by Beth Moran
It was time.
63
Stop Being a Loser Programme
Day Two Hundred and Twenty-Eight – The Final Challenge
The morning of the triathlon, with Joey at his dad’s, I was woken up by my usual trespassers letting themselves into the kitchen. Waiting until the smell of coffee, eggs and nervous excitement wafted into my bedroom, I pulled on a hoodie and my old leggings and went to face them.
‘Come on, Ames, get yerself a proper competitor’s brekkie!’ Mel beamed, beneath blue and white face paint and blue plaits.
‘Only I’m not competing.’
‘Well, you never know.’
Too frazzled to argue, I ate my brekkie, changed into a smartish new dress and faffed about with my hair until Dani frogmarched me to her car.
‘Dani, is that my swimsuit in your bag?’
Dani shrugged, the essence of nonchalance. ‘In case of emergency. Selena might have eaten too many Easter eggs and need a bigger size.’
The swimming centre was abuzz already, a good hour before the race began. Pop-up food stalls selling healthy snacks and their own versions of a competitor’s breakfast lined one edge of the sports field, with two more sides full of stands advertising virtually every sports club and fitness class in the county. Kommando Kim was leading a mass warm-up in the middle of it all, browbeating members of the public, from toddlers to pensioners, into joining in, using her delightful combination of intimidation and verbal abuse. I’d seen children in tears, and some of the parents were in an even worse state than their kids.
Not quite holding Mel or Dani’s hands, but finding enough comfort and support in their company all the same, I tried to walk tall and keep my breathing steady as we made our way through the crowd. We found the rest of the Larks clucking and preening their blue and white feathers near the outdoor tennis court. To my enormous relief, Audrey was there. She offered me a small smile and a nod.
With Nathan nowhere to be seen, Marjory took over as captain and filled us in. ‘There are five teams competing – a men’s football team, men’s cycling club, a mixed athletics club and a team from the county council leisure department, plus us. No swimming club team, so that’s where we’re most likely to have the advantage. I suggest we aim to come out of the first leg with as big a lead as possible.’
‘What?’ Isobel screwed her face up. ‘I think a more realistic aim would be to not come last. We’re the only all-women team, that football team are all under thirty and have you seen the thighs on the cycling club?’
‘Uh, hello?’ Bronwyn retorted. ‘Firstly, way to have a winning attitude. Secondly, being an all-women team is not a disadvantage, what we might lack in brute strength, we make up for with grit, guts and girl power. Thirdly, Olympic champion, world champion!’
‘Uh, I’m not actually competing,’ I said, horrified that everyone didn’t already know, despite chickening out of telling them myself.
‘Yeah, whatever. My mistake.’ Bronwyn winked, most unsubtly, and a coil of suspicion tightened round my spine.
‘Right, any questions?’ Marjory asked. ‘All hydrated, carb loaded and warmed up?’
They all were.
‘Right, let’s head over to the pool.’
‘Jealous?’ Dani asked me, as we walked towards the main entrance.
‘I’m going to love cheering you on.’
Dani raised her eyebrows, in wry acknowledgement that I hadn’t actually answered the question.
Before I could admit that perhaps, just maybe, deep in some forgotten cranny of my brain, I felt a tiny flicker of envy at not being part of the triathlon team, a man bustled up.
‘Amelia, oh my days, what a relief, we’re ready to officially commence the proceedings and the crowd awaits their star!’ He held out one hand to shake mine, while using the other one to begin herding me in the direction I was already going. ‘Antonio Galanos. We’ve spoken on the phone.’
‘Yes, hi.’
‘For a moment there, I thought you might have done another runner! Ha ha!’
Dani, hurrying along on the other side of me, spurted out the mouthful of water she’d just swigged from her bottle.
‘I mean, I know we aren’t the Olympics or anything, but, well, round these parts a family fun fit day is almost as special. Right. If I could hand you over to my colleague, Janine, I’ll get the scissors.’
