How Not to Be a Loser Page 8

  The thought of Sean charming Joey like he’d done me, only with thirteen extra years to perfect his techniques of entrapment and enchantment… it made my heart stutter in my chest, set my left eye twitching like a demented frog.

  If Joey discovered I’d been keeping his father from him, he might be more easily persuaded to zip right off on one of those jets his dad liked so much. Off to a private Olympic-sized pool and masses of pocket money and family adventures that actually happened outside his new, enormous house.

  Sean had relinquished any claim on his son through his absence. But did Joey have the right to find out for himself whether or not his father was a sleazeball? Even if that hurt him in the process? He was still a child. Who got to make that call?

  18

  Stop Being a Loser Programme

  Day Forty-Eight

  It was late October when I finally dredged up the courage to don my new gear and ready myself for the short walk to Brooksby Leisure Centre, having prepped myself with a few (secret) early morning walks to get used to being outside again. Knowing Mel and Dani would be there helped, a lot. Knowing Nathan would be there? I hadn’t decided yet.

  Joey had told him I was coming, mostly to make sure I didn’t back out at the last minute – ‘you have to go now, they’ll be waiting for you’. That meant that when I saw Nathan waiting at the end of my street, I was barely surprised.

  ‘You’ll make people nervous, loitering about in the shadows,’ I said, striding past without stopping, my breath a puff of steam.

  It took about three smooth paces for him to draw alongside me. ‘How’s things?’

  ‘So-so.’ I didn’t bother mentioning how my anxiety was currently trying to squeeze my breakfast back up again. ‘How are you?’

  We caught up on nothing much, managing to distract at least part of my mind from what lay ahead. I then asked how Joey was doing.

  ‘I mean, of course he tells me training’s brilliant and he’s heading for imminent glory. I just wanted to check if your version matched his.’

  ‘Honestly? He’s incredible. If anything, he doesn’t know how good he actually is. The trial is pushing him to work at his best, and it shows how much he’s been coasting at Brooksby.’

  I enjoyed the glow of pride, allowing it to shush my fears for the moment. ‘Thanks again for giving him so much time.’

  ‘It’s a pleasure.’

  We carried on walking in silence for another minute or two. ‘So, who are you really?’ I asked, as the leisure centre lights came into view.

  ‘Excuse me?’ Nathan peered at me through the darkness.

  ‘Swimming coach. Running club instructor. Football player. Stalker of lone women. Who is the real Nathan Gallagher? Which of these do you concentrate on the rest of the time? Or is it something else altogether?’

  ‘I’m a personal trainer. Mostly. I love coaching the swim club, and the Larkabouts helps me sleep at night. I’ve only ever stalked one woman.’

  ‘By one woman, you do mean me?’

  Nathan laughed. ‘I’ve told you, you’re the only woman crazy enough in these here parts to run solo at night.’

  ‘While sober, anyway.’

  ‘Fair point.’

  ‘So what kind of clients do you have, Mr Personal Trainer?’

  Nathan rolled his shoulders. ‘All sorts. People rehabilitating after injuries or surgery. Wanting to lose weight for a wedding. Midlife crises. Quite a few who suspect their partner is having an affair. Or are recently divorced and trying to feel better about themselves.’

  We entered the car park, where up ahead a group of women lounged against the wall of the centre, or sat on the steps outside the main reception. As they saw Nathan approaching, half of them stood to attention, or started doing stretching poses. Ones which seemed to focus on the chest or bottom area. Well, gotta stretch out those glutes before a good run, I suppose.

  ‘And how many of them are female?’ I asked, letting some mischief leak into my voice.

  Nathan sighed. ‘I get a lot of clients through the Larkabouts. Or mums of the swim club kids. And more women use personal trainers than men. Plus, more women tend to be free during the day, which is when I like to work.’

  ‘All of them, then?’

  ‘No! Not all of them. And I resent the implication that people only hire me because…’ He trailed off.

  ‘Because what?’ I asked, all innocent. I’d spent many a long hour, once upon a time, hanging out with ridiculously fit, confident guys who oozed testosterone. Banter and jibes were the way we’d expressed sportsmanship, built team bonds. It felt weirdly comfortable slipping back into this role. Like being a teenager again.

