‘Most bikes have at least eighteen gears these days,’ Jennifer said, eyes glued to Flo’s handle bars.
‘Pothole,’ Flo pointed out a bit too late for her daughter to notice, and then, ‘Nonsense.’ She was well aware she could have chosen an eighteen or even a twenty-seven geared bike seeing as the one she’d returned (with Stu’s help) had had every single bell and whistle apart, of course, from an actual bell or whistle. ‘Seven’s plenty. I grew up on three.’
‘And rode fifty miles to the coal mines and back in all weather,’ Jennifer sighed (her one nod towards melodrama). ‘I know, Mum. I’m only pointing it out because you’re making life harder for yourself if you’re really going to do this.’
Flo shot her a quick look. ‘Why on earth wouldn’t I do it? It’s for charity!’
Jennifer pretended to be interested in her children, this sort of conversational impasse being all-too-familiar terrain for the pair of them.
A surge of outrage roared up in Flo. Why wouldn’t everyone stop picking on her? She had a brain. A body that functioned very well for a seventy-two-year-old woman, thank you very much. The GP had told her, her heart age was fifty-seven! So what if she didn’t have all the bicycle gears the universe had to offer? Mabel (her bicycle was definitely a Mabel) had seven of them.
‘The chap down the cycling shop said Mabel was perfect for riding round country lanes and in town.’ Flo had checked the Hadrian’s Wall route online the other day and they’d be out in the country alright. That and riding straight through the heart of Newcastle. So there you were, town and country. Mabel was also, the chap had said, excellent for hills. So. Seven gears it was. A bouncy leather seat, a basket on the front and a tingy bell she’d already used twice. It was perfect. Apart from the seat not being quite as comfy today as it had been during her two minute trial ride.
‘Why Mabel?’ Jennifer pursed her lips betraying the onset of a couple of lines.
‘I thought it sounded fun.’
‘Fun?’
‘Yes, you know that thing that sometimes happens when you’re not trying to talk your mother out of doing something for charity.’
Jennifer sighed again, then pushed ahead to instruct her son to zip up his waterproof because it looked like it might rain in the next forty-eight hours. She didn’t even notice the floods of daffodils coming up all along the towpath. Jennifer had loved daffodils when she was little. They’d made her utterly giddy with delight. Where had all of that glee gone? The wonder?
Flo shifted on her seat again wondering, as her posterior announced its discomfort, if her own mule-like tendencies were, in fact, hand-me-downs to Jennifer. After she’d returned the racing bike (to a different Halfords, there was no chance she was going to have that reedy, spotty boy give her a knowing, I get it, you’re old, look) and gone to the lovely little village cycle shop, she had point blank refused to buy any of the padded lycra shorts despite strong encouragement to do so. While Stuart had embarked on a lengthy discussion about the durability of something or other in Mabel, Flo had tried on a pair, but it had felt like having nappies on, so no thank you very much my good man, but she’d do this the old-fashioned way. With her own natural cushioning. Cushioning, it was becoming clear, that wasn’t entirely up to the task.
‘Mum?’ Jennifer pulled to a stop. ‘It’s time to stop. The children have had it and I really don’t think Captain George is looking right.’
‘Honestly, Jennifer—’ Flo stopped and turned back to see Captain George doing his best to keep up but there was something decidedly out of kilter in his gait. She dropped the bike and as she went to him, he collapsed to the ground.
A phone call to Stu, a silent car ride and three hours of pacing in the waiting room of the veterinarian’s later, Jennifer was as livid with rage as Flo was hollowed out with grief. She’d hurt her baby. Over-stressed his raging joints and ligaments until – snap! His right cruciate ligament had gone.
‘It’s so typical of you,’ Jennifer was saying. She didn’t even wait for Flo to reply before continuing her lecture. ‘Pushing and pushing beyond what is actually enjoyable all for your own benefit.’
‘The vet said George would make a full recovery.’ A very expensive recovery, but cruciate ligament surgeries really were on a different level these days, he’d said. George would be enjoying the same technological advances as Alan Shearer had.
‘He’s old, Mum. He shouldn’t have been out running that long. Just as the children shouldn’t have been out for such a long ride in this bloody awful weather. Lily’s properly ill now. Dad’s going to get sick because you know he won’t leave her side. And Jake.’
‘Jake wasn’t sick when we left.’ According to Stu, he was happily watching a documentary on killer whales after a hot bowl of soup.
Jennifer gave a brittle laugh. ‘Believe me, Mum. He will be by the time we get back.’
‘And it’s all my fault, is it?’
‘It usually is, Mum,’ Jennifer said with uncharacteristic venom. (Normally it was world weariness that accompanied her slights).
Flo shifted in her chair so she could face her daughter. ‘Now what’s that supposed to mean?’
‘Oh come on. You know you’re always pushing when it’s obvious no one else wants to take part.’ Jennifer’s eyes were lit bright with anger.
‘Really?’
Again, the hard laugh filled the empty, easily moppable waiting room.
‘Mum.’ Jennifer fixed her with a look of sheer disbelief. ‘Do you remember anything about our childhoods?’
Of course she did. Jennifer was being ridiculous.
‘All of the “adventures”? They all end in disaster.’ She began to tick things off her fingers. ‘The ski trip when Jamie broke his leg after the instructor told you it was too icy to take out a
