Slow burn, p.11
Slow Burn, page 11
“Yeah,” I tell him. “I’m going to be brave and go it alone for my next session.”
“I’ll miss our little afternoon session! I’ll think about you at five thirty on Friday.”
I roll my eyes. “No, you won’t.”
Ollie doesn’t reply. He just frowns and looks uncomfortable.
And speaking of uncomfortable . . . now I’ve got to do the Zoom with Dad. Ugh! I am so extremely not in the mood for this. I wouldn’t be at the best of times, and this is the worst of times. I’m a failure.
I shower and change and head downstairs where Jake is propping his laptop up on a stack of big books.
“All right,” he says, not looking at me. I can tell he’s anxious about this too.
“Yeah.”
“Mum’s ordered the pizzas. They’re coming any minute now.”
“OK,” I say. “Do you want me to do anything?”
“No, I don’t think so. Maybe go get Sash?”
I walk back to the bottom of the stairs and call her name. She appears in her pajamas. “Don’t forget we’re talking to Dad now, yeah?”
“Oh yeah,” she says. Even though she had clearly forgotten, I’m oddly pleased to know it hasn’t been hanging over her in the same way it’s been hanging over me.
The doorbell rings and Mum answers it. The smell of pizza fills the room, and I go to help her with the boxes. I look at the clock on the living room wall. Only a few minutes until our appointed time. I busy myself by getting out plates and transferring personal pizzas to them (Margherita for Sasha, pepperoni for Jake, and one with salty things on it for me) and taking the plates into the living room, and then it’s time, so we all crowd onto the sofa and Mum goes and starts piping the icing onto a birthday cake in the kitchen, spinning the turntable with one hand while she ices with the other. Jake leans over and opens the link Dad sent us, and when we join the Zoom and Jake sits back on the sofa, we’re sitting so uncomfortably that it looks like a hostage video but with pizza.
Dad is always late for everything. Tonight is no exception, so we just sit in silence for a few minutes, looking at our reflections, contemplating how weird it is for us to all be piled onto one sofa when normally we would be spread out across different seats, but tonight we have to be crowded into the frame so he can see all of us. It feels very unnatural. But then we see Dad’s face, and it’s so the same and so much the thing we’ve been seeing all our lives that it makes my chest hurt. Not like when I’m running, not that spiky, scratchy breathing feeling but a way that makes me feel heavy and hollow at the same time. His brown eyes and almost black hair and his beard that’s going gray and that softness of his features, like a big puppy or something. That’s the face I saw all my life until this summer. That’s my dad.
“All right, you horrible lot,” he says, smiling broadly when we appear on his screen, exactly the way he would say it when he got home from work.
“Hi, Daddy,” says Sasha.
Jake and I don’t say anything yet; I’m still too taken aback by seeing him on video rather than in person. Then I remember the whole point of us doing this is so we can talk, so I say, “Hi!” It comes out too bright, too chirpy. It must definitely register as fake, but it’s the best I have right now.
Jake just grunts something that could be a hello but might just be a grunt, who can say?
“Got your pizzas? From Gino’s, yeah?”
“Always,” I say, mustering a smile. I hold up my plate to show him my pizza with its anchovies and olives and capers.
“Salty!” he says, screwing up his face in disapproval.
“What you got, Sash? Margherita?” Sasha nods as she eats a slice. “And the one with all the meats on it for you, Jake?”
“No, just pepperoni,” he mumbles.
I realize it’s going to fall on me to make this work. “Have you found a new pizza place?” I ask.
“I’m working on it. Gem —” he says before stopping himself. Gemma. A forbidden word. At least right now. “I’ve been told that the place I got this is the best one around, but it’s not quite Gino’s. Not bad, though.”
“There’s no such thing as bad pizza,” I say. And then no one says anything. And no one says anything. And no one says anything. “How’s —” I begin, but Dad speaks at the same time as me.
“No, you go on, Roo,” he says.
“No, it was nothing,” I say, shaking my head. “I was just going to ask how your new work is.”
