Chapter 13
FREYA
It’s so muddy. So bloody muddy. That rhymes. Bloody and muddy.
Bloody muddy.
My goodness. I think I’m losing my mind.
This is awful, though. So much mud. It’s such hard work running through it.
I really, really, really don’t want to do an ice bath.
So I’m somehow going to have to do this course faster than all these super-fit-looking people.
My lungs are on fire. It feels like my head is too. I really can’t think.
‘Are you okay?’ Jake asks me, talking really easily, like he’s just out for a stroll around the park, instead of doing the hardest physical challenge I’ve ever tried.
I can’t talk. I can’t even shake my head. I just keep on lugging my booted feet through the quagmire below us. I hate, hate, hate, hate, hate running.
Eventually, we come to the end of the hideous running bit, thank fuck. We’ve reached one of those net things you see on TV and we have to crawl under it. So so much better than running. A genuine little break.
The other teams are all already under the net, because they all ran faster than I did. It looks quite hard – some of them are getting quite stuck – but it looks way less bad than the running was.
‘It’s very muddy.’ Jake speaks very apologetically. He’s been fairly apologetic all morning (when he hasn’t been laughing) after he realised what an idiot he’s been since the moment we met. Apologies are absolutely no good whatsoever to me now, though.
‘Don’t care,’ I pant. ‘Rest from running.’
‘Okay. I’m going to go slightly ahead of you and I’m going to hold the net up so all you have to do is crawl as fast as you can?’ he says. ‘How does that sound?’
Well, it kind of sounds patronising. But it also sounds excellent.
‘Perfect,’ I manage to say.
And oh my goodness I’m delighted to say that I am pretty good at crawling through mud. It’s so much better than running.
And unbelievably, when we get out at the other end, it turns out that out of all the six teams we’re first, because at least one of every other pair has got tangled in the net.
‘No time to gloat,’ Jake yells. ‘Run.’
Fucking running. I really, really, really fucking hate it.
This run is a relatively short one, though, thank goodness.
However.
Next thing we have to go up and over a really high wall thing. We have to get strapped into a nappy-like keep-you-safe-while-you’re-climbing-far-too-high ropey device and climb up it using little sticky-out bits like you see people do in the Olympics now.
I do not like heights. I do not like them at all. I need to focus on the wall in front of me, not the fact that I’m going up and up and up.
I need to focus on myself and what I’m doing and not the ground beneath me.
Unfortunately, what I am doing is climbing with the assistance of Jake, which means that he is holding, pushing and pulling various bits of me.
And in focusing on that I am also focusing on the fact that he has what I do have to admit are very nicely muscled arms and legs.
And his bottom looks very hard and muscly too.
How is that even possible? And there’s something about bits of me being in close contact with him that’s giving me serious stomach palpitations.
Clearly, I need to date a bit more. I’m going mad just because I’m very literally up close and personal (albeit it covered in mud) with a very physically attractive (albeit very annoying) man.
‘You’re a natural.’ Jake’s slightly quirky smile makes me want to smile too, and also causes my stomach to dip again.
When I’ve recovered from the stomach dip, I take stock of our position and realise that he isn’t even joking. I genuinely am not bad at this, especially with Jake’s lovely muscly help.
And therefore we get to the top way faster than anyone would have expected me to, and faster than the other teams. And given that we were already slightly in the lead following the net, we’re massively in the lead now.
I feel amazing. This is so cool. I should take up climbing as a sport. I love it.
And then I look down.
‘Fuuuuck,’ I scream. ‘We’re so high up.’
‘It’s fine,’ Jake soothes. I want to kick him, frankly.
‘No, it isn’t,’ I screech.
‘It is. You’re all strapped up, remember. And you’ll be back on the ground really quickly.’
‘What, when I fall? And die?’
‘No. When you’ve abseiled down.’ He says it like it’s a regular thing to say.
‘Abseil?’ I query, because it is not in fact a regular thing to say.
‘Remember from the briefing what you have to do? Would you like me to go first or stay and help you?’
I wasn’t listening at all to the briefing; I was too busy panicking about the run we were about to start.
‘I don’t know. No, I do know. Don’t leave me.’ I might, if I’m honest, be clutching his arm with my hands shaped into claws.
‘Okay. No problem. Shall we go together?’
