January 2014
‘I had to see you, I missed you so much!’
It is a grey wintry start to a new and exciting year. Catherine tightens her legs around Simon’s waist and they kiss frantically. She breaks off and looks up and around from under her hat, although it is Simon who is playing a dangerous game. He is a school governor, he runs the local triathlon club and his wife Laura has friends in most of the cafes and tea rooms in Hazelworth, none of which are open on New Year’s Day.
Catherine squeezes his muscly Lycra-clad thigh, open and cocksure, lapping up her lover.
‘I was so lonely without you at Christmas!’ she says.
‘Me too.’ Frantic hands grope cold small breasts.
Catherine feels bad for Simon’s children – who are all still asleep, unknowing that Daddy has gone for a run – little Esmée nestled into her mummy’s back with her legs horizontal across the space where her dad lay. Catherine doesn’t feel too bad though.
‘What did she get you for Christmas?’
‘Don’t talk about Laura, we don’t have long.’
‘Well I got you this,’ Catherine says with a mischievous, competitive smile as she takes an envelope from her pocket with Eurostar written on the front in a curly script. ‘I have to go to Brussels next week for work. Please say you can come with me. Two nights at the Steigenberger. Me. Naked. With a bow on if you like.’
Lycra stretches. Teeth clatter.
‘Fuck you’re amazing. I’ll see what I can do.’
*
Maya wakes to the buzz of the radio. Nick Cave. ‘Get Ready For Love’. The world outside is grey and still and she wonders why she set the radio at all. She scrapes long waves back off her face and into a messy bun high on the crown of her head and walks to the tall wardrobe at the top of the tall maisonette. She sheds her thermals and drops them to the whitewashed floorboards before putting on a white sports bra, a coral pink vest and deep purple tights, then throws a grey long-sleeved top over her head and shoulders. Eyes barely open.
Maya skips down the first flight of stairs, the one that turns a corner as she goes, and into the high-ceilinged bathroom on the landing below, then down another small flight of stairs into the kitchen. She looks out of the window onto the junction and roundabout two streets away below. No cars. The gastro pub with the pretty hanging baskets is closed. Commuters don’t hurry across the zebra crossing. Maya already knows how this day will pan out. The sky has a still greyness about it that will linger until it gets dark at 4.01 p.m. The sun won’t burn through. Birds won’t chirrup. It feels like the sort of day that, unless Maya makes any effort, she knows she will spend alone.
Maya takes a bite of honeyed toast with a dry mouth and thirst consumes her. She looks around the kitchen. The water glass she forgot to take to bed last night sits by the sink. A wire rack on the opposite counter displays the offcuts of macaron failure. Dented, blistered, cracked. Maya looks at the broken pistachio shells on the kitchen worktop, but, smiles to herself as she remembers the perfect ones she ended the year making, before going for a meal out, sitting in the freezer now.
I think I’ve nailed it.
Maya takes a final bite of toast before leaving the rest for her return and carefully slopes, eyes not yet fully ready for this New Year, down the longest flight of stairs to her trainers on the black and white checked floor by a stained-glass front door. As she laces up her trainers Maya knows she will feel so much better after her run.
When Maya’s hair turned wavy and Jacob and Florian brought her back to the place she was born, their father Herbert Flowers inspired her to run, citing it as a cure for all ills, but mostly a great opportunity to write haiku. Maya hated those first months of fatigue and thumping. Lump, sweat, wheeze. But on seeing her dad’s upbeat silhouette through the glass in the front door of Jacob’s house, and hearing his chuckles of glee as their feet hit the pavement in unison, she didn’t have the heart to let him know she wasn’t enjoying it. Besides, Maya couldn’t give up; she is one of four children, running was rare time spent alone with her father. As the pair began to run more fluidly, Herbert started to suggest a haiku theme for each run and the two would plod silently side by side. Father hearing the sound of one hand clapping, daughter trying not to let him see her counting syllables on her fingers. Hours later, with tired but satisfied limbs, they would text each other a poem they had created. Maya would always press send self-consciously, worried that Herbert would think it was prose rather than poetry, or that she might have miscounted the syllables. She needn’t have. She couldn’t see it but Herbert always loved them, kicking one leg in the air in delight as he read Maya’s haikus out loud to Dolores from his armchair.
Running worked. Her father was right about its curative powers. As Herbert pencilled more and more haikus into his lined A5 notebook, Maya ran stronger, seasons changed, and she soon forgot she was ever broken.
At times, father and daughter would run side by side under an inky sky, not saying a word but breathing in the same Flowers rhythm and puff. Other times Maya would struggle, running behind her father so she could visualise him giving her a piggyback. He’d carry her home while she looked at the criss-cross lines on the back of his pineapple neck, although the comfort he brought made her feel like she was already there. Same short legs under a long lean and muscular back. Same funny flat feet that slightly opened outwards. Same wavy hair, although Maya’s flowed behind her while Herbert’s bounced above.
