?’
‘Peace, I suppose.’
‘Well you won’t be getting that, Kath. Not with what the weather man has in store for you. I’m guessing sore knees are a more likely option. Let’s all of us cross our fingers that Kath makes it across the finish line intact, shall we?’
He held up his fingers and then made a face as if to say, she won’t make it, but … bless her for trying.
And just like that, she knew Kev’s next raft of veiled insults would bounce off her like water on Gore-tex. He was acting like a right plonker. Oblivious to the fact that her LifeTime campaign had unearthed a more caring viewership. Fans who, whilst still keen to watch Kath and Kev make complete idiots out of themselves, also had sorrow and fear and pain in their lives and felt comfort in the knowledge that ‘even the likes of Kath and Kev’ had to search for silver linings as they ugly cried their way through life’s challenges.
Her producer gave her a wrap-it-up twirl of the finger.
‘Well you enjoy your beach blanket, Kev. Just a quick note to any of our viewers who live along the route today … the graphic should be popping up – yes – there it is on your screens. Don’t be shy about giving us a wave of support as we ride past or even join us for a mile or fifty-three. The number, if you’d like to donate is on the bottom of the screen and on our website …’ She turned to the group and cupped a hand to her mouth. ‘Are you ready to get on yer bikes for the trip of a LifeTime?’
A roar of cheers and whoops erupted around her as not only the riders, but a large crowd she hadn’t noticed gathering joined in, waving them off as she mounted her bicycle, rode about ten metres down the road only to discover that the first part of the Coast to Coast path entailed dismounting and walking for three hundred metres.
This, she thought as a dawning recognition rose within her, must’ve been what it felt like for her brother each and every morning. Elation that he’d made it another day, despair that it would never be easy.
Chapter Forty-Five
‘And so it begins, O Happy Instagrammers. The Epic Journey of Discovery. I won’t lie. I’m feeling like an oversized Frodo … ready to set off where no Big Boned Goth Girl has gone before … the Cumbrian Coastline. In shorts. On a bike. In the rain. Not feeling remotely miserable at all.’
(Camera pans to Sue who is chatting earnestly with Flo and a beardy guy who, by the looks of things, was totally dominating the conversation.)
‘These are my trusty, yet unlikely, companions, ready to take on the challenges of the Epic Journey that will end in … drumroll please … NEWCASTLE UNIVERSITY where I will discover the answer to life, the universe and everything … or, at the very least, the lure of the jello shot.’ (Off-camera fake crowd noises.) ‘Then off to Tynemouth where the journey actually ends, but what sort of epic journey would it be without the inevitable, illuminating side journey?’
Camera pans to Kath Fuller beckoning everyone into formation then back to an EXTREME CLOSE-UP.
‘There’s our chirpy leader. And now … See this? It’s my happy face. See this? It’s my scared-as-shit face. See this? It’s my too-late-to-back-out-now face. Hasta la vista, world. We’re off.’
The sooner Flo got some wi-fi the better. She wanted to FaceTime Captain George. See how he was getting on. And, she tersely reminded herself, Stu as well. She’d left him quite a detailed list of George’s after care, but couldn’t shake the niggling feeling that he’d think pre-warming George’s favourite blanket before bedrime wasn’t necessary. He’d not seen the look in George’s eyes the first time she’d done it. Pure love, was what it had been. Disbelief, in fact, that he should have someone in his life who knew him so very well.
She glanced at her odometer (irksomely configured in metric despite Stu knowing full well she still worked in imperial but she’d been so guilt ridden about him having to nurse poor Captain George in her absence, she’d not insisted he change it as she normally would have done).
Humph. Not quite so far along as she’d hoped two hours of pedalling would have advanced her.
Flo tried to speed up but the gears appeared to be working against her. All twenty-seven of the ridiculous things. Complete excess, when the seven on her own bike had been perfectly fine. These were clacking far more dramatically than hers did. Plus the handlebars were all wrong. And there was no basket.
Clacketyclacketyclack.
She shifted gears again, looked up and saw that Raven, who’d just been beside her, was already halfway up the slope, peddling away as if she had some sort of in-built rocket launcher powering her up the hill. That, or one too many coffees at breakfast.
She’d learn.
Flo began to hum ‘Bicycle Race’ by Queen then stopped as the slope most definitely turned into a hill.
Sue picked up the rest of the song, fat-bottomed lyrics and all, for her.
‘Great song, isn’t it?’ Flo said, happy for the distraction from some rather clunky internal gear changes. This was, most assuredly, no Bicycle Race. Bicycle slog more like. Her knees, for some reason, weren’t playing ball with the rest of her. Sympathy, no doubt, for Captain George and his poor, snapped cruciate ligament.
‘Mmm …’ Sue crinkled her nose. ‘Who was it by again?’
‘Queen, darling.’ Queen! The anthem makers of Flo’s twenties and thirties. She’d absolutely loved them. The charged lyrics. The way they spoke directly to her, championing those who chose to march to the beat of a different drummer. Oh how she’d wept when she’d heard Freddy Mercury had died. So much so, Stu had (fleetingly) been convinced they’d been on friendly terms.