‘Um.’ I look down again and do a big intake of breath and tighten my grip on his arm.
To his credit, he winces and glances once at where my nails are definitely digging in hard to his flesh, but doesn’t say anything.
‘It’s very high indeed,’ I point out.
‘You won’t fall because you climbed up brilliantly and abseiling down is easier, but if you did it would be fine, because you’re safely strapped in.’
Okay. Deep breaths. He’s right, of course he is. But the ground is so far away. It would really hurt if we fell.
I hear a sound diagonally below me to my right, and look over my shoulder. Eek, we’re about to be overtaken.
I do not want to be doing that ice bath.
‘Okay.’ I’m suddenly decisive. ‘Let’s do it.’
‘Okay. Like this.’ Jake shows me and I copy him.
And then, he lets go and starts bouncing his way down the wall.
He stops after a few bounces and looks up at me. ‘Freya?’
‘I can’t do that,’ I state. I mean, he let go. I’m just not doing that. It’s too high. Far, far too high.
Fortunately, there are sticky-out bits to hold on to on both sides of the wall, so I can climb down the other side using those. I set off.
‘Freya? I think abseiling would be a lot faster.’ Jake’s bouncing his way down again and is nearly at the bottom.
‘Don’t care.’ I’m too warm to talk much. Climbing is hot work. ‘Too high.’
A lot of the others bounce their way past me on their way down. I keep on climbing. Eventually, I get to a point – around the height of Jake’s head, so maybe six feet up – where I feel confident to abseil, so I let go, bounce once and am on the ground.
‘Yesssss,’ I yell. That was so cool. Maybe I will take up climbing. ‘Maybe I could abseil from higher up next time.’
‘You definitely could,’ Jake assures me, and I find myself beaming at him.
I do feel hugely triumphant and full of excellent endorphins, but only one person gets off the wall after me and he’s tall and lean and sprints off towards the next obstacle (I have no idea how he fell behind me in the first place), so this is realistically the end of the race for me in terms of not coming last.
I do semi-run to the next obstacle (a parallel bar thing, which is an absolute fiasco when I do it) and then I don’t bother running after that, because there’s blatantly no chance of us not losing, and I really don’t mind walking through mud – the squelchiness of it is quite pleasant when you aren’t worrying about getting your clothes and face muddy (I’m already fully mudded up) – and I might as well enjoy myself as much as I can.
I lumber on to the end, and I do enjoy the last obstacle, a raft thing across a stream (I just sit on it feeling muddy and slightly trembly from all the overexertion) while Jake puts his very well (but not too well) developed biceps to good use paddling us and I admire his strength and the whole muscly thing, and the wider view, because now that I can see something other than mud, I realise that it’s very pretty here.
And then we walk through the finish line holding hands, because that’s what all the other pairs did and it does actually seem natural to do it, and the others all cheer us. (Unless they’re mad and would in fact like to do an ice bath they’re probably also cheering because they haven’t lost.)
As we stand there I suddenly become very aware that I’m still holding Jake’s hand, and I think he realises the same thing at exactly the same moment because we both all at once just drop the other’s hand, very much as though we have hot potatoes on the end of our arms. We stand and don’t speak for a few moments, and then we both congratulate the other, at once.
There’s not too much time to stand around though (well, not for us, anyway, because we came in so far behind the other pairs) before Sonja – who seems to be absolutely everywhere this weekend – tells us that we need to go and have showers asap so we’re ready for our ice baths.
Which the other pairs are going to watch. Like, actual torture.
‘Bloody hell,’ I say to Jake as we make our way back to our rooms. He isn’t the person in life I would choose to discuss any of my thoughts with ever, but I obviously have no-one else to talk to right now.
‘Sonja has literally taken every single dislike I mentioned and turned them all into a list of activities for this weekend and she’s even managed to add in things I hate that I didn’t mention.
Like she has a superpower that involves guessing the most evil thing she can do to me. I hate cold showers.’
‘It’s an ice bath,’ Jake says. ‘You know that, right? Not just cold and not a shower. Icy. Bath.’
‘What?’
‘An ice-cold bath. All of you goes into it. At once. Not like a shower. It’s good for you. Health-giving. Invigorating.’
‘Have you done one?’
‘Yep. Several. Quite enjoy them.’ Of course he bloody does.
‘Fucking hell.’