‘Sounds good.’ Sounded long. She tried to cover up her grunt as she climbed on her bike with a satirical whoop. Sue gave her a confused look, then a thumbs up and climbed on her own bike.
‘So …’ Raven nodded at Sue’s sky-blue bicycle after a few minutes. ‘What do you think?’
Sue patted the bike’s handlebars, wobbled for a second, gripped the bars until her knuckles were white then shot Raven a giddy grin. ‘I love it. Dylan really knows how to find a bargain.’
Raven gave a proud smile, as if it were entirely down to her that Dylan was, indeed, a bargain-bagging eBay savant. When it came to cycle stuff, anyway. And he knew some crazy sick cycle tricks as well. His humble bragging about cycle parkour – an insane way of riding a bicycle on the tops of walls and rooftops and jumping with the bike on and off of just about anything – was genuinely, honest to goodness, humble. He could pop himself and his bicycle … from a standstill … onto the top of a bin and then carry on riding it as if he’d done nothing more than dodge a puddle. She looked down the cycle path they were on and tried to imagine how Dylan would ride up or down or fly over all of it with a little cocky flick of the wheel this way or that. Just thinking about it made her exhausted. The boy was as full of energy as she was of teenaged disdain for her fellow teenagers. Dylan excepted, obvs.
‘Thanks for coming out with me,’ Sue said after a bit of silent pedalling.
‘Absolutely. No problem.’ Raven swallowed back the guilty apology that should have followed. Sue had actually been quite diligent about going out, even if only for a bit, the entire ten days since they’d made their purchases. She invited Raven every single time and never once moaned or cajoled or rebuked her when she made her excuses. The truth was, she’d hit a bit of an emotional snag of her own and was afraid if they had alone time without the telly, everything she’d been spilling her guts to the work therapist about would come flying out in a torrent of woe that she really didn’t deserve to feel. Not when Sue was going through the actual death of an actual loved one who had mired her in substantial debt and then topped himself rather than face up to what he’d done. Not that she was judging, but … effing hell. She hoped there was some mahoosive apology letter buried somewhere amidst all of those receipts and things. Boxes and boxes, he’d left. She didn’t know how Sue got up in the morning. Not that Gary had left her much choice. Anyway … she’d not met the man. Not her place to judge.
‘How many miles do you think Kath does a day?’ Sue asked. ‘She looks pretty fit.’
Raven shook her head. She didn’t know. ‘I suspect her trainer sees to that.’
‘Maybe we should’ve hired Dylan,’ Sue said in a way that suggested she might think Raven and Dylan were a thing.
To put her well off that track because – No, Raven barked a not-ruddy-likely laugh then asked, ‘Have you rung the production office back?’
‘The Brand New Day people?’
‘Yeah.’
Sue shook her head. ‘I thought we’d better speak to Flo, because it sounded like they thought we were all still working at the call centre and I didn’t feel it was my place to – you know—’
‘… tell her about The Rachel Incident?’
Sue crinkled her nose. ‘Yeah. I wish they’d have her back. The place feels a bit …’
‘Boring?’ Raven offered.
‘Quieter,’ Sue countered in that politic way of hers.
‘Maybe they will. If Flo, you know, apologized. It’s not like people are exactly banging the doors down to work there.’
‘What do you think you’ll say,’ Sue asked, the tone of her voice making it clear she’d drifted off somewhere entirely different.
‘When?’
‘When they come to interview us?’
‘Oh, god. I don’t know. I was just presuming Flo would do all the talking and I would stand there like a berk, then it would all be over and that would be that.’
‘But …’ Sue made a weird chewing motion as if she was trying to taste the perfect way to explain what she’d actually meant. ‘I don’t really want to do it. I’m probably more shy than you are – not that it’s a contest,’ she quickly added. ‘It’s more that … I was just thinking.’
‘What?’
‘Well? It’s not just any old bike ride is it? It’s a bike ride for a charity that helps people who are going through a tough time and … I don’t know. It seems important to make sure people know that we know that and that we support that and the people who ring in and the people who volunteer and Kath who is making it all happen.’
Raven nodded. All good points. She felt a bit squeamy, now. To have been so blithe about it. She, after all, was going through her own things and probably could’ve done with someone neutral to bounce ideas off of before she did stuff like move out of the family home to prove a point she wasn’t entirely sure was worth proving.
‘Are you going to …’ Oh crap. She’d just started a sentence she didn’t really know how to finish.
‘… talk about Gary?’ Sue quietly finished for her.
‘Yeah.’
‘I’m not really sure it’s something they want on television.’
‘Kath talked about it. What her brother did.’
Sue’s lips disappeared into her mouth with an mmm.
‘I’m sure they’d help you. You know, how to phrase things.’
‘What about you?’ Sue deflected. ‘What would you want to talk about?’
‘How to be brave,’ Raven blurted.
‘You’d be good at that,’ Sue said, clearly missing the fact Raven had meant it as a wisecrack, a
