Chapter twenty-one #2
‘Yes?’ I wasn’t sure what she was asking.
‘No, really. You can tell me.’ She made that sympathetic squinchy face.
‘Why wouldn’t I be OK?’
‘You just seem like you might not be feeling well?’ Head-tilt of concern. ‘You weren’t at the meeting this morning?’
‘I’m fine,’ I said defensively. Had she somehow intuited my Fraser humiliation? ‘I slept in a little bit.’
‘Aw. Did you? It’s just that . . .’ Natasha touched my arm as if to steer me away from the searching eyes of the office and into the safety of the kitchen.
She dropped her voice to a concerned, but still audible to the nearest desk, murmur.
‘Beth. Did you know you’ve come into work in your pyjamas? ’
‘These aren’t pyjamas,’ I informed her. ‘They’re harem pants.’
The sympathetic face squinched even further. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes.’ My cheeks burned.
‘OK. Well, look, I say this with love, Beth, but, as your friend, they’re not doing anything for you. They make you look a bit . . . Nelly the Elephant. And they’re not really appropriate for a professional workplace.’
‘Fuck off, Natasha,’ I said.
My voice sounded so crisp. And how enjoyable it was to say those words after only thinking them for so long.
She started back, as if I’d shoved her.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘These are perfectly good Hush harems from last season, I’m not holding a client meeting today, which is why I am not dressed for a client meeting, and, in any case, it’s never appropriate to body-shame your colleagues.’
‘I wasn’t body-shaming you!’ She glanced around to make sure there were witnesses. ‘I wasn’t body-shaming her!’
Susannah, who’d been my graduate mentee before Covid, was taking a call at desk seven but now looked up from her keyboard. She didn’t speak, but she gave Natasha a quizzical head-tilt, and that was enough.
‘Susannah!’ she protested dramatically. ‘Oh my God! No!’
And Natasha was going to be my new boss, I realised. I’d have to deal with her passive-aggressive drama every single day, undermining what little confidence I had.
No. No. No.
I let my gaze travel around the office I’d once enjoyed working in, now full of strangers sitting at uncomfortable desks. It wasn’t just the décor that had changed. The atmosphere had changed. The direction had changed. Would I apply for a job here now? No, I would not.
The fog swirled in my head, but began to lift, blown away by the rising wind of this strange rage.
What right did Natasha have to be so rude about me? She was hardly Grace Kelly herself. There was a line along her jaw where she hadn’t blended her foundation in properly.
‘This isn’t like you, Beth. You don’t look well,’ said Natasha, with faux concern, again making sure everyone could see she was being gracious.
‘You’re right,’ I said. ‘I should probably fuck off.’
So I did.
I picked up Tomsk from Rachel’s – she actually complimented me on my bold pairing of harem trousers and a suit jacket, so that helped – and drove over to Rosemount.
It wasn’t my day to go in, even if I hadn’t cancelled my appointments, but it was on my way home, and I was curious to see if there was anything from Martine’s mystery ex in the memory box.
I also wanted to tell Pam how much her text had meant to me.
In the depths of my misery, I’d thought to myself: I have no friends, no family, no one, but that wasn’t completely true. Not really.
As I drove up towards the house, I saw a crowd of people standing outside in the car park: nurses in their lilac overalls, some residents, a couple of contract cleaners in red jumpsuits.
There was some cheering and clapping, and when I got nearer I could see Lewis was cycling round the car park on the tandem, this time with Kay Lloyd in the rear seat.
Despite the helmet, knee pads and elbow pads swaddling her like a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle, Kay was having a whale of a time. Unlike Eunice Stafford, she was pedalling like a demon, and together she and Lewis were getting up quite a head of steam. I could hear her shouting, ‘Faster, faster!’
I scanned the crowd to see if Hugh was there, but there was no sign of him.
While Kay and Lewis were coming in to land, to the sound of applause and cheers from the crowd, I parked and watched Kay dismount with the help of Pam and Ellie. Then Lewis cycled over to me before I’d even got out of the car.
‘Beth!’ he said. ‘Can I tempt you this time?’
He was out of breath, and grinning with that relaxed energy that comes after hands-in-the-air dancing or an uninhibited laugh.
It made his face look boyish, guileless and unguarded, and I smiled back.
Lewis had a tremendous smile. It carried up through his ridiculous moustache, all the way into his brown eyes. It felt churlish to resist.
‘Go on,’ I said, and saw the smile change, intensifying into something warmer.
‘Excellent!’ he said. ‘Let’s get you padded up. Pam?’ He turned and waved at Pam Woodward. ‘Pam, have we got some spare knee pads?’
‘No, just give me a helmet.’ I didn’t want to think about it too much, and trying to make kneepads fasten around my chunky knees would kill the moment.
I had a weird urge to do something that might blow some fresh air through me.
The fog had been lifting slowly ever since I’d left the office, and my head was now much clearer than it had been.
I felt strange but in a different way; a funny giddiness had come over me, displacing the rage somewhat.
Maybe it was telling Natasha to fuck off.
Maybe it was the unexpected thought that if I got sacked for telling a co-worker to fuck off, it would take a decision out of my hands.
‘So, you get on there,’ Lewis was saying, and without further encouragement I swung my leg over the bar and hoisted myself on to the saddle. Pam handed me a helmet and I fastened it under my chin, trying not to think what I looked like.
‘Come on then,’ I said, gripping the handlebars.
‘Have you done this before?’
‘Nope.’
‘You’ve ridden a bike?’
‘Years ago.’ I’d had a pink Raleigh for Christmas one year, until Mum drunkenly reversed over it and it wasn’t replaced.
I suddenly wondered what her version of that fun family story was, what had caused her to be so drunk on Boxing Day.