  Only Nathan was my coach, not my squad-mate. And I was not a teenager. I was a thirty-two-year-old mum who looked nearer to fifty. An unfit, messed-up, frumped-up, full-on failure.

  Get a grip, Amy. Know your place!

  ‘Hi, Nathan!’ the Larkabouts chorused as we reached them.

  ‘Who’s this?’ one woman asked, looking me up and down. She was probably one of Nathan’s clients. Rail thin, apart from balloon boobs bursting out of her running top, with a massive dark ponytail, taut face and wrinkled neck.

  Before I could coordinate my jellified legs to turn around and sprint right back out of there, never to return, I heard a familiar voice.

  ‘Amy! Ey up! ’Ow’s yer ankle?’ Mel barrelled through the group, which took some doing given her girth, and reached up to give me a hug, holding on until my anxiety unclenched its claws from my lungs and I could breathe again.

  ‘It’s great, thanks,’ I mumbled. ‘I like your hair.’ It was purple today, scraped into several teeny bunches all over her head.

  ‘Yeah, the girls did it.’

  I remembered from our previous conversation that Mel had two girls and three boys. Her girls were six and eight, the boys seventeen, thirteen and four. ‘Five kids, four dads,’ she’d scoffed. The first two were with her childhood sweetheart, who she’d married at eighteen. ‘Then, that monster-evil cancer got him. And I plum lost me mind with grief. I was that lonely without him, I fell from one crappy mess into another. Only good to come out of them bad years were Taylor, Tiff and Tate. Then, with Tate being the way he is and all, I woke up. Pulled meself together. Started running and met people like Dani. So, family Malone’re back on the straight and narrer now.’

  ‘Is Gordon looking after them?’ I asked. Gordon was the relief carer for her youngest son, Tate, who had a rare chromosome disorder resulting in multiple disabilities. I reckoned if Gordon was looking after all those kids at six in the morning, he might actually be an angel who simply moonlighted as a care worker for kicks.

  ‘Nah. No point. They never wake ’til I get back. And if they do, Jordan’ll stick Love Island on; they’re addicted to that crap.’

  ‘Jordan’s the eldest?’ I made no comment on my opinion about children watching Love Island. Who was I, mother of just one child, to judge?

  ‘Yeah. I call him my lifeguard. Mostly I try to let him have a normal teenage life. You know, sleepin’, eatin’, on his phone, chasin’ girls and gettin’ inter trouble. But he always spots when I’m at the end of me tether. Runs me a bath or cooks dinner. “I’ll be Mum today,” he says. Gets the younger ones playin’ Minecraft or summat. Him and the Larks, they’re the reason I’m still sane.’

  ‘Still sane?’ a young woman with gorgeous black hair tumbling round her hoodie asked, in a strong Welsh accent. ‘Who you trying to kid?’ She turned towards me. ‘Bronwyn. You must be Amy,’ she said, and gave me a massive wink with huge brown eyes.

  ‘Um.’

  ‘Yeah, Mel and Dani’ve told us all about you,’ she grinned.

  Right. Not Nathan then. No, Amy! Of course not!

  I wondered if Bronwyn was Nathan’s client, too. I could imagine them in the gym together, him correcting her squats posture. Her dabbing at the sweat on her face and neck with a tiny towel…

  ‘And this is everyone else. Everyone, Amy’
s finally turned up!’ she called. ‘I won’t bother with names; you’ll figure us out soon enough.’

  Nathan started off by taking us through a few stretches, occasionally throwing out a pointer and ignoring the comments the women shouted back, one after the other like machine guns:

  ‘You try doing that with your legs at my age!’

  ‘Blummin ’eck, Nathan, I’ve given birth to five kids, I could ’ave a go at that move, but the results wouldn’t be pretty.’

  ‘I’ve had two and I’m not going there.’

  ‘I’ve had none and I still don’t think it’s a good idea.’

  ‘No one should be attempting that at this time in the morning, love.’

  ‘No one should have to watch you attempt it…’

  ‘At any time!’