A while later, ribbon cut, half a dozen official photos, plus half a million unofficial selfies snapped, I was still hanging on in there. The overwhelmingly positive response of the crowd meant that I almost stopped expecting someone to sneer, or jeer, or ask me about the articles. I was ushered towards the pool, over to a special seat reserved in the spectators’ area, beside Tate’s wheelchair. The rest of the seats quickly filled up, with more people pressed in along the sides and in the aisles, in what I’m sure must have been a breach of health and safety regulations. Joey and Sean were seated towards the front, in amongst the Larks’ friends and families, causing another twinge of regret that I’d been such a big wimp, Joey wouldn’t get to see me race.
Ten minutes before the triathlon was due to start, I was asked to announce each team as they arrived – the swimmers still damp from their warm-up. The Larkabouts were the final team to enter.
‘Eh! This’ll be the only time we come in last today!’ Mel hollered, waving and giving a manic thumbs up to her watching family.
I’d been doing reasonably well so far, managing not to garble, remembering to smile, ignoring the odd snicker or whispered comment, maintaining a normal respiration rate, but when Nathan trooped in behind his team, in a blue tracksuit and tight white T-shirt, my heart did a triple backflip. He had his game face on… right until he spotted me.
‘No need to look so surprised,’ I mouthed as he walked past, trying and failing to frown.
He shook his head, eyes crinkling. ‘Pleased. Not surprised. I knew you’d be here.’
Well, if you’re so pleased to see me, where were you for the past two months?
How about he didn’t make contact because he’s pleased, in a strictly professional capacity, to have helped a client succeed in one of her goals?
Yeah. I guess that explained it.
‘Right,’ the manager of the swimming centre said, having taken the microphone from me, ‘can the swimming competitors please take their places. All other entrants must now move to the team viewing area to my left.’
There was a flurry of activity as most of the competitors moved off to the side, while the third who were going to swim took off their tracksuits and did some enthusiastic stretches, nearly knocking the manager and a few of their opponents into the water. Something not quite right was going on with the Larks, though. None of them had moved to the side, and all nine – ten of them, including Nathan, were now stripping off their blue and white tracksuits, revealing nine tiny swimsuits and one pair of appropriately sized shorts.
‘What the hell are you doing?’ I yelled, most improperly.
‘We’re the Larks!’ Dani called back. ‘We stick together no matter what.’
‘But you’ll lose!’ I screeched back. ‘Isobel can’t even swim!’
‘I’ve got armbands and a float! I can manage a couple of lengths. Probably.’ She stuck out her chin and put her hands on her hips, no doubt aiming for defiant but slightly missing the mark due to the unicorn armbands.
‘We’ve got Nathan, he’ll make up for Isobel,’ Bronwyn said, gesturing her head at our coach.
Oh my goodness.
He resembled a Greek statue.
Was someone saying something, maybe about a race or something…? I seemed to have forgotten…
‘No Lark left behind!’ Marjory’s battle cry thankfully interrupted my lust-addled stupor. ‘We win together or we lose together. But we stick together when it counts!’
‘What, like on every training session when you disappear off into the distance?’ Selena snarked.
‘No Lark left behind!’ Marjory called again
, and this time I managed to drag my eyes off Nathan and keep them on her long enough to notice what she was holding out.
‘The race is about to start,’ I jabbered back.
‘You can take the second leg.’
I looked at the swimsuit in her hand. Moved my gaze to take in ten Larks. My friends, my squad, my rescuers. From age twenty-two to seventy-five, from an Olympian to a woman who couldn’t even swim. Women who’d made fearless choices, and terrible ones, who’d faced crap that they never would have chosen. Strong, courageous women who’d picked themselves up, dusted themselves down and kept on running. Who had forgiven the past mistakes, especially their own. Who had learnt that life is too damn short, and too darn tough at times, to give a monkey’s banana what a random crowd of spectators, or online gossip-scavengers, or trash-paper readers would think of them. Women who knew who they were, and what they wanted to do, and let nothing and nobody stop them from doing it.
