Chris Cleave Ebook Boxed Set (104 page)

Kate picked her up, and Sophie clung to her and laid her head on Kate’s shoulder. Kate stood with her for a long time. Then Sophie reached out to Jack, and he took her and rocked her and whispered into her ear.

Kate walked to the window and looked down on the street where a crowd of cameras was already gathering.

Tom went over to her. He said quietly, “More than anyone, I know what you’ve gone through to get to these Olympics and I know what it will cost you to walk away. In a few hours you will get on a plane with your daughter, and doing that will hurt more than childbirth. And do you know what? This is how you’ll know you’re her mother.”

Kate leaned gently against him. “Thank you,” she whispered. Tears welled in her eyes.

“You can do this,” Tom told her. “You can make your daughter better. The doctors tell me it’ll be a hard and painful and slow road, but she is going to get well again.”

“I know I can do a hard road,” she said. “I know I can do a painful one. But you’ll have to help me deal with slow.”

As the sun sank below the bowed roofs of the terrace, Jack ran Sophie a bath and helped her get undressed. She was listless and vacant in the tub. She sat upright and twisted the flannel halfheartedly between her hands while Jack made up a story for her. He had Luke Skywalker and Han Solo pilot the
Millennium Falcon
through a difficult asteroid belt. Doing all the actions and sound effects himself, he had the two heroes beat overwhelming odds to defeat an attack fleet of TIE fighters. Then, since none of it provoked a response from Sophie, he had the exultant Han and Luke kiss passionately in the cargo bay of the
Falcon
. They were surprised in the act by Chewbacca, whose rage response showed that he had old-fashioned views on human love, which were typical of his species and yet unbecoming in such a well-traveled Wookiee.

Jack watched Sophie’s face but she only stared, glassy-eyed, at the taps.

“Are you even listening, missy?”

He snapped his fingers. “Hey! Earth to Sophie Argall. Come in, Sophie!”

She turned her head slowly and squinted at him. Her expression was that of a naturalist who thought—but was not entirely sure—that she might have detected the outline of a well-camouflaged creature amidst the foliage.

“What?” she said.

“Are you okay, darling?”

She closed her eyes. “I just want to go to bed, please.”

Her voice was a whisper that barely carried over the buzz of the extractor fan in the bathroom.

Jack lifted her out of the bath, toweled her, pajama’d her, and sat her on his knee to clean her teeth.

“It’s going to be alright, honey,” he told her. “You’re going to be okay.”

“Yeah,” she said.

He kissed her on the forehead. Her skin was hot, but maybe it was just from the bath.

“Think you’ve got a temperature?”

She shrugged.

Jack found the digital thermometer in the bathroom cabinet and took a reading in her ear. The little screen said 101.5.

“I’m going to give you some Calpol,” he said. “I don’t want you to tell Mum, okay?”

“Why?”

“Because she’s got a big race tomorrow. We don’t want her to worry about a little thing like this, do we?”

Sophie shrugged again. “I’m fine,” she said, but she let Jack feed her two spoonfuls of the liquid paracetamol.

He put her to bed and she went down without a murmur. She felt hotter than she had before. He knew he should say something to Kate, and at the same time, he knew he shouldn’t. He sat on the top stair for a long time, thinking it over before he went down.

Kate was sitting at the kitchen table with her eyes closed and her hands gripping the table edge, leaning to the left in her chair.

“Tea?” he said softly.

She frowned, still with her eyes closed. “Shh. I’m visualizing.”

He touched her on the shoulder. “Visualize a cup of tea?”

She leaned her head against his arm. “Yeah, go on then.”

He busied himself with the kettle and the teapot.

When he came back to the table, Kate said, “How was Sophie?”

He put the teapot down. “Great. We were doing a story and she loved it.”

Kate poured a cup and blew on it. “I have trained you to use a teapot, Jack Argall. Of all that I have achieved, this will be my legacy.”

He studied her face. “You okay?”

“Excited. I think I can beat her.”

“I think you can too. Just don’t do what I did in Beijing.”

She smiled and held his hand. “It’s different now. Sophie’s getting better.”

“Yeah,” he said, brightly.

He looked down at their hands, entwined on the tabletop.