  And so it went on. Boy, these women could talk. While simultaneously jogging on the spot, sticking their faces down between their knees and, a short while later, their head torches bobbing down the old railway line towards the woods.

  Except for one woman, I’d guess not far into her twenties, who was the only one apart from me to save her breath for the run. She was tall like me, too, but with a much more solid build. One of those bodies made to carry some curves. I guessed that in the right clothes, with the right attitude, she’d make a stunning plus-sized model. Slumped at the back in a tracksuit that looked borrowed from a ’90s rapper, head down, shoulders hunched, face miserable, she appeared nearly as much of a lost, lonely loser as me.

  ‘Audrey!’ the woman with the massive fake hair and balloon boobs shrieked back at her every few hundred metres. ‘For pity’s sake, put some effort in. Even Mel’s beating you. Do you want to be fat? Stay single for the next twenty-one years?’

  ‘Shut up, Selena,’ several of the women panted.

  ‘It’s not a competition.’ Nathan had spent this first mile or so zipping up and down the line of ten runners, covering about five times the distance of anyone else, while still managing to utter words. And nice, encouraging ones at that. ‘You’re doing great, Audrey.’

  I slowed down a little to run alongside her (only a little, but still – not the slowest, even having taken over a fortnight off!). ‘She seems a bit of a cow. Is she jealous?’

  Audrey nearly choked on her own incredulity. ‘Hardly! Look at her.’

  ‘Looks like she’s desperately trying to hold on to her past looks because without them all that’s left is a mean and repugnant personality. What gives her the right to bitch at you like that? If I were you, I’d be tempted to get fit just so I could catch her up and shove her off the top.’

  Ouch, Amy, who’s the bitch now?

  Well. That Selena woman had made me really mad. I felt substantial sympathy for crushed and cowering women who came last in their running club because they felt they deserved last place in life. Out of the all the Larkabouts, I thought Audrey might make a good, non-intimidating, non-invasive friend.

  ‘She’s my mum.’

  Ah. Oh. Right.

  Time to suddenly get too out of breath to speak for a while and shrink back into the shadows where I belonged. During which time my brain would try and fail to think of something to say to somehow remedy suggesting someone murder her own mother.

  But by the time I’d thought of something (‘sorry’ – not much else I could say, really), we’d hit the steepest part of the hill, and Audrey dropped so far back I could only make out her head torch, pointing at the ground. It was impossible to stay with her without slowing to a walk. I would have swatted away my pride and walked anyway, only Nathan swooped back to jog alongside me.

  ‘How’s the ankle?’

  ‘It feels a bit unsteady, that’s all. I’m taking it easy.’

  ‘Oh, this is you taking it easy?’

  I considered the layer of perspiration plastering both my trendy bottoms and hi-tech top to my skin. Damp, straggly hair. Breath sounding like I was blowing into an invisible harmonica. Did I want Nathan to think this was my ‘taking it easy’ look?

  ‘I’ve been resting for nearly three weeks. My fitness may have regressed slightly.’ I glanced at Bronwyn, further up the hill. She was chatting away to the woman next to her, their hands gesturing like hyperactive shadow puppets. The other woman even found the strength to throw back her head and laugh.

  ‘You’re doing great. Just don’t push it too hard the first week. I don’t want you waking up so stiff tomorrow it puts you off coming back. Some of the group have been building their fitness for years.’

  I felt a prickle of anger. One thing I used to be pretty darn good at was pushing myself to the very limits, refusing to acknowledge can’t or won’t, or never. Refusing to allow pain, or tiredness, or feeling stiff to stop me from being bloody amazing. How dare this guy label me as weak or flaky. How dare he patronise me like this, telling me I’m doing great as I gasp and hobble my way through a 5K run.

  He knew nothing about me. What I was capable of. What was at stake. This is why I should have stuck to training by myself.

  I nearly turned right around and sprinted for home. Only, I knew, with a few more plodding paces up that endless, evil mountain, that the emotion steaming through my blood wasn’t anger, but embarrassment.

  I used to be pretty good. Somewhere along the way, I forgot how. If there was a chance this group could help me, I would swallow my ridiculous, misplaced pride and do my best to let them.