I never could ask her now. I pushed away the gulp of sadness.
‘I’m guessing that riding a bike is kind of like . . . riding a bike?’
‘Then you’ll be fine.’ He was balancing the tandem, squeezing the brakes to stop it moving, and I could tell from the stability how strong Lewis must be.
It gave me an unexpected thrill. ‘I’m the captain, I do the steering, and the brakes and whatnot.
You’re the stoker, so all you have to do is pedal – and trust me.
OK? When I say go, you start pedalling. Right foot down first. Like you mean it. You can do this, Beth.’
I stared at Lewis’s back. He’d changed into a cycling top (of course he was the kind of man who’d have the specific, professional-grade kit) and I could see the broad curves of his shoulders under the Lycra, and solid triceps bulging under the tight sleeves.
I hadn’t imagined those were lurking under his suit.
He was close enough for me to smell that unexpected aftershave he wore, plus a top note of honest sweat.
It was the smell of someone who’d been working hard while pretending to enjoy themselves for the benefit of other people.
No wonder Pam and Eunice and Kay and Iris adored Lewis, I thought. He did stuff. He finished things. He’d probably make the kind of old-fashioned husband the widows of Rosemount were always sighing over. The sort they regularly told me didn’t exist anymore.
‘Did you tell Kay Lloyd and Eunice to pedal like they meant it?’ I asked Lewis’s back.
‘You’re not like Kay and Eunice,’ he said without turning round.
‘No, I—’ I started, and before I could say, ‘I weigh twice as much as them put together,’ Lewis said, ‘One, two, three, go!’ and I put my right foot down as hard as I could and somehow – no idea how – we were moving.
I couldn’t stop myself squealing as we wobbled forward, to the general applause of the crowd. Adrenalin surged through me like nothing I’d felt since – well, since I was a kid going down a slide, probably.
‘You’ve got it!’ shouted Lewis, and, encouraged, I pedalled harder.
Without even trying, our legs were working in unison and soon the tandem was going faster than I’d expected.
A feeling of elation started to build inside me as the wind rushed across my skin and my heart started pumping.
With Lewis on the front, controlling our direction and speed, there was nothing I could do apart from pedal, so I lifted my face up to feel the sun on it, and let the sheer joy of movement blow through me like the wind.
‘This is amazing!’ I yelled, and I couldn’t make out what Lewis said in response.
It sounded like ‘You are amazing,’ but the tyres were loud on the tarmac and there was a lot of cheering going on.
Residents had come to their windows to watch, and I waved at faces I recognised – Nigel, and Eunice, and Linda Horrobin.
The uncomfortable saddle apart, I felt euphoric, fizzy with energy, bursting and blossoming inside with lemon-yellow and tangerine-orange like Minnie Little’s lava lamp.
We were skimming around the path at some speed, round the car park, down the drive, taking a right hand along the path that circled what had once been Rosemount’s walled gardens.
Lewis was cycling like he had a point to prove and I was matching him with power that was coming from a place inside me I didn’t know about.
I’d forgotten the physical sensations of riding a bike.
The hiss of the tyres and the rush of air in my nose made me feel hyperaware of every raw breath, every blink, every lungful of fresh leafy air.
I was here, right now, breathing and living and after months – years!
– of sitting at my desk, digesting tax periods that had been and gone, yearning for times in the past when I’d been happy, wishing I could go backwards, instead of forwards, the shock of the adrenalin sent me into a strange high.
I didn’t feel weightless exactly, but I sensed that my weight, and the force of my pedalling, was driving the tandem along faster once we’d got going, a positive momentum rather than a dragging anchor.
It wasn’t just the tandem. There was another well of suppressed energy inside that had been cracked open, and the two were blending to create powerful forward motion. I was still devastated and ashamed and furious about Fraser, but it felt like hot lava pouring out of me, not pushing me down.
You can do this. Lewis was right. I could do this, I could do anything. If I couldn’t go back, I’d have to go forward – and was that so bad?
I felt a rush of gratitude towards him. With every shove of the pedals I was pushing Natasha down, pushing Christian and Fraser down, pushing myself forward, towards the next stage in my life.
Impulsively I leaned forward and let my forehead touch Lewis’s Lycra-clad back, in a silent thank-you, just for a second or two. We went over a bump and my nose and my lips brushed the bumps of his spine, and I jerked back before I broke my nose by accident.
His muscles flexed in response and he sat up suddenly. ‘Are you OK?’ he shouted over his shoulder.
He must have thought I’d collapsed.
‘I’m fine!’ I yelled. But I was better than fine. I was alive.
When we get off this bike, I’m giving this man a hug, I decided.
And as the thought went through my head, I thought what Lewis’s body would feel like pressed against mine, only the fine skintight Lycra separating my hands from those muscles of his toned back, his strong arms. I flinched. Inappropriate, Beth.
‘Sure you’re OK?’ he shouted, and I was about to say yes when something caught my eye.
We were rounding the side of the house now, coming back to the front. There were more people at the windows and I raised a hand again to wave.
Nigel gave me a cheery two-fingered salute but I barely had time to acknowledge it when my eye was caught by a different sort of gesture, in a window one storey up.
Eunice Stafford was leaning out, waving and shouting, but not at us – she was trying to get the attention of the crowd below.
‘Help! Help!’ she shrieked, her thin voice carried away on the wind. ‘Help!’
‘Lewis,’ I yelled, alarmed. ‘Lewis, look up there! Eunice is going to fall out if she’s not careful.’
He looked up and saw what I’d seen.
‘Bloody hell,’ he said and if I thought we’d been going fast round the paths, it was nothing to the acceleration that followed.