In his first heat in Beijing, he’d lined up against one of the French riders; he hadn’t even learned his name. He’d shaken his hand on the start line and tried out his French on the guy, in the name of international relations. He’d said, “
Bonjour,
feller.” The Frenchman had smiled but he’d looked scared shitless. Jack had felt sorry for him, coming up against Jack Argall in the first round.

That velodrome in Beijing was astonishing. It was packed. There were twenty thousand men, women, and children in the stands, and half of them were taking photos. As the clock counted down to the start, the camera flashes increased like the souls of the saved until they weren’t individual points anymore but one great urgent web of light, shimmering and pulsating across the surface of the crowd like the signals flowing over the skin of a creature from the deep. And the roar the crowd made—it was colossal. It gave Jack the fear. He had earphones on inside his helmet, and an iPod tucked into the sleeve of his skinsuit. He was listening to the Drambuie Kirkliston Pipe Band blasting out “Battle of Killiecrankie.” That was a tune to make the devil afraid, but it wasn’t enough to drown out the din of the crowd. The whole surface of the track was trembling. He could feel the buzz of the crowd transmitted right up the seat tube of the bike and through the rigid carbon saddle to
his arse. The insides of his lungs vibrated with it. His teeth hummed as if they were picking up radio. The atmosphere sliced through his nerves and pulled them free from his carcass and discarded them like the string from a Sunday roast.

Trackside, there were TV cameras everywhere. They had a camera on a zip wire that hovered in to a foot in front of his face, like a huge black wasp. It showed his face, twenty meters high on the gigantic screen they had there, suspended above the center of the velodrome. He had his helmet on with the blue silvered visor that came all the way down past his nose, so naturally he gave the crowd his Judge Dredd face. And they loved it, and they gave him a cheer and stamped their feet till the whole venue shook.

He looked across to the Team GB support crew in the technical area. His coach was giving him the hand signals to calm down, to focus on the countdown and stop playing with the crowd. So naturally Jack raised his hands high above his head and began to clap out a rhythm in time with the music in his ears. The crowd roared even louder. They clapped when he clapped. The noise was incredible. Twenty thousand souls from every nation on Earth clapping out the rhythm to the “Battle of Killiecrankie.” It was possible to forget, just momentarily, that Sophie was five thousand miles away, in a small room, starting chemo.

Playing with the crowd, he grinned. He watched himself clapping on the massive screen. It showed him in slow-mo. The muscles punched out so hard each time his arms engaged, there looked to be an alien under his skin, fighting to get out.
Christ
, he thought,
I really am stupendously strong.
The camera zipped in close to his face again, and without thinking about it he yelled, “This is for you! Get well soon, Sophie!”

He looked across at the GB crew. Next to his coach was the mechanic. Two hours before Jack had even showed up, this guy had been here to disassemble his bike, clean it, lubricate it, and reassemble it, using a chart recording his setup preferences to the half millimeter. The man had cranked every Allen bolt to within 0.5 percent of its optimal
tightness using a digital torque wrench. Then he’d examined Jack’s tires, inch by inch, with a magnifying glass, looking for the tiniest sign of damage. If he found anything, he replaced the tire and started again. One hour before Jack had left the hotel, his coach had showed up at the velodrome, checked the mechanic’s work, and made sure there were clean towels trackside and a static warm-down bike ready and cleaned for after the heat. Next to his coach and the mechanic was the assistant coach. Half an hour before Jack had arrived, the assistant had turned up with an insulated bag containing isotonic energy drinks for use during his warm-up and high-protein recovery drinks for after the heat. All these drinks were brought to body temperature, in order to place the minimum physiological stress on his system. Next to the assistant coach was the team physio. He’d been monitoring Jack’s pre-warm-up stretches and preparing the massage room for after his postheat shower. Next to the physio was the GB medic, and he was on station in order to respond within fifteen seconds in the event that Jack should crash or collapse or go into some kind of seizure induced by the combination of adrenaline, twenty thousand cheering human beings clapping to his rhythm, and a bagpipe tune commemorating a victory by the forces of James VII of Scotland over William of Orange of England. Jack wasn’t sure what the medical term for that would be.