‘Queen, yes, that’s right.’ Sue nodded beneath her helmet, her expression turning wistful. ‘Gaz took me for my birthday.’
‘To see Queen?’ Impossible. She’d have been about nine.
‘The movie. Bohemian Rhapsody? With the actor from …’ she hmmed a moment and then, ‘I can’t remember. One of those shows Gary just loves.’
‘Film?’ Flo asked instead of commenting on the tense Sue had used about her husband.
‘It was ever so good. It was a biography really, about the singer … what was his—
‘Freddy Mercury.’
‘Yes, that’s right.’
Of course it was. Flo had been what they now call a super fan. Not obsessive or stalky or anything, but when Queen went on a world tour, Flo had never been more insistent about having a say in her roster. Twelve times, she saw them. Six in Europe, five in the US and one bitterly cold day in To
ronto. But she’d been there, just like the postman. Come rain or shine. Whipping out her lighter at a moment’s notice. Singing and swaying along with the rest of the crowd. It was at a Queen concert – December 1st, Madison Square Gardens – when she’d finally decided she could, and would, marry Stu. The crowd was at fever pitch when, with characteristic showmanship, Freddy had hushed them all into a silence so taut all twenty thousand fans must’ve been holding their breath. He sat down at his piano, waited, then began to sing: the opening words of ‘Love of My Life.’
Stu, whom she had dumped an hour earlier when he’d refused to wave sparklers about on the grounds of health and safety, had somehow found her again and, with his characteristic understatement, slipped his hand into hers, along with a different type of sparkler. The type that came in a little eggshell-blue box.
She’d said yes instantly, and it was right there, amongst the thousands of drunk and stoned and tripping Queen fans, that they shared their first public kiss. It had even involved tongues and, if memory served, Stu’s hand up a garish satin top she’d favoured at the time. The next morning was the only time Stu had ever been late for crew call. Five minutes, but still … she’d loved wielding that power over him, even if had only been the once.
Behind her she heard voices. She took a glance back, a sharp pain lancing between her thigh and buttock as she did. Crumbs. She’d forgotten it. Her bouncy, luxurious gel seat cover. She could picture it perfectly, sitting on her dressing table so she wouldn’t forget – forgotten because of a small whimper she thought she’d heard when Stu was shifting Captain George from the kitchen to his favourite outpost, the conservatory sofa. To prevent saddle soreness, Stu had said when he’d given the seat to her with that sensible look of his. Then he’d handed her a small pot of Happy Bottom Bum Butter. A purchase, no doubt, that had caused his bank manager some alarm. She shifted back into place with a grimace. It’d be fine. She could put up with anything for four days. Particularly now that she’d finally succumbed to the lure of padded shorts. Shorts, Stu had assured her, specifically designed for longer rides. Hopefully an Unhappy Bottom wouldn’t be a problem. She perked an ear at the sound of voices. ‘Competitive oldies on your five o’clock,’ she stage whispered to Sue.
Sue wobbled as she looked over her shoulder, just as the two other ‘silver surfers’ of the group rode up alongside them.
Whilst Flo considered herself an open-minded friendly sort, even to the ‘Trevors’ of the world, these were the type of people who, particularly in the last few years of flying, irked her the most. The lean, wiry type of senior traveller Flo often saw eating homemade granola bars in the middle rows of economy (bliss! After all of that by choice roughing it they’d endured out on Macchu Picchu or the bus down from Everest or wherever it was people who didn’t worry about their knees went). Their skin was always leathery, but with the healthy glow of someone who, without too much encouragement, would sign up for a triathlon ‘just to see how they got on.’ She and a couple of the other more seasoned flight attendants had taken to calling them ‘meerkats’, as they were forever hunting about for the whereabouts of the cabin crew. This was where they differed from the Trevors. They didn’t want to give information. They wanted to receive it. In high volume. Tailwind speeds. Pronunciation guide for near-extinct tribal peoples. Best kept teppanyaki stand hidden in Tokyo’s cavernous subway system. Insatiable, they were. If there was any reading material to back up whatever it was you’d just told them, so much the better. They were exhausting. The lot of them.
Flo tensed as the pair of them rode up alongside her and Sue, their expressions alight with interest as they pointed out flowers on the bankside, cumulonimbus clouds scudding along the horizon (now that the rain had moved East) and the call of a female blackbird. They looked as though they were on holiday rather than an arduous cycle ride raising money for a mental health charity. Didn’t look as though they had a care in the world.
‘Blustery today,’ said one as if they’d all just won the lottery.
‘Interesting how strong the wind is,’ said the other, ‘Particularly if you take into account what Trevor said, about the Helm Wind.’
Sue, bless her, made the mistake of asking, ‘what’s a helm wind?’
The meerkats launched into an astonished retelling of Trevor’s ‘did you know’ all of which, Flo was gratified to note, slowed them down as they reached the hill’s ascent so that she could keep up. For some reason, having to get off of her bike and push in front of these two would’ve been an ego blow she wasn’t ready for. Not on Day One, anyway.
