She glanced at her odometer (irksomely configured in metric despite Stu knowing full well she still worked in imperial but she’d been so guilt ridden about him having to nurse poor Captain George in her absence, she’d not insisted he change it as she normally would have done).
Humph. Not quite so far along as she’d hoped two hours of pedalling would have advanced her.
Flo tried to speed up but the gears appeared to be working against her. All twenty-seven of the ridiculous things. Complete excess, when the seven on her own bike had been perfectly fine. These were clacking far more dramatically than hers did. Plus the handlebars were all wrong. And there was no basket.
Clacketyclacketyclack.
She shifted gears again, looked up and saw that Raven, who’d just been beside her, was already halfway up the slope, peddling away as if she had some sort of in-built rocket launcher powering her up the hill. That, or one too many coffees at breakfast.
She’d learn.
Flo began to hum ‘Bicycle Race’ by Queen then stopped as the slope most definitely turned into a hill.
Sue picked up the rest of the song, fat-bottomed lyrics and all, for her.
‘Great song, isn’t it?’ Flo said, happy for the distraction from some rather clunky internal gear changes. This was, most assuredly, no Bicycle Race. Bicycle slog more like. Her knees, for some reason, weren’t playing ball with the rest of her. Sympathy, no doubt, for Captain George and his poor, snapped cruciate ligament.
‘Mmm …’ Sue crinkled her nose. ‘Who was it by again?’
‘Queen, darling.’ Queen! The anthem makers of Flo’s twenties and thirties. She’d absolutely loved them. The charged lyrics. The way they spoke directly to her, championing those who chose to march to the beat of a different drummer. Oh how she’d wept when she’d heard Freddy Mercury had died. So much so, Stu had (fleetingly) been convinced they’d been on friendly terms.
‘Queen, yes, that’s right.’ Sue nodded beneath her helmet, her expression turning wistful. ‘Gaz took me for my birthday.’
‘To see Queen?’ Impossible. She’d have been about nine.
‘The movie. Bohemian Rhapsody? With the actor from …’ she hmmed a moment and then, ‘I can’t remember. One of those shows Gary just loves.’
‘Film?’ Flo asked instead of commenting on the tense Sue had used about her husband.
‘It was ever so good. It was a biography really, about the singer … what was his—
‘Freddy Mercury.’
‘Yes, that’s right.’
Of course it was. Flo had been what they now call a super fan. Not obsessive or stalky or anything, but when Queen went on a world tour, Flo had never been more insistent about having a say in her roster. Twelve times, she saw them. Six in Europe, five in the US and one bitterly cold day in Toronto. But she’d been there, just like the postman. Come rain or shine. Whipping out her lighter at a moment’s notice. Singing and swaying along with the rest of the crowd. It was at a Queen concert – December 1st, Madison Square Gardens – when she’d finally decided she could, and would, marry Stu. The crowd was at fever pitch when, with characteristic showmanship, Freddy had hushed them all into a silence so taut all twenty thousand fans must’ve been holding their breath. He sat down at his piano, waited, then began to sing: the opening words of ‘Love of My Life.’
Stu, whom she had dumped an hour earlier when he’d refused to wave sparklers about on the grounds of health and safety, had somehow found her again and, with his characteristic understatement, slipped his hand into hers, along with a different type of sparkler. The type that came in a little eggshell-blue box.
She’d said yes instantly, and it was right there, amongst the thousands of drunk and stoned and tripping Queen fans, that they shared their first public kiss. It had even involved tongues and, if memory served, Stu’s hand up a garish satin top she’d favoured at the time. The next morning was the only time Stu had ever been late for crew call. Five minutes, but still … she’d loved wielding that power over him, even if had only been the once.
Behind her she heard voices. She took a glance back, a sharp pain lancing between her thigh and buttock as she did. Crumbs. She’d forgotten it. Her bouncy, luxurious gel seat cover. She could picture it perfectly, sitting on her dressing table so she wouldn’t forget – forgotten because of a small whimper she thought she’d heard when Stu was shifting Captain George from the kitchen to his favourite outpost, the conservatory sofa. To prevent saddle soreness, Stu had said when he’d given the seat to her with that sensible look of his. Then he’d handed her a small pot of Happy Bottom Bum Butter. A purchase, no doubt, that had caused his bank manager some alarm. She shifted back into place with a grimace. It’d be fine. She could put up with anything for four days. Particularly now that she’d finally succumbed to the lure of padded shorts. Shorts, Stu had assured her, specifically designed for longer rides. Hopefully an Unhappy Bottom wouldn’t be a problem. She perked an ear at the sound of voices. ‘Competitive oldies on your five o’clock,’ she stage whispered to Sue.
Sue wobbled as she looked over her shoulder, just as the two other ‘silver surfers’ of the group rode up alongside them.
Whilst Flo considered herself an open-minded friendly sort, even to the ‘Trevors’ of the world, these were the type of people who, particularly in the last few years of flying, irked her the most. The lean, wiry type of senior traveller Flo often saw eating homemade granola bars in the middle rows of economy (bliss! After all of that by choice roughing it they’d endured out on Macchu Picchu or the bus down from Everest or wherever it was people who didn’t worry about their knees went). Their skin was always leathery, but with the healthy glow of someone who,
