by Shaw, O. C
“Don’t sit there, for God’s sake! People need to be able to get in and out of the changing room,” she asserts in a tone of voice that clearly says: “how can you be so stupid.” I’m still too stunned to respond, and by the time I collect myself enough to consider trying to get to my feet, let alone informing her she has just nearly knocked me out, she has already flounced past and out the door.
“Are you okay?” A pair of hands reach under my arms and pull me to my feet. For a moment my knees fold as I try to stand, and it is only the support of my helper which keeps me in place. Gradually I collect myself enough to turn and thank my rescuer. Of course it had to be, I think despairingly as I take in the face and body. It can’t just be any old person; it has to be the man I’ve been having dreams about since the last time I humiliated myself in front of him. I just stand there, looking at him blankly and trying to fathom what to say until he finally says: “Are you sure you’re okay?” obviously taking my silence as an indicator of some sort of damage to my brain. Not good, I think, I’m coming across as half-witted now.
“Really, I’m fine. Thank you for helping me, but I can manage.” It sounds ridiculously prim and standoffish even to my own ears. He lets go of me, and I instantly miss the feel of his arms upon me. I watch him step back and raise an eyebrow while he takes in my appearance before saying:
“Can you? Really? All the evidence would seem to indicate the contrary. You’re going to have quite a bruise there.” He points at my forehead. “I suggest you think about putting some ice on it,” he says before turning and walking stiffly away into the men’s changing rooms. In retrospect I don’t think I could have handled the situation worse if I tried, and I regret my ridiculous response as I watch him disappear again. With my mind filled with my latest instalment of hideous embarrassment, I move to finally enter the changing rooms, when Stuart sees me and calls me over. I sigh before walking slowly over, wondering what else could possibly go wrong today.
“Hey, Lily, I was thinking about you today,” he says as I approach, before peering at me closely and adding, “Have you done something to your head?”
“You were?” I reply, frankly amazed anyone ever thought about me when I wasn’t physically in their face. I choose to ignore the observation about my latest injury.
“Yeah, we’re putting together a fundraising event for a family whose five-year-old has been diagnosed with leukaemia, and I thought you might be just the sort of person who’d like to get involved. It’s no big deal, really, just a three peaks type challenge, but with big hills rather than huge mountains – we thought we’d go up to the Peak District to do it so it’s a bit more of a challenge, but it won’t be too hard. I know you’ve got kids, so I thought you’d be up for it. The added bonus is that it’s also great exercise. And since you’ve been going great guns in here, I thought it might be just your thing.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” I mumble, taken aback at the thought of being included in the challenge. “I’m afraid I’d just hold you back. I’m not really fit enough yet.”
“Nonsense, you silly mare,” he laughs, “don’t worry about that. We already have a real mix of people coming. Some of them are gym regulars, but some are the newbies like you. Pat’s coming, and she’s much less fit than you are,” he adds. “We’ll just make sure the group is split so those who want to go fast can go ahead, and those who don’t can do it at their own pace. It’s only over three days, and we’re going to stay in a local house that’s near the peaks we’re planning to walk, so you’ll even get a little holiday while you’re at it. It’ll be perfect. I’m sure we’ll manage to have a giggle in the evenings,” he says with a wink which can only be described as naughty. I can’t help myself smiling back at him.
“I don’t know,” I hesitate, mentally listing all the reasons why it would be virtually impossible for me to even think about taking off for a few days on my own like that. I start with the most obvious excuse: “I can’t really justify the cost of getting there; we’re a bit skint at home at the moment, and I’m spending all my spare cash on gym membership.” It’s the first of the many reasons that came to mind, and possibly the most socially acceptable, while somewhat embarrassing to admit. I can’t imagine telling him any of the other reasons; my husband would never let me go away with a load of other people, let alone blokes, or my husband expects me to be home so I can cook him his meals. Unfortunately for me, Stuart has clearly anticipated my first excuse and has already prepared a response.
“No, no no, the only thing you need to think about is putting some money towards food and drink while we’re there; the house is free because one of the other members owns it as a holiday rental property. He knows the guy whose kid is ill and offered it to us free of charge as his personal contribution. The place looks amazing, not really a house, more like a mansion – it sleeps over twenty if we double up in rooms. It’ll be a right laugh. John has offered us a coach from his company, again at no charge, so it really is just a bit of money for food and drink. And let’s face it, you’d need to eat if you were staying at home, so it won’t cost you a lot more. Oh and maybe a few quid towards fuel,” he adds as an afterthought. He knows he has me, and the smug grin on his face tells me he’s confident I can’t worm my way out.
“Well, I don’t know,” I hedge, “it sounds okay, but let me speak to Greg and I’ll let you know for sure when I come in again. When is it?” I suddenly think to ask.
“Great, brilliant!” Stuart says emphatically, as if I’ve already confirmed my attendance. He hands me a sponsorship form, telling me: “All the details are on here. You might as well make a start getting sponsors soon. And I wouldn’t bother trying to nobble anyone here – I’ve already cleaned up – so you’ll have to try your other mates.” I’m heartened by his assumption I have other mates to “nobble”, as he puts it, as I quickly dart across the gym and into the changing room before he can think of anything else.