He looked at all of these people—all of this apparatus that was supposed to make him win—and a hollow feeling grew in his stomach. He couldn’t keep his focus away from the fact that Kate and Sophie were riding a harder race. The bagpipes careened around his head. The crowd drowned out the drone notes. He tried to keep his head in the game, but a chill was quickening inside him.

Two things happened then. One, the French guy rode away from the start line. Two, Jack’s coach started making frantic hand signals, pointing at the disappearing Frenchman as he rode off down the track. Jack was thinking,
That’s inexperience for you. The poor bastard’s so nervy, he’s gone before the whistle.
But his coach was still waving his hands and
shouting, and the French rider was twenty meters down the track and looking back over his shoulder. Jack was thinking,
The guy’s going to see what’s happened, and he’ll have to turn around and come back to the start line, which will be mighty embarrassing even for a man accustomed to the popular music of Johnny Hallyday and Jean Michel Jarre.
But the guy didn’t turn round. He put his head down instead and sped up. So Jack turned off his iPod to get a better idea of what was happening. That’s when he heard the entire crowd falling into a sickening silence. In the sudden quiet his coach was shrieking at him to
“Go! Go! Go!”

Shit
, he thought,
I’ve only gone and missed the start.
But he knew that with the kind of effort he was easily capable of putting in, he could still catch the French rider. He was calm. He popped up from the saddle and powered down onto the cranks. The Frenchman had fifty meters on him, and he’d abandoned any tactics: he’d seen his chance and he was just going flat out for the line. Jack dug deep. He put everything into the chase, and by the end of the first lap the gap was down to thirty meters. He could feel his face contorted with pain, but it was working. As he crossed the lap line, his coach gave him a double thumbs-up from trackside.

He wound it up even harder, forcing that last fraction of one percent out of his body. He was getting there. The frame of the bike was flexing with each pedal stroke. It was the stiffest bike ever built, and it couldn’t cope with the power he was laying down. By the end of the second lap, the Frenchman was only ten meters ahead. Jack’s heart rate was at 195, power at over one thousand watts. The journalists covering the race from the press pit could have run a two-bar electric heater off him and still had enough power left over to drive their laptops. Jack was thinking,
This is what they will write about me: Awesome, awesome, awesome.

And then he thought,
Sophie.

A picture formed in his mind. He was alone in a room, holding Sophie’s hand as she lay absolutely still. It was hard to tell, from the picture, if she was alive or dead. The image snatched his breath and broke
his rhythm. He lurched, and for a moment he stopped gaining on the French rider.

He tried to get back on the pace.
Pedal pedal pedal. Breathe breathe breathe.

But the image came back to him, more distinct now. Sophie’s hand in his, her face a mask of stillness.

His coach was making more frantic gestures from trackside. He was shouting,
“Step it up! Step it up!”
At the end of the third lap, Jack was twenty meters behind. He wound it up as hard as he could, and his coach was shouting,
“Let’s go, Jack, that’s it!”

The picture came back.

He couldn’t block it out anymore. All the force poured out of him, as if someone had pulled plugs from drain holes in the soles of his feet. The Frenchman beat him by forty-five meters. Jack was only just coming out of the curve onto the home straight when he saw him cross the line with his hands in the air.

The crowd was very quiet. There was a stillness in the velodrome. The humidity was overwhelming. Sweat poured off Jack in hot sheets. He slowed to a halt over two laps and grabbed the trackside rail to lean on. His chest was heaving. He was too exhausted to even get off the bike. The medic raced over with his bag. His coach ran up and put an arm around his shoulders.

“The fuck just happened there, Jack? Are you okay? The fuck was that all about?”

The pain was burning all through him. It was agony—he realized he was actually groaning. The medic was asking him could he tell him the name of the prime minister? He had a stethoscope on Jack’s chest. Dave was in his face asking was he alright? He sat there with his body shaking and he let the physio cool him down with a sponge, like you’d do with a racehorse.

His mind kept lurching between the moment and that terrible room where he’d sat holding Sophie’s motionless hand. He was so frightened
and confused he could have screamed. This was how a bull in a bullfight felt, bleeding from all the lances. He wanted to destroy things. He wanted to die right there, by the side of the track. He wanted the world to be burned to ashes and all of the people to be gone and nature to start again without him.