‘How have your first two days back at work been?’ I ask Jess as she parks the car and we head to the sports centre.
‘Exhausting, daunting – and absolutely great,’ she grins.
‘So you’re going to enjoy being a working mum again?’
‘It’s early days,’ she shrugs. ‘But the adult company was a revelation. Of course, half the people have changed since I was last there, but all the new people seem nice. I loved it. Here we are.’
She pushes open the door to a busy foyer and bypasses the queue at reception to go to the changing room. As I stuff my bag in a locker and glance round, I note that there are women of all shapes, sizes and ages here – and feel slightly reassured.
‘This way,’ Jess says, as we head to a meeting room at the far end of the squash courts.
The idea is that all three groups – ranked according to their respective speeds – get together at the start for a discussion about the nature of that evening’s session. Jess is in the top group. She’s one of only three females, but assures me that she flits between this and the middle one.
‘Wow! You made it!’ I hold my breath as I take in Oliver and his unbelievably cute smile. ‘I’m so pleased we twisted your arm.’
His red T-shirt isn’t quite the Mr Darcy blouson and breeches I’ve had him sporting in several fantasies in the last few days, but it’s pretty damn good anyway. More importantly, it shows off his slender body to glorious effect.
He leans in to kiss me on the cheek, seeming more confident than the first time we met – but still boyish and sexy enough to make my heart loop the loop. ‘Now, which group will you feel most comfortable with – slow or medium?’
The answer, obviously, is slow. How could it possibly be anything else?
Yet, when Doctor Dishy asks, I suddenly despise the word ‘slow’, with its grim overtones of amateurishness and under-achievement. Having to confess that I belong in that group – with the feeble part-timers – is just not on.
‘Well, as I said . . . I used to do a lot of swimming,’ I mumble.
Jess does such a violent double-take I’m surprised it doesn’t induce whiplash.
‘So,’ I continue. ‘Perhaps . . . the middle group, I think.’
‘Are you sure?’ blurts out Jess. I flash her a look.
‘That’s rather ambitious, Abby,’ says Oliver gently. ‘Even if you’ve done loads of swimming and are super-fit, this is a different discipline. Unless you’ve done some running too?’
‘A bit,’ I grin confidently. Jess looks at me as if I need to be sectioned.
‘That’s the spirit.’ He smiles softly and I am filled with longing. ‘Let’s see how you get on. We can always review it at the next session.’
He walks to the front of the room and tries to command the attention of the group. It takes a minute before people realise he’s attempting to speak – though God knows why because he has
me
gripped the second he opens his mouth.
‘We did a lot of hill training last week,’ he says. ‘So today’s session is a steady run.’
Steady
. Well, that sounds all right, doesn’t it? Nothing too arduous. I turn to my side and realise that Jess is still glaring at me, apparently unable to shut her mouth.
Doctor Dishy goes on to discuss the importance of interweaving different types of runs – hill sessions, steady runs and the hideous-sounding speed sessions – to increase fitness. At least, I think that’s what he says: I’m too busy drifting into those eyes to pay attention to much detail.
Finally, we adjourn to the running track for a surprisingly strenuous exercise session, which turns out to be only a warm-up. There are squats, stretches, bends and lunges – so many, in fact, that by the end of it my face is rather more sweaty and red than I’d hoped it would be at this stage.
Jess grabs me by the arm. ‘What on earth are you doing in the middle group?’
I pull away. ‘Are you trying to humiliate me?’
‘Of course not,’ she says furiously. ‘Look, it’s not too late to jump in with the slow group. There are people who’ve been running for years in there.’
‘I’ll be fine,’ I say through gritted teeth.
She sighs, unconvinced but resigned.
‘Okay. Maureen’ll look after you, won’t you, Mau?’
I’ve heard all about Mau. Her exact age is as much of a mystery as the origin of dark matter, but it’s fair to say she’s racked up a few more years on the clock than the average group member. What she lacks in conventionality, however, she makes up in glamour. With a body I’d be satisfied with now – never mind in thirty years – she’s dressed in a green Lycra cat suit, with Jennifer Hart hair and so much jewellery that she rattles like the Ghost of Christmas Past.
‘I’m normally in the slow group myself, love,’ she tells me. ‘But I made the mistake of going a bit too fast for the last couple of weeks and the lovely Oliver has insisted I move up. I’ll humour him for a week but, I’ll be honest, I prefer to avoid too much puffing and panting at my age – when I’m running at least,’ she winks.