“Oh, it’s all right, nothing too exciting . . . But I suppose accountancy never has been very exciting, has it?”
“Nope,” says Jake flatly. I think of the time Jake complained about Mum not putting Dad on the phone while we were eating dinner. How eager he seemed to talk to him. And now that he’s presented with him in person (sort of), it’s all fallen apart. Too real. Too much.
“So . . .” Dad says with a sigh. “What are you spending your school holidays doing?”
“Ruby’s doing running,” says Sasha enthusiastically, which makes me feel a little sparkle somewhere in my chest.
“Is she?” Dad frowns, like Sasha must be mistaken.
“She is,” I say, and I expect Jake to jump in with something to make it clear how absurd this proposition is, but he doesn’t. That’s how you can tell he’s really feeling defeated. Not taking an opportunity to make fun of me. “I’m entering the Dawson Dash. I’m going to try to win it,” I say.
“Oh!” Dad says, looking bemused. “Good for you!”
“Jake’s mostly been hanging around here and working at the pub in the evenings, haven’t you?” I go on.
“Yeah,” he says.
“Getting good tips?” Dad asks.
“Yeah, not bad,” Jake says, looking into the camera as he speaks, which makes a change from the way he’s been avoiding digital eye contact with Dad this evening.
Silence. We all pretend our pizzas are very interesting and important and chew away at them with our eyes down. It’s a world apart from our Wednesday-night takeaways together.
Then Dad’s head jerks to one side and there’s a jingle of keys.
“Hiya, darling!” comes a woman’s voice, and we see her walk into the sight line of his laptop camera and kiss him on the cheek. And, just like that, the bottom falls out of my stomach. Like I’m in a lift that’s dropping ten floors in one go. I feel it in myself and somehow it’s like I’m feeling it for Mum who didn’t even see it. Oh no. This was not part of the plan. “What are you watching?” She peers at the screen. A face. Lots of long brown hair. Nice makeup. A floral sundress. “Oh!”
“Gemma!” he says almost angrily. “I told you! I told you this was tonight! I thought you were staying out!”
“I forgot!” she says, exasperated. “Is that a crime?”
We sit in the tensest silence imaginable until Jake’s voice cuts through, higher and more wobbly than usual. “Is that her?”
“Jake, I . . .” Dad begins, then turns to the woman. “Can you go somewhere else, please? Just while I sort this out.”
“All right!” says the woman impatiently before disappearing out of the frame. But there wasn’t much point in Dad trying to get rid of her, because Jake leaps forward and slams the laptop shut before slumping back on the sofa and nibbling at his thumbnail with a dark expression.
“Who was that?” Sasha asks. It’s clear she already knows what’s going on but just wants someone to say it.
“His new girlfriend,” I say, sighing. I look over to the kitchen where Mum is standing with an icing bag in her hands, not moving, wondering if she should come in. It’s impossible that she didn’t hear the whole thing, isn’t aware of what happened. I feel a lump in my throat. It’s all so real now. Not that it wasn’t before, but . . . now it really is. He really is somewhere else. He really is living with someone new. It’s all really happening, and there’s no going back now.
“Mate,” I say, putting my arm around Jake, which isn’t something I do very often. “Are you OK?” He doesn’t answer, just keeps nibbling his thumbnail.
“It’s just shit,” he says finally. He gets to his feet and goes up to his room, taking the stairs two at a time.
“Yeah,” I say softly, even though I know he can’t hear me.
Jake’s departure prompts Mum to put down the icing bag and come into the living room.
“Can I go to my room now?” Sasha asks her.
“Take your pizza with you,” Mum says, sliding into Jake’s vacant place on the sofa.
“No, it’s OK. I’m done with it.”
Mum looks at her, trying to figure out what to say next. “Take one slice with you,” she says.
Sasha sighs in her unintentionally funny, theatrical way, which fails to make me laugh right now. “Fine,” she says, sliding a slice off the plate and carrying it upstairs with her.