Those runs with her father were precious, but as Herbert’s knees weakened and Maya’s life became busier with work and teaching, they stopped running together as much. Herbert’s silhouette doesn’t wait through the stained glass of her new front door now and Maya doesn’t run up to the symmetrical house on the hill. The house that still has the dusty bookshelf in the bedroom, although the wooden figures have disappeared to no-one-knows-where. Father and daughter don’t run to the common where the Flowers children used to climb trees, past the tennis courts and rose fields and down the hill to Hazelworth’s market square and back. Herbert Flowers doesn’t hold out his finger for Maya to squeeze in farewell as she peels off down the road back to Jacob’s house, seeing her future ahead of her. She occasionally creates haikus, but mostly forgets to send them.
Strong and alone now, Maya runs her street, her route. She runs, turning right out of the road lined with spiky bare hazel trees, onto the zebra crossing by the roundabout and left down the thoroughfare that takes you into the centre of Hazelworth and the market square. The spire of the church looks down disapprovingly at bottles and pint glasses strewn on pavements from last night’s revelry. Maya runs more carefully across the cobbles and down a winding street where sparkling blue bunting crosses overhead, past the florist with slate love hearts in the window; the bridal shop with dresses that look like edible confections; the antiquated barber’s shop; the French-style bakery whose metal shelves are void of rosemary bread and cinnamon swirls today.
Those first few minutes of a run are always the hardest, but Maya finds her stride as she turns left past the puddings parlour onto a road that runs along a river. Tudor buildings house solicitors’ offices and hair salons and Maya passes a road sweeper heading in the other direction. Maya sees the path to a hill that overlooks the centre of the town and decides to start the year on a positive note and conquer it. Legs have awoken and funny feet feel unstoppable.
One of Herbert Flowers’ many mantras flashes in her mind as she leans into the hill and up towards the site of the long-since burned-down windmill at the top.
Imagine a hand at the base of your spine, encouraging you along.
Breathing becomes more difficult at the summit as Maya winds along a path between two rolling expanses of damp grass, silent and lifeless apart from a squirrel to the left and two lovers kissing frantically on a bench in front of her. The town is behind her. Maya glances back. She wishes she could pinpoint Train Man. He turns right out of the station, she turns left. Where is he sleeping? Who might he love?
*
The New Year view from Primrose Hill is more resplendent, more full of hope. London’s skyline looks postcard perfect, even under the grey sky there is an autumnal feel about this chilly midwinter morning and trees still show orange flare in the last dying months of winter. A little boy tries to whizz through the grass on a shiny new scooter, shades of orange and purple stalling under chubby little legs. He looks up at his dad with pleading eyes and a snotty nose.
‘You need to go on the path with it, Arlimoo,’ says a loud and loving voice.
‘You come with meeee,’ asks the boy, although it’s more of an instruction.
‘I’ll go,’ says Nena, jumping up from the bench as she twists her hair in a bun. Black hareem pants and bright trainers dart across the grass to guide the scooter with the boy surfing on it back onto the path.
Tom observes, long arms outstretched, resting on the top of the bench, huge smile on his face.
‘OK, put this foot on the flat bit and your other foot on the floor…’ Nena’s small muscular legs provide a back support for Arlo as she surrounds him to help position him on his favourite Christmas present.
Tom watches Nena move around his son, mesmerised by the way she arches and leans. Nena moves in front of the scooter facing Arlo and crouches down, nose to nose.
‘OK, ready? When I count to three you will start using this lovely strong leg to power yourself forward, OK?’
‘Yeth,’ nods Arlo, as enchanted as his daddy.
‘One… two… three!’ Nena tugs the handlebars as she glides backwards, pulling Arlo towards her, who starts to scoot as she runs even faster.
‘Careful Arlimoo!’ shouts Tom from the bench.
A shiny brown bowl cut becomes ruffled in the wind, as a beaming face, with a gap between two top teeth, advances towards Nena. Proud, cold, rosy.
‘Arghhhh, you’re so good I don’t think I can keep up…’ Nena laughs, still running backwards, bent down to eye level with Arlo, who is scooting with all the strength he has in his little right leg.
Arlo tires and puts both feet on the board while Nena slows him down. As he draws to a stop, she pretends to fall backwards and rolls acrobatically three times on her black leather biker jacket.
‘Ouchy! You sent me spinning!’
Arlo giggles the delightful gurgles of a boy whose father’s happiness is rubbing off on him.
Nena looks at his round, contended face and marvels at how she can be up and out at 9 a.m. on New Year’s Day and feel so alive. ‘Arghhhhh you’re so fast you knocked me over!’
Tom runs over and wraps warming arms around them both. His flat cap blows off in the wind to roars of laughter.
‘Come on, let’s get hot chocolate and marshmallows.’