Chapter 24
Colin
I saw the same thing every time I closed my eyes these days: Leesa in a pretty dress, giving me a wry smile over that little dent in her chin.
But for the benefit of Vickers, the psychologist on the other end of this video call, I cleared my throat and answered, ‘I don’t see anything except the finish.
I don’t feel anything. I just get over the line – ahead of Andreu. ’
Oops, I knew that last part wasn’t what he wanted to hear.
‘That’s good,’ he said so gently I wanted to punch him from several countries away. ‘Just remember what the other cyclists do is up to them. You just visualise yourself. It’s okay to feel something too, just know that you’re stronger than the pain and the effort and you can get over that line.’
A grunt of assent was all I could muster.
‘All right, Colin. I’ll see you in Strasbourg. Until then: rest. Tony asked me to remind you, since he’s not there to look after you himself.’
‘I’m resting,’ I insisted. ‘It’s a fucking idyll.
’ Turning my phone, I showed Vickers the rolling Italian hillside and the actual babbling brook providing a clichéd soundtrack outside my nonno’s place.
When I turned it back to face me, the image of my face was framed in the cosy rustic view of the old stone house with ancient wooden beams.
It didn’t change the fact that the place I most wanted to be right now was somewhere in Poland. I’d looked it up and plotted a route: 12 hours and lots of highway tolls and construction sites. If she was in the north, that was another 500 km. It was a big place.
‘Do you… need to talk about anything else?’
‘Nah, mate,’ I said, leaning back in the old wicker chair and propping an arm behind my head.
I wasn’t about to tell him that Dad’s concern for my rest was actually a passive-aggressive comment about Mum via the team psychologist and I definitely wasn’t going to talk about the tearing, burning, cut-up sensation that came over me every time I remembered Leesa was heading back to the States after the Tour.
They were not helpful visualisations, when I got caught up imagining her taking my face in her hands before a stage, telling me I could win it and that she’d be there at the end. It wasn’t her job to sort out my messed-up head, but I recognised the spiral I was sinking into.
I just didn’t want to pull myself out, if it meant I had to stop thinking about her.
I sat down with Nonno after the call with the psych, but I was rusty with the Tressette cards and the weird local version of the game he’d taught me when I was younger – as rusty as I was at speaking Italian.
He wasn’t very mobile and I was supposed to be resting, which was so wholesome it made me want to text Leesa again.
If Mum had had her way, we’d have lived somewhere around here during the season, but Dad had settled us in France, near the Pyrenees – another of the many things they must have disagreed about. As if it wasn’t clear enough: Gallaghers rode bikes, we didn’t manage healthy relationships.
Even though I considered myself close to Mum, even that relationship functioned – if it could be called functioning – because we went running together in the off-season. Of the two of them, Dad was more touchy-feely, but at least Mum was interested in more than my performance.
All of which was why I was caught out that evening at aperitivo on the porch with Mum – well, Mum had an aperitivo and mine was soda water with lime – when she asked, ‘Colin, are you going to talk to me?’
I sat up in surprise, dropping my feet down from where I’d propped them on another chair and shooting her a wary glance. Mum was tall and thin and strong and her resilience was something I hoped I’d inherited.
She didn’t usually want to ‘talk’.
‘About what?’ I asked doubtfully.
‘You’ve been so quiet all week.’ Her measured look made the tips of my ears heat. ‘Is it the problems between your father and me? I know we probably didn’t handle it well and it’s you and Lori I most feel for—’
‘I’m not upset about that,’ I said, resisting a frustrated sigh. ‘I mean, it’s shit, but I can see how you both might be happier in the long run.’
‘Do you know how Lori’s taking it? She doesn’t…
speak to me much.’ There was a world of regret in her tone that I didn’t really want to address right now.
I also wasn’t sure I wanted to admit that I had spoken to Lori last week.
We’d just mumbled some mutual commiserations about how our parents seemed to have regressed into children giving each other the silent treatment, but that was more than I would have expected from my sister. She’d gone soft, since falling for Seb.
‘Lori deals with this stuff how she always does: with stubbornness. She’s stubbornly making a healthy relationship, despite our inspirational family history.’
Maybe I shouldn’t have leaned into the sarcasm, because Mum looked stricken. ‘Me separating from your father is no reflection on you.’
‘Maybe not, but it doesn’t encourage me to try out commitment myself.’ Unless a miracle occurred and Leesa Kubicka stood before me in a white dress. I’d run as fast as I could to the altar, which was a rather disturbing thought.
‘Well, that’s for the best.’
Pressing the heels of my hands into my eyes, I grumbled, ‘Thanks so much for confirming that I’m not relationship material, Mum.’
She leaned forward and brushed her hand lightly over my cheek, the way she’d done when I was young. I wondered if she realised how important those little caresses had been for my mental health.
‘It’s not about being relationship material. You have other priorities right now. I’d hate to see you take on too much and not succeed at any of it.’