As we split up and prepare to set off, I check out my fellow middle-group members. There are twelve of us: eight women and four men, and I’m burdened with more subcutaneous fat than the rest put together.
I linger at the back, preparing to set off, when a loud roar crashes through the air. I look up and take in the vehicle and its familiar blue bodywork, as my heart convulses to a near standstill. The sensation exacerbates as its owner removes his headgear and marches towards the sports centre. His strong legs break into a run as he throws his bag over an unfeasibly muscular shoulder, dressed in a black T-shirt.
I whip round my head and focus on the woman in front of me as I catch my breath and try to focus. I knew tonight was going to be full of challenges. I hadn’t counted on Tom Bronte being one of them.
‘You heard the man – tonight we’re going steady,’ says Mau to the rest of the group. ‘So no darting ahead and showing me up. I’m an old woman, remember.’
‘Yes, who’s fitter than most twenty-year-olds, Mau,’ grins my neighbour, a brunette of about forty-five with cropped hair and the smallest running shorts I’ve seen since I owned a Barbie. Still, she looks friendly enough, so I take the opportunity to clarify something.
‘Um, the guy with the motorbike,’ I say casually. ‘Is he a member of this club too?’
‘Tom? Yeah. Lovely, isn’t he?’ she whispers behind her hand with an impish grin. ‘Ooh, that smile!’
‘Sadly, he’s taken,’ adds Mau, overhearing. ‘More’s the pity. I’m still holding out some hope that one day he might decide he fancies a bit of Glamorous Granny.’
The fast group launches off up the hill, with Oliver at the front and Jess at the back, her sleek thighs displaying not the tiniest ripple. From the corner of my eye, I spot Tom Bronte sprinting to catch up, pounding the pavement with effortless power and speed.
Then it’s my group’s turn.
My limbs are clunky at first, as though my legs are coming out of hibernation after spending a hard winter in a Siberian tundra. But, to my surprise, it isn’t long before I find my stride – and tentatively conclude that this running business might not be so bad after all. Okay, we’ve only been going for three minutes, and the best runners are already out in front, but the majority are going at a more moderate pace than I’d expected.
I indulge myself with the thought that maybe I am one of them, after all. That Jess and I are built of the same stuff. I
do
love exercise – it’s just taken until now to realise it.
I breathe in the air and feel blood pumping through my veins as I’m engulfed by a wave of positivity. God, it’s good to be alive!
Fifteen minutes later, I’m trying not to wheeze dramatically as if seconds from death, but my lungs feel as if they’ve been doused in petrol and set alight by a flame-thrower.
What’s worse is that the others aren’t miles ahead as you might expect, because they keep thoughtfully running back to me, before turning and sprinting in the other direction again. Then repeating the exercise – again and again.
I’d like to tell them that they don’t need to, that I’d rather they just abandoned me. Unfortunately, I have lost the ability to speak. The result is reminiscent of a scene from every corny war film, in which the brave few put their own interests behind those of some poor bugger who’s had his legs blown off. Which, funnily enough, I can fully relate to at the moment.
‘Are you all right, love?’ asks Mau on one such occasion. Despite having not stopped for miles, she says this so effortlessly you’d think she was lying on a chaise longue with a glass of champagne and box of Maltesers.
‘Urgh,’ I splutter, an alternative phrase for
I’m fine – please leave me alone.
She looks worried.
‘Look,’ she suggests, jogging alongside, ‘why don’t we slow down, love.’
‘You . . . don’t . . . don’t . . . nee . . . don’t . . .’ I give up halfway.
‘If you want to stop you can, you know,’ she reassures me. ‘You don’t have to do the full hour with us.’
At that, my knees collapse. I lean over and put my hands on my thighs and drop my head, gasping for breath.
‘An
hour
?’ I ask eventually. ‘You run for an hour? How is that . . . possible?’
Mau suppresses a smile. ‘We only run for forty-five minutes in tonight’s session. The rest is warming up and cooling down. So you’ve only got another half hour to go. You’ve done really well.’
‘Have I?’ I whimper.
She looks at me sympathetically. ‘Why don’t you and I take a short cut?’
‘No, don’t let me hold you back,’ I insist. ‘You go on.’
‘I don’t mind,’ she shrugs. ‘I’m coming tomorrow anyway. Come on. Quit while you’re ahead.’