I finally start to change out of my work clothes and get ready to start my workout, but as I do I catch sight of my reflection in one of the mirrors and groan. A brilliant red line that will soon become a vivid purple bruise marks the middle of my forehead where the door had hit me. Days and days of more embarrassment as I’ll be forced to explain what I’ve done to myself once again lie ahead of me. I sigh as I finish doing up my laces, ignoring the throb of my head as I bend forward.
At the beginning my workout, Stuart makes a point of finding me again and informing me he had taken a quick look at my training regime and adjusted it to help me prepare properly for the challenge. I look at the card and groan inwardly to see the increased resistance weights and gradients he’s added to what was already a stretching programme as far as I’m concerned.
“Oh, and I’ve found you a roommate too,” he calls over his shoulder as he walks off to harass some other poor victim.
“Sorry, what?” I ask, momentarily confused, before I realise he meant for the walking trip. “Who?” I call after him, my anxiety about the level of commitment he’s already assuming betrayed by my shrill tone.
If he hears my anxiety, he chooses to ignore it, calling back: “Annie. She’s over on the cross-trainer, if you want to introduce yourself.” And with that he’s gone again.
I look over to the cross-trainers and see a couple of women who could possibly be Annie. Summoning all my courage I walk over and tentatively call: “Annie?” to the first lady, who looks to be in her fifties with a plumpish figure like mine and dark hair. She shakes her head and points to a third lady further along the row that I hadn’t seen previously, as she’d been hidden by the column. I follow to where she pointed, only to be confronted with a woman who could have easily been a model. She’s like some sort of glamazon, at least six feet tall, with dazzling red hair that falls in perfect ringlets, where it has escaped its ponytail around her equally perfectly proportioned face. Think Elle McPherson with red hair. She basically embodies almost everything I’m not, I despair inwardly.
She l
ooks up and catches me staring at her, at which point her face breaks into a massive grin as she booms: “You must be Lily! It’s lovely to meet you. Stuart mentioned you to me. What on earth have you done to your head?” she says, pointing to my bruised forehead. Annie speaks in the way people do when they are talking and listening to very loud music at the same time and don’t realise they are virtually shouting. She sees me flinch, as the heads of all the other gym users shoot up and around like meerkats at such atypical noisiness and stare in our direction. She quickly pulls off her headphones. “Sorry, didn’t meant to shout at you,” she says, followed by another of her melting smiles. Frankly, her voice isn’t much quieter than the first time, but something about her personal magnetism draws me to her, and I can’t help but smile back.
“I hear we might be sharing a room,” I say, looking up at her shyly. She laughs, a great joyous laugh that draws the attention of the room again and makes me laugh in response this time.
“I can’t wait, Lily. I’m so overdue a bit of fun. I don’t know about you, but some play time with a bit of walking for a good cause thrown in sounds really good. I think you and I’ll hopefully have a great time in between the exercise,” she says with a wink. I explain to her I still need to sort out some things at home before I can definitely confirm, but if it’s at all possible I will try to make it.
Something about her has me looking forward to going. She grins at me and takes my mobile number, immediately entering it into her phone, insisting we will need to meet up in advance of going to agree who’s going to bring what, and that she’ll text me to arrange a day and time in case we don’t bump into each other again at the gym.
I nod obediently before hesitantly raising my hand in farewell and then scurrying my way over to the first apparatus on my revised programme, surreptitiously watching Annie out of the corner of my eye all the while. She’s magnificent, with a body to die for. Not stick-thin, but womanly with legs which stretch on seemingly for miles. She laughs her way around the gym, appearing to know everyone. I watch their faces light up when she pauses to speak to them, especially the men. Kind of like a red-haired gym version of Princess Diana, I muse, feeling small and invisible by comparison. I know immediately when she’s left because the electric hum that seems to accompany her has gone, and the gym seems just a bit less brightly lit and cheerful, so I buckle down to trying not to fall off the treadmill at the new gradient Stuart had set me.
Chapter 5
By the time I get home that evening, all the boys are already in. They have now adjusted to my new routine of going to the gym after work, happy to wait for food a little later if it means they don’t have to cook for themselves. I had been mulling on my way home over how to position the trip away, worrying about how the boys and Greg were likely to react, but it seems as if the fates are smiling on me for once in my life. As I’m serving up plates of chicken with salad and potatoes (the rotisserie in the supermarket has recently become a personal lifesaver and worth the cost of a few of my personal luxuries), Ethan announces that the agency has found him a new job. There are general encouraging noises from around the table as he explains he will be doing silver service waiting on tables at posh events. The agency apparently keep a supply of people trained, whom they then draft in when a client has a big event that they need extra staff for. It seems the job would involve a weekend training course, because apparently there was a certain etiquette and technique which needed to be adhered to. But after that, assuming he passed his assessment, he had been told they tended to be needed most weekends and some weekday evenings too; and the money was excellent. I don’t hear much more after he mentions the training weekend is the same weekend as the planned Peak District trip. One down, two to go.