Because a good result at the Tour de France was so similar to a committed relationship – both came with pressure for success.
‘Colin, I can see it’s bothering you this year. Is it because you’re a favourite?’
My only answer was a gulp.
‘Listen to me, no one’s expectations matter except your own.’
That earned a snort in response. ‘I know a lot of sports psychology is crap, but that takes the cake. Dad has spent half his life preparing for this. He’s brought in a team of amazing support riders.
He’s trying to sign a major sponsor to fill the hole in next year’s budget and that sponsor has been stuck with me as their talent.
If I screw up—’ I didn’t even want to finish that sentence.
‘Has something your father said upset you?’
‘No,’ I insisted immediately, leaning my neck on the back of the chair and staring up at the sky. ‘He’s a tough old codger, but that’s nothing new. I wouldn’t have got here without him.’
‘But?’
‘But nothing. He’s my coach, as well as the team manager. He’s supposed to criticise me and, if I occasionally take it personally, that’s my fault. Also nothing new.’
She sighed somewhat dramatically. ‘I wish I’d never let him coach you two. First he turned Lori against me and now this. He’s your father, Colin. If he’s made you feel unloved—’
‘He just shows his love in a weird way,’ I mumbled, thinking of that text-message exchange with Leesa yesterday.
Swapping stories about our European extended family, our difficult parents, had made me feel closer to someone 1,000 km away than anyone currently in this country.
‘But seriously, Mum, I don’t need a pep talk. ’
‘All right,’ she acquiesced reluctantly. ‘I’m glad I was imagining things anyway. After Lori last season…’
‘Imagining what things?’ I asked, taking a sip of my soda water and gazing out at the distant hills over the river.
‘Oh, the restlessness, all the time spent on your phone. I thought you might have got distracted with a girl.’
Damn the bits of Irish in my complexion. I didn’t want to admit anything, because what was the point, when Leesa would be gone again in a few weeks? But I suspected it would be pointless to deny it.
‘You aren’t… distracted by a girl, are you?’ The pained tone was back.
‘What difference would it make?’ Something was expanding in my chest, threatening to tumble out of my mouth in a confession Mum didn’t want to hear.
My stupid heart. It wanted acknowledgement, affirmation, something to feed these feelings that I shouldn’t even have – feelings I would take with me into the Tour, che sarà and all that.
‘Is it serious?’
‘Why are you asking? Because you’d bribe her to stay away from me?’ I hated when my own jokes bit me in the arse. I’d tell Leesa to take the money and run.
‘Who is it? How have you even had time?’
‘I haven’t,’ I said, trying to calm her down – trying to calm myself down. ‘There’s no one.’
‘You’re still so young. At your age, these things grow out of proportion.’
She didn’t have to be right, on top of everything else. ‘I said there was no one,’ I insisted through gritted teeth.
‘If you’re not ready, love can… twist and consume you and you have too much ahead of you to let that happen.’
‘What do you know about that?’
‘Don’t turn this on me. I was young once.’
I knew a little of her history, although not much, I realised. ‘And you loved Dad once too? Or did you have another grand love affair in your twenties?’
‘I know I’m not the best person to give you advice,’ she began, her voice shaking, ‘but commitment at your age always comes at a cost. You need to live your life first.’
And Leesa needed to live hers.
‘I know that. I’m not Lori.’ Although before last year, I wouldn’t have imagined my sister could commit to a life-changing relationship.
‘Of course not. You’re the man. You’d make your partner compromise for you and your career. I was so afraid Lori would give it all up for love last year. I’m still worried it will come to that in the future.’
She didn’t know how her words were landing with me; they felt like a hundred needles, pricking me with conviction. I couldn’t live with myself if I made Leesa give something up, but the thought of letting her go forever made my lungs seize up.
It was September all over again, when I’d given in to the urge to spill some feelings and caused more pain than I’d ever imagined. I still had that stupid cardboard sign at home, the one that had indirectly caused her broken arm. If she ever saw the back… I should have tossed it a long time ago.
‘I’ve taken on board your advice,’ I said lightly to Mum.
‘You guys raised us to compete and I respect that,’ I continued, although it made me think of Leesa and her intelligence and her struggles with success and failure.
Her parents would be horrified if she tossed in her job, her ambitions, to follow a cyclist around Europe.
Mum leaned her head on my shoulder. ‘You’ve grown up a lot over the past two years.’
‘I’ve been an adult for seven, Mum,’ I grumbled.
‘Yes, but…’ She wisely didn’t finish that sentence. ‘No matter what your father wants for you, I believe you’re ready to win.’
No matter how many times I’d talked the big talk – even the number one tattooed on my arse – I had to admit I wasn’t sure I could hang onto that dream. Here were some home truths I could never admit to Mum or Dad. But maybe Leesa would have understood.
‘The adrenaline will see me over the line on the first stage, and each of the 21 stages after that,’ I assured Mum.