‘It’s Flo, isn’t it?’ asked Meerkat Two.
Like a few of the other riders – not all – Sue, Raven and Flo had gained a bit of notoriety from their bit on the telly. She tapped her helmet and said, ‘I’m surprised you recognised me with this on.’
‘Oh, no. It wasn’t that, it was more …’ Meerkat Two put her fingerless gloved hand to her dried apple face and laughed, ‘You look a bit different in real life is all.’
Old, thought Flo, grimly. She was going to say old.
‘Well! Lovely to meet you. See you at the first biscuit stop.’
Meerkat One, mercifully, took that as her cue to push on ahead to see if she and Meerkat Two couldn’t buy a little time to bird watch when the route hit the beach again.
Flo, aching from trying to keep up with the lot of them, changed gear.
A stubbly chinned thirty-something man rode up alongside Sue just as the narrow country lane opened, rather miraculously, straight out onto the seafront. He was wearing the ‘full kit and caboodle’ as Flo liked to say. He had on the yellow shirt, of course, but underneath it was some sort of ‘second skin’ type top that seemed quite popular amongst the impressively large turn out of middle-aged men. Cycling shorts, clip-on shoes, reflective, polarised glasses, helmet complete with blinking light on the back and his water bottle was filled with a coloured energy drink. ‘Nice day for it,’ said the man.
Sue heaved a sigh of relief. At last. Someone to talk with. She’d lost Flo somewhere along the way. A ‘comfort stop’ that Flo hadn’t wanted her to stick around for. She hadn’t spotted Raven for a while either. Early on in the ride, it became apparent that Raven’s riding pattern was … erratic. Powering up a hill one moment, stopping to talk to her phone the next, coasting down a hill sticking her feet out and squealing wheeeeee! the next. Not at all the girl who had quietly and diligently helped Sue sort through hundreds of invoices, knocked on dozens of doors and, at the end of each evening, made hot chocolate for the pair of them before slipping off for ‘an early night and a read.’ It was like meeting an entirely different person. The mirror image, she supposed, of discovering her cheery, contented husband was actually spiraling ever downwards into the depths of despair.
Raven, it appeared, had a fun side.
Being an up and coming Instagram star ‘on her terms and her terms only’ had lit something up in her. She’d never have painted flames onto her eyes before now. It was as if she’d found some spark of joy either from the ride or Instagram or that quirky lad Dylan that she’d not managed to find living with a forty-two-year-old, recently widowed, 111 call handler who didn’t quite know what to do with herself beyond tidying their perfectly clean house and watching re-runs of Bake Off. She certainly seemed to have more on her mind than ‘just pedalling.’ A remit Sue had taken to heart until she realised ‘just pedalling’ left her with quite the surplus of thinking time.
‘We’re lucky the rain cleared up,’ said Sue, happy to escape the rabbit hole of too much personal reflection.
The man laughed, Sue’s reflection catching in the polarised lenses of his glasses. ‘It’ll be back soon enough.’
‘Oh?’
‘I’m from Newcastle, like Kath,’ he said as an explanation for his authority on the matter. ‘The weather goes through all four seasons at least once an hour here Ooop North.’
‘Good thing I hadn’t planned on coming back with a tan,’ Sue quipp
ed from an arsenal of chit chat she didn’t realise she had.
‘Charlie,’ he said with a little wave.
‘Sue,’ she said, swerving to avoid a puddle.
‘First charity ride?’
‘Does it show?’
‘No,’ he said, amiably. ‘Not in the least. This is my third,’ he volunteered.
‘Oh?’ That seemed … committed.
‘What made you choose this particular ride?’ Charlie asked, pulling his reflective sunglasses off to reveal a pair of warm brown eyes.
‘Oh …’ Sue had really rather hoped everyone had seen her piece on the show and that she’d never have to talk about it again. Kath had been the one to actually explain about Gary and his … decision. She’d not had to say a word except, of course, that she was really pleased to be going on the ride and to be part of such a good cause.
‘I’m on the ride because of my mum,’ Charlie volunteered.
‘Oh, I’m – sorry?’ It was difficult to know how to respond to a statement like that.
‘Not to worry. Chemical imbalances are what they are, but … she’s getting help now, that’s the main thing. For her bipolar,’ Charlie explained when Sue threw him a questioning look.
‘Gosh,’ said Sue. ‘That’s sounds complicated.’
Charlie nodded. ‘Can be. Especially when she stops taking her meds. There’re only so many times you can explain away picking up your mum from the police station for an ASBO.’ He laughed as if he’d just told Sue his mother was regularly being caught talking too loudly at the library. ‘But! Single working mum, good person at heart – these things happen. It’s my turn to look after her. Anyway, she seems to have resigned herself to the fact that if she wants to participate in so-called normal life, she’s going to have to take her meds.’
Sue nodded, feeling an unexpected prickling of tears. Maybe if Gaz had said something, to his doctor even, they might’ve given him happy pills to get through his rough patch.
‘But enough of my hard luck story,’ Charlie waved it away.