  It was seven when I straggled back into the village, ending up at the square instead of the leisure centre, as usually the club stopped for a drink or some breakfast in the Cup and Saucer café.

  ‘We stink the place out, mind,’ Mel told me. ‘So Chris wants us out by eight to give the fumes time to disperse.’

  We pondered that lovely thought for a few seconds, before I fudged my excuse about having to get home.

  The faster women were already finishing off their cool-down stretches, with the exception of Marjory, who had appeared old and frail enough to need a walking frame until she’d overtaken me about thirty seconds into the run. Marjory had stretched, cooled and now sat in the café window, chugging a chai latte.

  ‘Walking the last hundred metres doesn’t make it okay to skip the cool-down,’ Nathan called out, as the latecomers began drifting off. ‘Stretches, people!’ he yelled, seemingly at no one in particular.

  ‘Sorry, Nathan, I’m due in court,’ Dani shrugged, heading towards a sleek Audi parked opposite the square. ‘Some serious human rights are at stake.’

  ‘No can do, Coach, the minibeasts are awake and wanting their brekkie. I’ll do me stretches as I go, look.’ Mel started fast-walking in the opposite direction, flinging alternate arms over her head as she went.

  Audrey attempted a couple of thigh stretches while Selena hissed impatiently, ‘Watch it. If you lose your balance, I’m not risking putting my back out trying to haul you up again. You’ll have to crawl home.’

  I had very nearly used up every last drop of self-confidence in joining the Larkabouts that day. But, wow, how could any decent human being let that one go?

  ‘How can you talk to your daughter like that?’ I blurted, voice quaking. ‘How is that helpful? You should be encouraging her, supporting her with love… and… and kindness and…’

  ‘It’s fine,’ Audrey interrupted in a dull monotone. ‘Mum’s right. I have terrible balance.’

  She trudged over to the café while I gaped in horrified disbelief and Selena smirked. ‘It’s called knowing your limits,’ she faux-whispered, pulling open the café door. ‘Try it sometime. Because you know what isn’t helpful? Butting your nose into other people’s business.’

  She disappeared inside, leaving me rubbing at both arms as if that would help brush off the horrible words, before turning towards home.

  ‘Nah-ah, Amy. Cool-down, first.’

  Nathan jogged past, forcing me to come to a stop when he planted himself in front of me.

  ‘If you skip it, your muscles will make you pay later.’ He smiled, ey
es glinting in the café lights.

  I scanned the sky behind him. The sun wasn’t up yet, but dawn was well on its way.

  ‘I need to head back, make sure Joey’s up. He wants an hour in the pool this morning.’

  And I didn’t want to spend one second in the village square trying to force my body into unnatural contortions in front of a highly attractive personal trainer who knew what a wimp I was. I did a mental shudder at the image of me being the one to lose my balance, having to crawl home after Nathan put his back out trying to haul me up again.

  Nathan shook his head, wincing. ‘Please don’t go home and collapse into a chair without stretching out properly. You can trust me on this.’

  ‘I know how to cool-down. And I know it’s important. I might not look like it, but you can trust me on this.’ I started to back away, picking up my pace as I reached the pavement. ‘See, I’m not even finished yet. There’s no point cooling down if I’m still running, is there?’

  ‘I’m going to ask Joey later!’ Nathan yelled after me. ‘Five minutes minimum or next time I’ll follow you to make sure.’

  That’s a big assumption, talking about next time, I huffed as I raced against the sunrise.

  A gust of autumn wind hit my face. It smelled of crunchy leaves and muddy fields. Dirt and pure, wild freedom mixed together.

  Who was I kidding? The run was the easy bit – hanging out with real life people for an hour, chatting with them, smiling, learning from them and not a single terrible thing happening to ruin it? Each one of the emotions powering through my bloodstream like a herd of marathon runners – jubilation, joy, worry, amazement, grief, hope, bewilderment – showed up my recent existence as the numbed-up, limping, nothing of a half-life it really was.

  Let alone that according to my cheapo imitation Fitbit, I had a new personal best to beat.

  I couldn’t wait to Larkabout next time.

  19