‘Blimey, Kath. There’s someone out there who doesn’t want you to have a good time. We’re slathering on our factor fifty down here, aren’t we, girls?’
Kath glanced at the repositioned monitor and saw a group of female athletes towering behind Kev, all geared up in their Commonwealth Games kit, volleyball nets beyond them and the ocean just beyond again. She pictured a shark roaring out of the surf and gobbling up her husband.
‘You know us Brits, Kev. We always love a challenge.’
‘You’re not jokin’.’ Kev flicked his thumb at the team of highly respected athletes. ‘The girls here have challenged me to a game later. I don’t fancy my chances.’ He beamed at the camera, gave it a knowing wink and, if she wasn’t mistaken, saw the tiniest twitch of panic flicker across his face.
A whisper of something she hadn’t felt for her husband threaded through her. Pity. Somewhere beneath that fame-hungry bon vivant was an incredibly insecure man so desperate to keep his place in the world, he’d belittle a woman, his wife, on the brink of doing a charity ride for her dead, ex-soldier, brother who’d cried out for them to help, only to receive a deposit in his bank account so that he’d take his sorrows elsewhere.
‘What do you want from your trip, Kev?’
He blinked at her. This wasn’t scripted and even she was surprised to hear the genuine interest in her voice.
‘Good tan, good fun, an arm-wrestling match with a lion.’ He answered with his usual Jack the lad panache. ‘Why? What do you want from your trip?’
‘Peace, I suppose.’
‘Well you won’t be getting that, Kath. Not with what the weather man has in store for you. I’m guessing sore knees are a more likely option. Let’s all of us cross our fingers that Kath makes it across the finish line intact, shall we?’
He held up his fingers and then made a face as if to say, she won’t make it, but … bless her for trying.
And just like that, she knew Kev’s next raft of veiled insults would bounce off her like water on Gore-tex. He was acting like a right plonker. Oblivious to the fact that her LifeTime campaign had unearthed a more caring viewership. Fans who, whilst still keen to watch Kath and Kev make complete idiots out of themselves, also had sorrow and fear and pain in their lives and felt comfort in the knowledge that ‘even the likes of Kath and Kev’ had to search for silver linings as they ugly cried their way through life’s challenges.
Her producer gave her a wrap-it-up twirl of the finger.
‘Well you enjoy your beach blanket, Kev. Just a quick note to any of our viewers who live along the route today … the graphic should be popping up – yes – there it is on your screens. Don’t be shy about giving us a wave of support as we ride past or even join us for a mile or fifty-three. The number, if you’d like to donate is on the bottom of the screen and on our website …’ She turned to the group and cupped a hand to her mouth. ‘Are you ready to get on yer bikes for the trip of a LifeTime?’
A roar of cheers and whoops erupted around her as not only the riders, but a large crowd she hadn’t noticed gathering joined in, waving them off as she mounted her bicycle, rode about ten metres down the road only to discover that the first part of the Coast to Coast path entailed dismounting and walking for three hundred metres.
This, she thought as a dawning recognition rose within her, must’ve been what it felt like for her brother each and every morning. Elation that he’d made it another day, despair that it would never be easy.
Chapter Forty-Five
‘And so it begins, O Happy Instagrammers. The Epic Journey of Discovery. I won’t lie. I’m feeling like an oversized Frodo … ready to set off where no Big Boned Goth Girl has gone before … the Cumbrian Coastline. In shorts. On a bike. In the rain. Not feeling remotely miserable at all.’
(Camera pans to Sue who is chatting earnestly with Flo and a beardy guy who, by the looks of things, was totally dominating the conversation.)
‘These are my trusty, yet unlikely, companions, ready to take on the challenges of the Epic Journey that will end in … drumroll please … NEWCASTLE UNIVERSITY where I will discover the answer to life, the universe and everything … or, at the very least, the lure of the jello shot.’ (Off-camera fake crowd noises.) ‘Then off to Tynemouth where the journey actually ends, but what sort of epic journey would it be without the inevitable, illuminating side journey?’
Camera pans to Kath Fuller beckoning everyone into formation then back to an EXTREME CLOSE-UP.
‘There’s our chirpy leader. And now … See this? It’s my happy face. See this? It’s my scared-as-shit face. See this? It’s my too-late-to-back-out-now face. Hasta la vista, world. We’re off.’
The sooner Flo got some wi-fi the better. She wanted to FaceTime Captain George. See how he was getting on. And, she tersely reminded herself, Stu as well. She’d left him quite a detailed list of George’s after care, but couldn’t shake the niggling feeling that he’d think pre-warming George’s favourite blanket before bedrime wasn’t necessary. He’d not seen the look in George’s eyes the first time she’d done it. Pure love, was what it had been. Disbelief, in fact, that he should have someone in his life who knew him
