Chris Cleave Ebook Boxed Set (91 page)

“It’s on you, feller. I’m only married to her.”

Tom kept his eyes on Jack’s. “You didn’t know how to tell her, right?”

“Something like that.”

“Me neither,” Tom said, dropping his eyes. “It’s a bloody shame, is what it is.”

“You know how they’re going to work it yet?”

Tom shrugged. “There’ll be a formal qualifier for the place. In three months’ time, a few weeks out from the Games. We’ll see which one of them is quicker on the day.”

“You got a hunch?”

“Don’t ask me that.”

“But have you?”

Tom kept his face neutral. “Three months is a long time, isn’t it?”

Jack felt his stomach go. “You think it’s Zoe.”

Tom didn’t answer. He turned away to watch Zoe riding. She was working half sprints now, slowing the bike on the straights and then powering up to enter the bends at speed before easing it back down again. She was keeping it loose and fluid, still warming up, not maxing out. She looked completely in charge.

They watched her in silence for a few laps.

“You confident about winning your own place?” Tom said finally.

“Sure,” said Jack.

Tom nodded, his eyes still on Zoe. “I was talking with Dave just now. He said you were ‘quietly confident.’”

“I don’t know about quiet. I told him I could turn up at the qualifiers with a BMX and a drogue parachute and still lap the other guys.”

“You always were a cocky bastard.”

“I used to be worse.”

Tom turned to him. “I remember. What I’ve never figured out, though, is why you race. You don’t fit the mold. Kate, she wants to know that she’s done her best and she wants to make you and Sophie proud. Zoe, it’s like she’s pursued. I mean she’s more scared of losing than she’s glad about winning. But you, it’s like you only race at this level because you can.”

Jack grinned. “I only race at this level because I got kicked out of Scotland.”

Tom laughed.

“What, did I never tell you the story?”

Tom shook his head.

“I started riding when I was maybe ten,” said Jack. “I was into the street racing up in Leith, and we used to crash every day. Pops got sick of taking me to A&E, so he talked me onto a Scottish Cycling program. Decided I’d be safer racing indoors. And Pops was a chain-smoker; I mean I can only imagine him sitting in the coach’s office, reeking of cancer and telling him what a healthy wee family we were. Anyway, they gave me a proper bike and I beat every junior in Scotland. Pursuit, sprint, any individual event—it didn’t matter. I was physically incapable of losing. I hit sixteen and the coaches were feeding me substances hitherto unknown—you know: vegetables and fruit. Feeding me properly was like cheating, that was what the main coach told Pops. Riders were giving up competing against me at that point, and races were getting canceled all across the Highlands and Lowlands. That was when all the Scotch coaches got themselves together for a parley. They said to themselves, ‘For the sake of our own careers, we have to get this young man out of Scotland.’”

“And that’s how your call-up came for British Cycling?”

“I didn’t even want to go. I was mostly out on the town, chasing girls, and I got home off my head one night and this letter was waiting for me. I’d been entered for the Elite Prospects Programme at the Manchester Velodrome, and could I please bring with me a towel, a wash kit, and appropriate riding clothes for a full day of racing. I guess you wrote the thing yourself, right? And at breakfast I had a hangover and Pops said, ‘What was that letter?’ And I was like, ‘It is from the English, Father. They are begging me to be their lawful king.’ And Pops said, ‘No, but seriously?’ And I told him what the letter was and how I wasn’t going to go to Manchester. I mean, it had never occurred to me to leave Scotland, the same way it had never occurred to me to leave my senses.”

“So what persuaded you?”

Jack smiled. “What Pops did was, he got on the phone. A fortnight later, the day before Prospects, a pal of his knocked on the front door and this pal just happened to be the former light middleweight champion of the whole of Scotland and the Outer Isles. You know the kind of guy, I mean he had tattoos on his neck and his arms depicting imaginative acts of violence. Jim was his name. I answered the door and Jim grinned at me with these two rows of gold teeth. And Pops said, ‘Jim’s here to put you on the train to Manchester.’ I tried to do a runner, but Jim grabbed hold of me. He was like, ‘You’ll enjoy England,’ and I was like, ‘No, I fucking won’t.’ So Jim grabbed the back of my hair and stood me up off the floor and squashed my face against the wall. ‘You’ll like England,’ he said. ‘The climate is mild and the folks have delightful manners, which it shall be their gentle pleasure to teach you.’ And I was gasping for air by this point so I just went, ‘Yes, yes, I’m sure I shall love it terrifically.’ And Pops said this thing that’s always stayed with me. He said, ‘It’s for your own good, Jack. I will not see you end up like me.’ And I said, ‘But I like you, Pops.’ And he said, ‘Well, you’ll like me more when you win gold.’”

