Kath smiled as she rolled to a halt, unclipped her shoes from her pedals and studied Raven in a way that didn’t make her squirmy. Which was little short of a miracle, as being under anyone’s scrutiny tended to make her squirmy. ‘C’mon. It’ll be interesting. Particularly for someone with flame eyes who likes to champion the underdog.’
Ack. Now she did feel squirmy.
In her head she definitely did. In reality? Not such a great track record on that front. Although … she had sort of helped Dylan get a job. Well, Dean’s brother Sue had really, but she’d been the go between. By all accounts he was loving it. Said Dean let him wear anything he wanted to work so long as the computers stayed pukka.
Raven glanced back at the lads then thought, fuck it. I’m with Kath of Kath and Kev. They’ll stick two fingers up at us, tell us where to stuff it, then we can carry on riding.
Twenty minutes later, Raven was utterly gobsmacked. The men she’d thought were smoking crack told Kath they were actually ex-soldiers doing art therapy. Kath had rightly recognised one of their tattoos and they were astonishingly easy to mine for information. Maybe it was Kath being famous that made them so chatty. Maybe it was meeting a Big Boned Goth Girl with flames shooting out of her eyes and wearing lycra. Maybe they were just lonely. None of them could find a job. All of them were desperate to be listened to. To be heard. Desperate to figure out how to live in their small towns with their small lives making absolutely no difference whatsoever when they’d been programmed to put their own lives at stake for a bigger cause: a country that had, effectively, turned its back on them when they’d come home. They’d eventually pulled the notebooks Raven had mistaken for gear out of their jackets and showed them the mask templates they’d each been given to draw their emotions on.
Fucking harrowing came to mind when the first one reluctantly pulled out his drawing. Lonely for another. Savaged for the third. They gave her a template when she mentioned she liked to draw. She put it in her pocket wondering what her ‘inside face’ would look like if she let it out.
‘Is it helping you, chaps?’ Kath asked. ‘The therapy?’
‘Better than sitting round doing nothing,’ said one.
‘Yeah, definitely,’ said the one who’d drawn a face that made The Scream look like a cheery yodeller. ‘Takes what’s in here,’ he tapped his head, ‘and gets it out. At least for a while.’
‘Thanks for stopping,’ said the third. ‘It … it makes a difference. To be listened to. Properly.’
Kaths eyes got all leaky with tears as she hugged them all and promised to send a shout out on the next morning’s show for ‘taking the ride to another level’.
As Raven and Kath pedalled away, Raven began to craft a retraction for her previous Insta post. Kath wasn’t a do-gooder giving face time to a charity she kept at arm’s length. She was a woman actively making amends.
Chapter Forty-Six
10 SECOND INTERSTITIAL: BRAND NEW DAY
VISUAL: Sue Young
GRAPHIC: Sue Young, Fundraiser for LifeTime
AUDIO TRANSCRIPT:
SUE YOUNG: I can’t believe it.
Off-camera question: What can’t you believe?
SUE YOUNG: That I just rode my bike fifty-three miles.
Off-camera question: Have you not done that before?
SUE YOUNG: No. Nothing like it. It’s such a sense of … of … achievement, you know?
Doing something you thought you never could.
GRAPHIC: BRAND NEW DAY: Bringing out the Best in Britons Everywhere
Flo had never been more grateful to see a town in her entire life. Even a town that smelt, most peculiarly, of tinned spaghetti. Just a few hundred metres from the end of her ride, the smooth pavement turned to cobbles and her gratitude evaporated. Her bum had had more than enough reminders that she was mortal, thank you very much. She trained her eyes on the end of the street where she could see dozens of riders chatting, drinking energy drinks and generally looking as if they’d had an absolutely brilliant time versus having endured a grim reminder that she was mortal. Finally, mercifully, she arrived and dismounted her bicycle with little to no panache.
‘Alright, love? Good day out there?’
Flo forced on a yes, of course smile as Becky, one of the group support team, took her bicycle out of her hands and wheeled it into a long row of cycles. ‘Yes, fine, I—’
‘You wouldn’t catch me out there on one of these things,’ Becky interjected chirpily.
‘Oh?’
‘Wouldn’t last five minutes.’ She ran a hand the length of her body. ‘This was not built for endurance.’
‘No? I’m sure you could—’
Becky waved Flo’s feeble protest away. ‘Honestly. It’s why I do the van. Makes me feel athletic just keeping up with you lot.’
‘But … you drive at the back.’ Which did beg the question, how had she got there before Flo?
A vague memory of a van passing her as she pulled up next to the seaside hotel came back to her. Had it really taken her five minutes just to get off her bicycle?
Jennifer’s warnings about pushing things beyond their limits sprang to mind, as did an image of Captain George lying in his bed, his shaved leg and hip looking painfully thin without his coat of shaggy fur.
She willed Becky to move on, spread her cheer elsewhere. If she were to take one step her weaknesses would be as exposed as George’s were.
‘Fola’s doing stretches in the hotel ballroom if you need a bit of a cool down.’
‘Oh, I’m fine.’ Flo lifted one foot and pretended to do a little stretch. A move that unleashed an unexpected rush of emotion. She’d felt incredibly alone today in a way she hadn’t felt since before she’d been married. Alone and guilty and desperate for news on Captain George which she daren’t ask for because hearing Stu’s calm, steady voice would only add to the guilt and longing for
