Chapter 33
‘Feeling all right there?’ Kim asks.
‘Fine!’ Enzo replies with as much enthusiasm as he can muster.
‘You’re doing great!’
He supposes he must be, if not collapsing onto the ground counts as ‘great.’ ‘A little light jog’ , she’d promised when they’d been messaging.
They’d start gently – nothing too strenuous.
‘Don’t want to put you off!’ Enzo reckons this definitely contravenes Advertising Standards because they are hill running.
Actually running – not jogging – up the steepest hill for miles around.
To Enzo this seems unnecessary as the park has plenty of flat bits too.
Flat bits that typically suffice whenever he runs normally.
‘It’s so much more beneficial than running on the flat,’ Kim announces.
‘I’m sure it is,’ he agrees, although Enzo wonders whether the science backs this up.
He was wrong to imagine that she’d streak ahead, a dot in the distance, laughing to herself about his shoddy performance.
What she’s doing is slowing her pace with much deliberation – in the way that Zain and Marianne do whenever they’re walking their little dachshund (Enzo has accompanied them on some of these walks.
While he’s not stopping to sniff every tree and pee against it, he’s aware that he’s the sausage dog in this scenario).
Briefly, with the flagpole in view, he visualises his cosy living room where he’d normally be on a Thursday evening, lesson planning or marking probably, if he weren’t ‘utilising the muscle groups that flat running doesn’t reach.’
It’s not once that they’re doing this circuit but three times.
To Enzo that feels overly harsh – especially as some weird geographical shift appears to be happening, in that the hill seems about ten times longer when they’re going up it than when they’re heading back down.
It’s the same fucking hill! How can this be?
‘A lighter step,’ Kim instructs him. ‘Lean into the hill—’ hang on, if he does that much more, won’t he topple over?
‘—and let your body weight roll over the entire length of your sole.’ To think he’d assumed that running was a matter of simply putting one foot after the other.
‘You’re doing really well!’ she reiterates, flashing a teeth-baring smile and hardly breaking a sweat while Enzo is conscious of his ancient running top adhering claggily to his torso.
‘ Really well done,’ Kim announces as, finally, they reach the top.
‘Thanks.’ He forces a grin as they circuit the hilltop and then make their way back down to the bottom again. That’s better, the downwards bit – as long as his knees don’t crumble.
‘What we’ll do,’ Kim tells him as they canter onwards, ‘is increase the number of circuits each time we come out.’ Like, do more than three?
Is he really up to this again, let alone an extended version?
‘Because with all your flat running,’ she continues, ‘you haven’t been building all-round stamina.
So that’s what we’re going to focus on, all right? ’
‘Right,’ is all he can say to that. He’s aware that he should be grateful for her having hauled him out – that her clients pay good money for this – yet Enzo notices that Kim is talking about ‘all your flat running’ in the way that she might say ‘all your beer drinking’ or ‘all that cocaine you stuff up your nose.’ As if it were a vice.
Surely flat running is better than no running at all?
They’re heading for the park exit now, passing normal runners jogging on horizontal ground.
Last time Enzo was here was with Celia, and how different that had felt, even though it had ended rather awkwardly.
His fault, of course. That stark introduction: ‘Celia, this is Kim.’ It’s been niggling him and he’s not entirely sure why.
Celia probably hasn’t given it a second thought – not with all that stuff going on in her life.
Yet the way she’d shared it all, about her unfaithful husband, the caravan, the biscuit-flinging – there had definitely been a feeling of trust there.
And he knows now that he wants to see her again to check she’s okay; that they’re okay as friends.
But what can he do? He can’t keep popping round to check on Spike’s progress.
If there isn’t any, that’ll wear pretty thin.
Now he and Kim have left the park and are running along a residential street.
His spirits sink as he spots a couple of his pupils ambling towards them; one smoking, one vaping.
If it weren’t too late he’d have pulled his running top up over his head but the boys have seen him too.
‘Keep going, Monsieur Fontaine!’ There are loud, barking laughs – the kind of laughs that only ever shoot out of teenagers’ mouths – and only when he sees the end of his street do his cringes subside.
‘Slow down to a brisk walk,’ Kim instructs. ‘Let your heart rate return to normal.’
‘I’m not sure that’ll ever happen,’ he jokes.
She smiles and stops, checking her sports watch. ‘Remember to get yours set up for next time.’
He hesitates and she catches this. ‘That is, if you want to go out again? I was thinking Saturday morning. I have a slot then, nine-thirty?—’
‘Oh, there’s this thing then.’ It has sprung into his mind like a gift. ‘This community thing I help with sometimes,’ he explains.
‘What’s that?’
‘Just the weekly litter pick to tidy up the streets.’
‘Oh, you do that, do you?’ Kim grins. ‘Good for you!’
‘Mathilde likes it,’ he says truthfully.
‘Right!’ She nods. ‘Well, enjoy yourself. And if you change your mind, you know where I am.’ And with that she scampers off at twice the speed of their run together. In fact, Enzo would describe it as a sprint.
* * *
By the time Saturday comes he has decided that the worst that could happen is that Celia won’t be persuaded to join them.
But that’s fine, he figures, as he and Mathilde stop off at the corner shop.
He’s aware that grappling bin bags of rubbish isn’t everyone’s idea of a fun weekend activity, and actually he just wants to see her.
‘What d’you think she’d like?’ he asks as he and Mathilde browse the packets of Super Noodles and a rather wizened selection of vegetables.
‘Biscuits?’ she suggests. ‘Or a cake?’
His gaze rests upon the packets of pink wafers and he smiles. ‘You choose.’ And so, with a distinctly corner-shop variety biscuit box, they head towards Celia’s place.
On the street corner an elderly woman is playing a wheezy old accordion.
They stop to listen, and as he fishes for change – Mathilde always wants to give buskers money – he wonders if this is a mistake, and that it’ll seem weird to Celia, them showing up out of the blue when he could have texted.
But he shakes this off and tries to assume a breezy demeanour as he presses her doorbell.
However, it’s not Celia who answers the door but Amanda, her TV presenter friend whom he’s gathered from Mathilde is pretty famous. ‘Oh, hi!’ She is all big bright smiles and pleasantries. ‘I’m sorry, you’ve just missed Celia. She’s in town having her hair done.’
‘Oh, no problem.’ Enzo smiles. ‘We’re just off to the litter pick and wondered if she might like to join us sometime.’ He hands her the box of biscuits. ‘And we wanted to drop this in to say thanks…’
‘For taking care of Spike,’ Mathilde offers.
‘Oh, thank you.’ Amanda takes the box and glances down at it briefly as if unsure of what it is.
Enzo clears his throat. ‘I just, erm, wondered how Celia’s doing?’ he says, adding, ‘We had a chat last weekend. I just, er?—’
‘She’s doing great,’ Amanda assures him. ‘She’s been back working at the shop this week so that’s a good sign, don’t you think?’
‘Definitely. That’s good to hear,’ he says.
‘Yeah.’ She nods, glancing down at the biscuit box again. ‘This is very sweet of you. I’ll tell her—’ She breaks off at the sound of a trilling mobile somewhere in the flat. ‘Sorry, better get that?—’
‘No, of course. Thanks anyway,’ Enzo says quickly, feeling a little silly now at having expected Celia to be there. She’s busy, he reminds himself. She doesn’t have space in her life for cleansing the neighbourhood with Saska’s gang.