“And did you?”

Jack sighed, watching Zoe making her slow loops around the track.

“I never told him how much it meant to me, and of course he died the year after Athens. Gasping his lungs out through an oxygen mask. If it hadn’t been for what he did, I’d be headed the same way.”

“Mate,” said Tom, “sounds like he wasn’t all bad.”

Jack watched Zoe as she leaned into another fluid lap. “You do what you can, don’t you?” he said finally.

Kate emerged onto the trackside in a blue skinsuit, tying her hair back. She hurried up to Tom and kissed him on both cheeks.

“Sorry,” she said.

Tom tapped his watch. “Nine minutes late, honey.”

“Sorry, there was traffic and—”

“It was my fault,” Jack said. “I was late to take over with Sophie and—”

Tom silenced him with one raised finger and used his eyes to push him back outside the technical area. Now that the training session was on, the dynamic had shifted.

“We got your bike ready,” Tom told Kate. “On the off chance you were planning to show up.”

He pointed out a heavy black butcher’s bicycle with a huge wicker delivery basket on the front, propped up on its kickstand beside the warm-down bikes in the center of the velodrome.

Kate groaned. “You’re not actually going to make me, are you?”

“Count yourself lucky. If you’re late one more time, I’ll make you race on it.”

Kate sagged her shoulders theatrically and walked over to collect the bike. It was a long-established penalty—for every minute you were late, you did a warm-up lap on the butcher’s bike. As Kate wheeled the bike up to the track, Zoe, still circling, took her hands off the bars and began a slow handclap that echoed around the empty velodrome. Kate winked across at Sophie.

“Want to come for a ride?” she said.

Sophie’s eyes widened. “Can I?”

Kate wheeled the bike over to where she was sitting, and held it up while Jack lifted Sophie carefully into the wicker basket on the front.

“You okay, big girl?”

Sophie nodded and clung to the rim of the basket, only half-sure.

“You’ll be fine.”

Jack steadied the bike as Kate climbed on and eased it out onto the track. She kept it steady and careful, hugging the black line at the bottom of the track, and a slow grin spread across Sophie’s face. Zoe played along with it, swooping down towards them, overtaking, and then allowing herself to be overtaken in return. She swerved and twisted in their slipstream while Sophie yelled with delight and called to Kate to ride faster.

Sophie opened the throttle on the repulsorlift engine and sent the speeder bike flashing between the trees. The airstream felt good on her face as the acceleration kicked in. Behind her own machine, an Imperial scout was giving chase. Sophie gripped the handlebars tight and threw in some evasive maneuvers. This Imperial scout was good. Whatever Sophie did, the following bike matched her turn for turn. Her pursuer seemed to know what Sophie was going to do, almost before she knew it herself. Sophie felt a sense of awe along with the excitement. This wasn’t just any Imperial soldier. Maybe this was Vader himself.

“Faster!” she shouted, and she felt the speeder bike accelerate.

Down on the forest floor the droid C-3PO was looking concerned, anxious bag of bolts that he was.
Are you sure you know how to ride that thing safely?
That’s what his silly mechanical face seemed to say.

“Relax,” came Han Solo’s voice through the rushing air. “A joyride isn’t supposed to be safe.”

Jack’s chest tightened as he watched the three of them riding, and he was relieved when Zoe glanced across at him. He implored her with his eyes. She stared at him for a moment, inscrutable behind her visor, and he shivered.

He was relieved when she called off her mock pursuit. She pulled alongside Kate and Sophie, matched their pace, and started up a running commentary in the style of the TV pundits.