It’s like some sort of divine miracle when Adam, who’s waiting to start an English degree course at Exeter in October, pipes up. “Well, since Ethan is buggering off and won’t be around at weekends, there isn’t much point in me hanging around much longer at home. My room in University Halls is available from the middle of September, so if one of you can take me down there, I’ll head off the same weekend to give myself a chance to settle in and get the lie of the land before term starts properly.” I hold my breath, not daring to show the hope on my face.
Greg grunts before saying, “Well, your mother is too crap a driver to cope with such a long journey, so I’ll take you.” As if warming to the idea, he adds: “If you let me crash on your floor, we can have a boys’ night before I have to drive back, and I’ll show you the tricks to being a proper student.”
Lost in his moment of reverie, Greg misses the look of horror that flashes over Adam’s face, and the smug grin on Ethan’s, before Adam politely says, “That would be great, dad, thanks.”
Greg smiles warmly at his son, looking excited at the prospect of a weekend away, before turning to me and saying: “So you’ll have a weekend to yourself for once. What will you do with the free time?”
“Well,” I pause as I feel three pairs of eyes look up at me from their plates, clearly not expecting me to have any plans. “There is a weekend fundraising event in the Peak District for a kid with leukaemia, which the gym has organised. I wasn’t going to go, but since you guys are all away and don’t need me, I think I’ll go and support it... since it’s such a good cause.” I really emphasise the bit at the end. Deathly silence meets my announcement. Clearly Greg was fine with the idea of him going off for a weekend, but the idea of me doing the same is somewhat less palatable. I hold my breath, waiting for some sort of reaction from Greg.
“Who are you going with?” he asks, seemingly just out of interest, but I know him well enough to recognise the edge to the question. He runs his hand through his hair, another sign of irritation and stress.
“Just some people from the gym. I don’t actually know a lot of them. People like me who need the exercise,” I say, laughing slightly nervously, knowing I was deliberately painting an image of fat people for some reason. “We’ll spend each day walking up a different peak, and the evening recovering,” I add.
“Where will you be staying? We can’t afford a hotel for you.”
I bite back the response I want to make – which is that since I have earned all the money coming in to the house, if anyone deserves a short break at a hotel in the Peaks, it’s me – and calmly reply instead: “Someone’s donated a big old house for the group to stay at. It’s not going to be comfortable, but it is free, so the only cost will be my food. I’ll have to share a room with another girl, but it’s all for a good cause.” For some reason I can’t explain, I know I need to make it sound like it isn’t going to be any fun or Greg will kick off about it. I hold my breath again while trying to look like I don’t really care.
Greg eventually grunts before looking at me and saying: “Well, it looks like you’ll need to arrange someone to feed the cat.” I know it’s as good as I’m likely to get from him, so I smile and reassure him I’ll make some arrangements, while calmly spooning extra chicken onto his plate.
The rest of the meal passes relatively smoothly. I keep the growing excitement inside me firmly harnessed.
*********
In the middle of the following week, I receive a text from an unknown number:
Hey babe, how about a drink so we can sort out the details for our trip?
My mind is blank as I gaze at the words on the screen. And then it finally clicks – Annie. Greg has been worryingly quiet about my planned trip. I’ve made sure all the arrangements are in place for everyone else’s plans (I’ve already got clothes washed and ironed for packing, shopping done, cat feeder recruited, car oil and water topped up), keen to make sure no complaint can be made of me or my plans. For some reason Greg has a habit of ruining any plans that I’m looking forward to, and I still can’t quite believe the same won’t happen for this trip.
Memories of my 30th birthday flash through my mind. Emma had bought me a weekend trip to London that involved an overnight stay at a cheap hotel and a
trip to the theatre. She had planned it as a great girls’ weekend, and we’d both been really excited. Unfortunately, about three hours after we got to London on the first day, I received a call from Greg to say he was unwell and not in a position to look after the boys. You could have argued the boys, at age eleven, could have coped for a day with sandwiches and extra T.V. time, but Greg was adamant he needed me home, even if the boys didn’t, so I dutifully got back on the train and went home again.
Emma had been fuming. “He’s controlling you, Lily. You are allowed a life of your own, you know,” she ranted. “You don’t have to run back to him immediately when he demands you to. In fact it would do him good to have to stand on his own two feet without you for a bit; it might make him appreciate you a bit more.”
I had never heard her quite so angry before, as I sat embarrassed on the train with her home, cringing inwardly at the loudness of her voice in the quiet but packed carriage. “It’s not about the money, Lil,” she assured me as I apologised profusely for the waste. “I just want you to have a chance to enjoy your life too. You give them everything, and they have absolutely no idea just how lucky they are. Greg is too controlling of you; if he really loved you, he would want you to be happy and do things you enjoy too. Instead, all he ever does is make sure you’re there to provide for his own enjoyment.” She was building up a head of steam now. “And the one time I think I’ve finally found a way to spoil you, he even manages to ruin that and drag you home.”