Of course I would take the second leg!
‘No Lark left behind!’ I grabbed the suit, pausing to find Joey in the crowd, already on his feet, fists in the air, face shining with joy. ‘GO, MUM!’
I waved at him, grinning, before turning back to Marjory. ‘But you can start without me just this once.’
It took an excruciating three minutes to wrestle out of the dress, another hurried two while I tried to adjust the swimsuit to cover as much as possible. Ten seconds to get my head in the game.
It was time.
‘Amy – you’re up!’ Dani poked her head into the changing room.
I hurtled out, across the tiles and, barely taking the second to check whether the lane was clear, took a deep breath and dove straight into the water.
Oh.
Oh.
Oh.
No sound.
No thoughts.
Just water.
My long-lost friend.
Instinct.
Joy.
Power.
Peace.
Oh.
At the millisecond before my lungs would burst, I broke out of the water, relishing the hit of cold air like an addict’s first shot of the morning. The sound of the crowd hit me, sparking a tidal wave of adrenaline, and without any conscious thought that, ah, yes, this is a race, I’d better get a move on, my arm swung up, legs kicked, and I was shooting through the water like a world champion after fourteen years of imposed confinement on land.
An hour later, we started the cycling leg of the triathlon smack in the middle of the rankings. I’d completed ten of the thirty lengths of the pool, with Nathan swimming eight, Mel, Audrey and Selena two each, and everyone else a single fifty-metre length. And if Isobel had needed a bit of a hand to complete the final forty-eight metres, well, all’s fair in family fun fit triathlons.
I think we managed to maintain third place for, ooh, at least three minutes of the cycling leg. While certain members of the Larks – i.e. the ones who were supposed to be cycling, and had therefore actually done some training on a bike – whizzed off ahead, and others who were naturally pretty fit whatever the sport, followed not too far behind them. Mel and Audrey were soon left puffing away either side of the person who’d not ridden a bike since she’d pulled wheelies up and down her cul-de-sac on a BMX.
‘This is easier than it looks!’ Mel grinned, giving her bell a good jingle after freewheeling down the first slope, sky-blue helmet balanced on top of her plaits. ‘All that fuss about learnin’ to ride a bike, nothing to it! Come on, guys, keep up, we’re in a race here!’
To be fair, it may have taken me longer than Mel to get back into the swing of cycling, but I wasn’t the one using kids’ stabilisers. And poor Audrey, I wasn’t sure if it was sweat dripping off her as she lumbered along in the freak Easter heatwave, face scrunched with determination, or whether she was literally melting. Thank goodness that for most of the ten kilometres, the roads were free of spectators, so we could huff and groan and grimace with no one watching. My muscles had regressed back towards flabbiness over the past few weeks, and it was amazing how quickly I became breathless.
Five kilometres in, it felt as though the sun’s rays had soldered Dani’s spare helmet to my head. My legs were trembling with fatigue, and where my backside met the seat, I expected to find a bloody, pulpy mess if I ever managed to haul myself off.
Exhaustion, agony, pushing myself way beyond any reasonable limits. I was loving it.
Audrey and Mel, who’d soon realised that riding a bike up a hill was a lot harder than zipping down it, not so much.
I tried gasping out a few pep talks and motivational clichés, but it is hard to get motivated when you last saw any of your competitors fifteen minutes ago.
And then, whizzing over the crest of the hill came Dani, Selena right behind her on a tandem.
‘Don’t tell me you’ve finished and then come all this way back again,’ Mel groaned, coming to a stop. ‘I don’t want to know.’
‘Come on, stop moaning and hop on,’ Dani replied.
‘Hop on where?’
‘Didn’t you ever ride on the handlebars when you were a kid?’
Mel looked stricken. ‘I’m not a kid any more, Dani. I don’t think my bum will fit on there.’
‘Don’t be an idiot. And hurry up – one of the council guys has fallen off at 7K. His bike’s a wreck and the rest of the team don’t even know because they’ve gone off ahead and left him. If we put our backs into it, we can beat him.’
