For the first time in her life, Flo lied to her husband.
‘Course not, darling. You’re my number one.’
For whatever reason, she knew it wasn’t true. The dog was. Stu was up there, of course. In the top two. Top four if she counted the children, but really they were their own people now and the closeness so many women spoke of with their adult children simply didn’t exist between her and her own offspring. Captain George, though. Captain George wasn’t just any old Irish wolfhound. He was special. He played up a loyalty to Stu when she was out, but Flo knew he really loved her most. Didn’t judge. Didn’t discourage. Didn’t force her to sit through another carvery luncheon down the club with the Springfields and the Jones’s who were unable to discuss anything beyond their upcoming cruises.
George nuzzled into her neck as if acknowledging the unspoken truth. They were kindred spirits. She’d throw herself in front of bus for him. A train. Anything really, if it meant prolonging his life. Captain George never said no. Never urged caution. He was a champion of ‘yes, yes, yes.’
Stu tapped his wrist, then pointed at Flo’s own which was happily weighted with her bells-and-whistles exercise watch.
‘How’re you going to work in your training with your work schedule? It’s an eight to four you’re on tomorrow isn’t it?’ Stu liked to memorise the weekly rota she taped to the fridge. ‘You can’t head off to the hills of Northumberland with nothing but a handful of dog walks as training.’
Ah. Yes.
She still had yet to explain about the work thing. Take the rota down. Flo looked Captain George in the eye then made another split-second decision. ‘Oh, it’ll all work out. I’ll ride in my lunch break. Anyway. As I understand it, there are quite a few flat bits. Along the river and such.’
Stu quirked an eyebrow.
Captain George blinked.
What was this about? Lying to Stu as easily as she made a sandwich. She hadn’t even so much as googled the route. Didn’t know a thing about it other than that it was up North. A zip of frisson whipped through her nervous system. Who cared? A little white lie wasn’t going to make a difference to the foundation of their marriage. She was grabbing life by the horns. Taking control of her future instead of resigning herself to the inevitable.
Stu slipped off his watch and set it on the left-hand side of the lacquerware tray she’d bought him for their twenty-third wedding anniversary (Tokyo-Singapore-London). ‘And you’re happy with the bicycle you chose?’
‘Love it.’ She hated it. Was already trying to figure out how to return it, but that lad down at Halfords hadn’t half riled her. (Why hadn’t she gone local??) When he wasn’t flirting with the poor uninterested girl in auto parts, he kept directing her towards those ridiculous adult trikes and electric bicycles. Said they might be more suitable.
Suitable? How on earth did he know what was suitable? He’d barely spent a quarter of a century on earth! She wasn’t a doddery old woman. She was a vital, mostly fit, seventy-two-year-old woman. A vital, mostly fit, seventy-two-year-old woman who refused to be jammed into a demographic. So she’d asked him which of the bikes would be best suited to the Tour de France then bought it. It had been easy enough to pop into the back of the Land Rover, anyway. Light as a feather.
‘And you’ll set me up with a few meals before you go? Leave instructions and everything?’
‘Course, love.’ She gave Captain George a look.
Honestly. Her husband, a man capable of flying hundreds of people in an over-sized sardine can across the world’s oceans, no longer seemed able to open a tin of soup for himself. He didn’t have Alzheimer’s. Or any other affliction as far as she knew. He had … retirementitis. A slow and invasive erosion of everything that had made him the man she had once ached to marry.
She glanced across at him, all tucked in for the night, cracking open his book to read the solitary chapter he afforded himself before turning in. It would take five to ten minutes and then off went the light, down went Stu’s head and he’d be asleep before you could count down from ten. Eight hours later, he’d wake up. The same triangle of bedding he’d just smoothed into place would be folded back so that he could slip his feet into the corduroy slippers he’d wear into the pre-dawn light of yet another day of exactly the same.
Well screw that.
Stu was going to have to up his game. Go to battle with Campbell’s cream of tomato. Drive to the shops himself for that matter. Tactics overtook frustration. He could look at feeding himself for a week as a real-life puzzle. A way of keeping his wits intact beyond the morning paper. She loved Stu. Hated watching him disappear into the soft, doughy recesses of pensionville. She wouldn’t let him go downhill. Not on her watch. And she wasn’t going down without a fight. Bums to Rachel Woolly and her ‘not in the best interest to go off script.’ This was about lives! The precious commodity of time and how it was spent. The bodies they inhabited and making the most of them. There wasn’t a script that worked for each and every human. No tried and true prescription for happiness and good health. Everyone was different and, as such, everyone had a different path to follow. Even her and Stu. It didn’t mean their love was diminished. Or that it would falter because of a white lie or two. It meant change. And in this case, change was a good thing.
She’d tell him in the morning. About the job. About having to change bicycles. About spreading her arms wide open to whatever the next twenty or so years of their lives had in store.
The time limit hit her like a wrecking ball.
Twenty years if