And then it’s just me and Mum.
“That was tough,” I say.
“It is tough, isn’t it?” Mum says, biting her lip. Biting at the skin in exactly the same way that I do.
“Mum . . .” I say, my heart feeling heavy and full at the same time.
“Yes, baby?”
“Are you doing OK?”
There’s a pause for a second and then she laughs, but it doesn’t sound like she means it. It sounds like something she just realized she had to do. “I’m doing fine, Roo. Don’t worry about me.”
“It’s just . . .”
“Just what?”
“I saw you in the front garden a couple of times. In the night.”
“Well, then,” she says. “It’s hard. It’s really hard. That’s the truth of it, for me as well as for you lot. But it’s not for you to worry about.”
“But I do worry,” I say quietly.
“Remember, Roo, I’ve got lots of friends, and Auntie Siobhan and lots of people to talk to if I’m feeling down about it. It’s not something for you to worry about, like I said. Yes, sometimes I have a little meltdown, but that’s something I’ve just got to go through. I don’t want you worrying about me.” She looks at me and holds her arms out. “You’re so good. Such a good girl.”
I let her pull me into a hug. “I’m all right.” She kisses the top of my head.
Maybe we’ll all be all right in the end.
When I meet up with Liv on Monday, I’m half keen to get out running again that evening to prove to myself that I can do it, and half all cloudy and anxious at the idea that I literally can’t.
Liv sighs. “This is just a temporary blip. It’s bad timing,” she says as we lean over the railing in Horniman Gardens and try to touch an alpaca. The alpaca does not wish to be touched. We respect its wishes. “Like, your brother was a dick to you. And then you found running hard. Finding running hard is not proof that your brother was right. If anything, it’s proof that a lot of this stuff — like, whether you can do it — is kind of . . . in your head?”
“Which is exactly what kicked off the beef with my brother in the first place! That very topic!”
“So you were right. You went into that run questioning whether you could do it, whether your body would ever let you do it. Instead of being like, Hell yeah, of course I can do it, why wouldn’t I? You know?”
I nod. “I mean, there is still a strong chance I literally cannot do it. That I’m not a runner, that I’m not cut out for it.”
“I mean, sure! It’s not for everyone, and you can obviously give up at any time, but . . . you do kind of like it, right? That sense of satisfaction when you finish, those sweet endorphins?”
“Yeah . . .”
“So! That’s all the reason you need to keep going, because you can do it. You’re already doing it. Anyway, it’s not like you’re the first cool fat babe to ever wear a sports bra.”
“No, there’s . . . you,” I say, trying to think of others.
Liv takes her phone out of her back pocket and taps at the screen with her thumb, the nail bitten short. She holds up the phone. “Well, there’s her,” she says, and I squint in the sunshine at the screen where I can make out a cool dark-skinned woman doing a headstand in yoga. She takes the phone back and then presents it to me again with a woman with flowing, glossy hair in a hot-pink Lycra set doing boxercise on a beach. And then someone heavily tattooed lifting weights with a smile. All fat. Warmth spreads through my chest. Comfort, I think it is.
“All fat,” Liv says, like she’s reading my mind. “And, like you said, there’s me. And all of that is even more true than what your brother said to you. Because this is real! These women are real! I’m real! You’re real! He’s the one who’s just making shit up!”
I nod, feeling a smile begin to form. Last time I tried was so rubbish, so demotivating, so all-around bleh that I think I really did believe Jake was right.
“Follow them all,” Liv says. “I command you. It’ll be good for you, and in turn it’ll help you be good for your sister.”
“I will!” And then, wanting to do something good for her in return, I say, “So April was pretty hyped that I had been hanging out with you.”
Liv raises an eyebrow. I should ask her how she does that, but now’s not the time. “She was?”
“She was. I was thinking you two should meet sometime. Like, I could introduce you in a non-cringe way.”
“I would be up for that,” Liv says nonchalantly, but I can tell she’s into the idea. Ruby Morgan, matchmaker! Is there no end to my skills?