‘We might not be last!’ Mel shrieked, ditching her bike at the side of the road and scrambling over to Dani’s.
Meanwhile, Audrey was plodding on ahead of us, head down, pretending to be oblivious to Selena pedalling alongside, repeatedly entreating her to get on the tandem.
I stretched out my shoulders, gritted my teeth, clenched what remained of my buttocks and caught up with them. ‘Come on, Audrey, you haven’t trained for the cycling leg, there’s no shame in teaming up with someone else.’
‘There’s plenty of shame in having my mum bail me out.’
‘No one in any of the other teams has swam and cycled.’
‘All the Larks have,’ Audrey wheezed, doggedly still going.
‘And Mel is on Dani’s handlebars.’
‘Why do you keep butting in and trying to help me?’ Audrey growled, bike wobbling alarmingly as she twisted her head towards Selena.
‘Audrey, you’re my daughter! I’d die for you! With a smile on my face! Everybody needs help, why not accept it from someone who takes a gargantuan amount of pleasure in giving it to you? I know you can do this without me. I believe you can do anything you put your mind to. But I know you, I know your strengths and cycling is not one of them. Baking, shoulder massages and figuring out what I’ve bought you for Christmas, yes, you’re fabulous at all of those. You’re the best person I know at Pictionary. But most of all, you are smart. So use that giant brain of yours to realise that all I want is to share a fantastic moment with my daughter. Come on, darling, hop on and let’s not be last, together.’
Audrey pushed on for a few more paces. I wondered if one of those streaks running through the grime on her face wasn’t sweat, but a tear.
‘Only if I get to go in front.’
Selena jerked the tandem to a halt. ‘Well, what are you waiting for, then?’
‘Me, please!’ I yelled, throwing my rented bike into a bush beside Audrey’s. ‘Be waiting for me! I want to not be last together, too. And, more to the point, my backside just can’t take any more.’
‘Where the hell did you get this tandem anyway?’ Audrey grumbled as she clambered on.
‘One of the athletics club brought it.’
‘How did you persuade them to lend it to you?’
‘I’ll worry about that when they notice I’ve taken it.’
So, with me straddling the basket at the back, the last of the Larks pushed on through the remaining few kilometres. We spotted the council casualty a kilometre from the finish line, wheeling his buckled bik
e along the side of the road with an excruciating limp.
‘Eh, walking’s a disqualifiable offence!’ Mel catcalled as Dani pumped them past.
‘I think catching a lift on the handlebars is too!’ the man yelled after her.
We finished together, two bikes, five jubilant women, whooping as we crossed the line most definitely not last.
Oh, it felt beyond wonderful to be racing with my team again.
We had another hour-long break for snacks, more photographs and wincing at Kommando Kim’s afternoon Killer Kardio session (non-triathlon competitors only). Selena followed me into the changing room.
‘Good to be back?’ She pulled out her ponytail and fluffed her hair in the mirror a few times.
‘Yes, thanks.’ I bent down to splash some water on my face. The heat in here was brutal. The brand new changing room already carried a faint whiff of rancid cheese.
‘You’ll be back for good? Training as usual?’
‘I hope so.’ And I meant it, too.
‘You’d better be.’
I paused, flicking a strand of hair out of my face. Selena demanding me back at the Larks could have been a compliment. But it sounded more like a threat.
‘It’s bad enough losing Nathan. If he’s left for nothing, you are not going to be popular round here. Might want to rethink the whole recluse thing.’
‘Excuse me?’ I gripped onto the sink as the blood drained from my body, leaving my head empty and spinning. ‘You think Nathan left because of me?’
‘Well, duh!’
I’d wondered, but to hear it out loud, from Selena of all people. My battered heart felt as though it splattered onto the shiny new floor.
‘Did he tell everyone?’
‘Darling, he didn’t have to. You know his rule. Professional boundaries.’