“And Sophie Argall is in the lead as they go into the straight. This has to be the most awesome performance by an eight-year-old that the Olympics have ever seen. She’s destroying the opposition now, and
watch that determination on her face as she powers around that final bend, and now here she is in the home straight. Can she make it? They said it was impossible but oh my goodness she’s done it, the girl wonder from Manchester, she’s only gone and taken gold!”

As they crossed the finish line, Sophie raised her arms in a victory salute. Jack noted Zoe’s smile beneath the line of her visor as she peeled off to carry on her warm-up. It was rare to see Zoe connect with Sophie like that. It was rare to see her connect with anyone.

He lifted Sophie carefully out of the basket and sat down with her by the track. The excitement had left her shattered. Jack pulled the fleece blanket back around her and held her on his lap.

He watched Kate and Zoe sparring. Kate got her real bike up to speed for a few laps and then Tom had the two of them do power intervals—ten seconds at full exertion followed by a minute to bring the heart rate back down. Jack kept his arms around Sophie as he watched. Every time the two riders flashed past, Sophie whispered, “Come on, Mum, you’re so much quicker!”

Watching the two women, Jack wasn’t sure. It had never been easy to choose between them.

In the hospital, after the crash, Zoe had held his hand. He’d woken up from anesthesia and seen her looking down at him with an expression more like sarcasm than sympathy.

“You took your sweet time,” she said.

“To…?”

“To be conscious. I got so bored.”

Jack glanced around. It seemed from the many beds with their green sheets and modesty curtains that they were on a hospital ward, or in some kind of budget hotel concept that probably shouldn’t catch on. The girl was saying she was sorry for some crash.

Jack said, “What crash?”

Concussion had set him back a couple of days. He half recognized
Zoe, though. Remembered her name, even, but not where he knew her from. He found himself smiling at her. It seemed safest. He remembered having had an argument with her once. Either recently or long ago. Maybe he’d been very drunk. Maybe he still was—maybe that was the problem. He wondered why she was holding his hand.

“Sorry, are we… going out or something?”

She smiled and shook her head.

“Would you like us to? You’re very attractive.”

“God,” she said. “You’re ridiculous.”

She didn’t stop smiling though, and they began talking. She told him how they’d fought at the velodrome, and yes, he remembered it now. He remembered her hitting him, in a rage. He must have pushed all her buttons.

She seemed different now. All of the hardness he remembered, it melted away as she talked. She was beautiful. She struck him as kind of sad, or maybe angry, or maybe she was just talking about fetching tea and a biscuit—he was finding it hard to follow her words. Her voice was slipping in and out of phase like the rainbow of sounds at the end of “Bold as Love.” And all the while here was a white thing in a green sling angling up and away from him. After the longest time he realized that the white thing was his own leg, in plaster, suspended from the ceiling on a chain. This was a weird place to put it. He could see his toes sticking out from the plaster cast, and by making the right movements in his brain, he could make the toes wiggle. It was hard though—it made him cross-eyed with concentration, like bringing a plane in to land. Just wiggling his own toes. He laughed, interrupting whatever she was saying.

“What?” she said, irritated.

“My
leg
!” he said, incredulous. “The fuck is it doing up there?”

She began explaining the crash to him again, but he cut her off.

“Just feel under my blanket,” he said. “See if this leg’s still attached to me, at least.”

“Under your blanket?” She smirked. “You’ll be lucky.”

He grinned back. “Can’t blame a man for trying.”

“Are you always like this?”

The question confused him. The morphine was wearing off. He lost his train of thought and noticed his broken leg all over again. This time, it hurt.

He looked up and saw Zoe more clearly now. Pale, intense, head shaved like a penitent.

“Tell me about you,” he said. It was something you were meant to say, and he said it to give himself some time.

Her green eyes stared off into space. “Ah, you don’t want to know.”

“I do.”

Her eyes snapped back down to his and he saw a flash of anger, but it quickly dissolved into uncertainty. “Yeah?”

He felt sorry for bringing that expression to her face. She couldn’t work out if he was playing with her.

He squeezed her hand. “Really.”

Something in her eyes closed itself off, and she laughed. “Forget it.”

When she laughed it unsettled him. Her eyes did something different from her face.

A nurse came and gave him more morphine.