Well, that question is tested when I’m back out with Ollie later in the afternoon. Can I do this?
“We’re going to try a slightly different route,” he says. “We’ll start on the other side of the park this time, just so it doesn’t feel like you’re doing exactly the same thing over again. The other day we fell a little short, but there’s no reason why you can’t smash it today.”
I nod. “I know,” I tell him, my face set resolutely.
“That’s what I want to hear more of! I kept thinking of you this weekend. I felt so bad, like I’d abandoned you when you needed a boost. But it sounds like you’ve gotten there all by yourself.”
“Well, that remains to be seen, but at least I’m going in with a good attitude.”
He looks at his phone, setting the timer. “Just pace yourself. Go as slowly as you need to at first so you can keep your energy up until the end. You don’t want to burn out too soon. You ready?”
“You bet.”
“Let’s go!”
We set off. Slowly, slowly. More slowly than usual. More slowly than before. I know what it feels like to have to run for this long, and I need to be able to see this through. I need to preserve my energy and effort for when I really need it. We run along the long, straight road of fancy houses on the other side of the park, and when we reach the end after a few minutes, my breathing starts to change. I feel it catching in my chest. But I won’t let it get the better of me.
As if he can read my mind, Ollie says (because he can talk while he runs, like it’s not even a thing), “Take long breaths through your nose and then breathe out slowly. Try to just focus on that for now.”
I nod, not wanting to waste any of my precious energy on talking.
In. Slowly. Out. Slowly. In. Slowly. Out. Slowly. I feel the number of times my feet hit the pavement increase between each breath. I feel my body complying more and more. I just need to keep doing this: keep it up, not stop. I just need to not stop. And I don’t stop, not yet. I keep going as Ollie leads me down through Mayow Park and around the outer path and back out of the farther gate on the same side again. Running up the slight incline on the road outside the park feels like climbing Everest, but I do it. I keep going. I keep going because I can. Because I know I can.
“We’re halfway done!” Ollie says, and part of me can’t believe we have to do this all over again, that I’m barely on the other side of the mountain, but a louder part of me says, Of course you can do this again. So I follow him along the road where we started the other day, but running in the opposite direction, and I think of how sure I was that I simply couldn’t do it and how much I regretted proving myself right, and I power through until we get to the end of the road and turn right on Dacres Road and I’m sure I can hear a woodpecker in the nature reserve and how cool is that and I wouldn’t be hearing that if I was at home right now and yes! On the other side of this block of flats is the downward slope! Sweet relief floods my aching calves as we head downhill, which means that by the time we turn off to run all the way along Inglemere Road, my body feels ready for it after that little rest. My body feels ready for it! Even though it hurts and my breathing is really not playing ball right now, I’m still going! I’ve walked along this road hundreds of times in my life, and it’s only from running back along it now that I’ve noticed it’s not flat — it’s on a slope. I feel every degree of this slope as I push on, running just behind Ollie. The modernist church at the end of the road seems so far away, but I will get there if I just keep putting one foot in front of the other. In fact, it’s impossible that I won’t get there as long as I just keep going. So I do, and when we get back to the downward slope of Dacres Road and turn right to continue our downhill trajectory, I feel so grateful to myself that I’ve just run up and down Inglemere Road since I was last here on this corner. I feel grateful and happy and so completely determined to see this through because I know I can. We run past the house with the life-size cuddly polar bear in the window, past the flats where the front garden is blanketed in crocuses in the springtime, on and on until —
“Stop!” Ollie says. “You did it!”
I stand, doubled over from the sheer effort of not giving up, of telling my body I could do it because my brain knew I could. My chest feels like it’s full of metal, jangling around in my lungs. But I feel such a rush, a lightness there too. Is this what they call . . . endorphins?
“Keep walking! Don’t stand still for too long!” Ollie tells me, and I grudgingly pick up the pace again.
“I . . . did . . . it . . .” I pant. I wonder how far off the five kilometers of the Dawson Dash this was. How far am I off my goal?