‘What makes you think I’m ahead,’ I mutter, my legs quivering as we jog slowly to the sports centre via her ‘short cut’. At least, she assures me it’s slow. It feels positively breakneck to me. And as we arrive at exactly 7.50 p.m. – annoyingly, at the same time as the other groups – I am suddenly certain that 7.53 p.m. will be the last recorded time I spend alive.
Jess rushes over. ‘Ohmygod. Abby – are you okay?’
‘Hhhhhrrryuuh,’ I reply.
‘Do you need to sit down?’
I shake my head as my backside plunges to the tarmac with the sort of impact that causes craters.
‘Have a drink.’ She puts a bottle of water to my lips and I glug it down, between ravenous breaths.
‘Bloody hell,’ she mutters, ‘I said you weren’t ready for that group. I’ve only just moved back up to fast after giving birth to Lola, and I’ve been doing this for years. You’re crazy.’
‘Hhhhhrrryuuh,’ I reply.
‘Come on, stand up,’ she instructs.
‘Hhhhhrrryuuh?’ I look at her as if she is insane.
‘Your muscles will seize up if you don’t stretch.’
‘The chances of my muscles . . . not seizing up . . . are about zero,’ I manage, but she hoists me up anyway as I hobble to join the three groups, who are all together now for a cool-down session.
I glance round and notice that the other women have subtle rosy-cheeked glows and delicate mists of sweat on their brows. They look invigorated and happy, intoxicated by adrenalin.
I look quite different. Every sodden strand of my hair is plastered to my face. I don’t need a mirror to know that my cheeks are the colour of a putrid beetroot. And, despite the voluminous proportions of my T-shirt, I have sweat rings the size of Lake Windermere under each arm.
‘Let me go to the back,’ I hiss.
‘Fine,’ she shrugs.
I only do the cool-down stretches to avoid drawing attention to myself, but it is agony. Just thinking about the state of my thigh muscles tomorrow makes me want to weep.
Worse than that though, is the creeping biliousness I’ve been getting since I stopped running. It’s as if my body, having endured the hell I’ve just put it through, is now wreaking its revenge by sending waves of acid through my chest cavity.
‘That’s it, everyone!’ shouts Oliver, as the group disbands and my stomach contracts violently. I’ve got to get out of here.
‘Let’s go,’ I hiss, seriously concerned about the turbulence in my insides. I grab Jess by the arm, but Oliver’s already on his way over.
‘Abby, how did you get on? Do you—’ he pauses mid-sentence and looks at me as if examining a recently run-over cat.
‘Fine!’ I reply, as nausea rages in my stomach and scales my oesophagus. ‘Uhmmm . . . great!’
‘Good,’ he nods, looking concerned. Or appalled. Or both. ‘So you’ll be coming again this week?’
Jess raises an eyebrow. Fortunately, her phone rings and she answers before she has a chance to hear my reply.
‘Oh . . . I’m not sure.’ My stomach is churning like a hyperactive cement mixer, relentlessly and repeatedly turning over. ‘I need to . . . uhmmm . . . I have a lot on this week.’
‘Right,’ says Oliver, raising an eyebrow. ‘Well, maybe another time.’
I hold my breath and for a second it feels as if depriving my body of oxygen has quelled my sickness. The only problem with that theory is that I can’t of course deprive my body of oxygen. Not for long. As I suck air through my nose, my minor surge of relief proves temporary. Instead, I have a surge of something else – and it’s not minor.
In fact, it is SO not minor that I can taste the combination of regurgitated doughnut, Quavers and the three Cadbury’s Roses I nicked from Priya earlier, even before they make their second appearance of the day.
‘I . . .’ I put my hand over my mouth as Oliver looks at me in alarm. In the absence of any good ideas, I do the only thing I can: turn and run. It’s the fastest I’ve moved in the entire session.
With Jess on the phone and apparently oblivious, I dart round the back of the sports centre and, before I can think straight, am pyrotechnically ill in the drain.
Afterwards, I straighten my back, feeling a sour emptiness, as tears prick in my gritty eyes and I sense Jess behind me. I spin round and wipe the corrosive taste from my mouth, thanking God only my best friend got to see this.
Only it’s not Jess. It’s Tom Bloody Bronte.
Can it get any worse than this?
I’m in the gutter of a car park, looking barely alive with a post-spew glaze in my eyes, while face to face with one of the most perfect physical specimens of manhood I’ve ever encountered. That he’s also proven himself a total tosser in his emails is little comfort.