‘Are you doing the ride on your own?’
‘No, I …’ Flo scanned the crowd for Sue and Raven, and came up empty. Little wonder as Raven had, with her encouragement, ridden ahead much earlier in the day and set off from the tea breaks near enough when Flo arrived.
Sue had ridden ahead as well, occasionally falling back to check that Flo was alright, but, again with Flo’s encouragement, had pushed ahead, clearly enjoying listening to everyone and the stories that had brought them on the ride.
‘Well, let’s get you inside for a nice hot cuppa before teatime, shall we?’ Becky pointed towards the hotel entrance where, to Flo’s delight, Raven and Sue were scanning the crowd. She waved, they waved, Flo excused herself from Becky and all of her positivity, gratefully accepting the ginger biscuit and cup of tea Sue handed her as they entered the hotel where they would regroup, sleep, then find a way to do it all over again.
Kath closed her eyes, lifted up her chin and let the sea air buffet her. It had been a long, emotional day but strangely curative. As if taking these baby steps towards marrying her public persona with her private self were helping her tap back into the person she never realised she wanted to be: a listener. Of course she listened to people on the telly. But she also had a producer’s voice in her ear, Kev’s expressions to read, her own reeling thoughts trying to keep herself a few seconds ahead of what was actually happening right this very moment, so … this was new. Listening and receiving without a plan.
‘Katherine?’
She blinked her eyes open and jumped straight into TV hostess mode. ‘Fola! Hello. How did you get on today?’
‘Good,’ he nodded earnestly. ‘Really good. Lots of thinking time.’
‘Oh? Did you not ride along with anyone today? It seemed a pretty chatty group,’ she added to cover the fact she’d been tactically ignoring him hoping that, because he was so gregarious and beautiful, he would have met people on his own.
‘Yes, absolutely. I chatted with many people, but I also had a lot of time to think.’
Six hours and thirty-seven minutes, if anyone was asking.
‘It is amazing meeting all of these people who—’ he looked out to the sea, searching for the right words. ‘People who have known such loss. Who are so honest about how they feel. How they got to where they are in life. I find it very humbling.’
‘You? Fola, you’re a total saint. I think you don’t have anything to worry about on that front.’
Fola shook his head. ‘No, I am no saint and it’s never a bad thing to be humbled.’
He said it in exactly the same way the Dalai Lama would’ve said it. Come to think of it, the Dalai Lama was a pretty humble guy.
‘Oh, come on. You’re one of the kindest, nicest, most helpful people I have ever met.’ She touched his arm. He looked at the spot her hand had vacated and then looked her in the eye with an electric intensity.
‘Katherine. I have a confession to make.’
Oh, please no. Don’t let him confess that he loved her. Not now that, after her own six hours and thirty-seven minutes of contemplation, she’d finally come to terms with the fact that loving him was completely mad. Seeing those soldiers today … it had been … beyond real. They didn’t have a solitary second spare in their lives to live on cloud cuckoo land because they were too busy dealing with the reality of it.
So, no. She didn’t love Fola. She loved the idea of him.
This little fiction she’d been carrying around – this secret romance – it was so much lovelier to dream about than face the reality that she didn’t love her husband anymore.
She was a textbook menopausal mid-life crisis.
Her thoughts pinged back to the ex-soldiers and how grateful they’d been to have been seen, to have been heard. Now that had been humbling. Maybe instead of Fola she should fall in love with a combat veteran – No! She returned to the mantra she’d been repeating over and over with each turn of her pedals today: What would Oprah do? How would she SuperSoul this?
Oprah would look it in the face and call it what it was. A time to decide what kind of person she, Kath Fuller, actually wanted to be.
Oprah did not fill emotional voids with deeply gorgeous, incredibly compassionate personal trainers. Oprah did not pretend she was happy in a relationship she didn’t want to be in anymore. No, Oprah dug deep. Right into her soul. Fearlessly. Unafraid to admit she had, in her time, felt bad about herself whether she was fat or thin. That being rich didn’t take away the hurt that came from people having told her she was ugly as a pre-teen. That fame came at a price … a vulnerability to public opinion. Opinion Kath had tried to keep entirely positive whilst stuffing secret after secret into her closet. Oprah kept it real. Which made opening up the closet to the rest of the world a pain-free exercise. There was nothing to hide.
‘My girlfriend and I were talking—’ Fola began.
‘Oh?’ Her smile stayed bright, but she saw instantly that his ‘confession’ was tactical. He knew she fancied him and was finding the kindest, gentlest way of letting her down which made her feel worse than she already did, but … alas alack, served her right for having believed a life in the limelight with Kev would make her feel whole.
‘Yes, we were talking and I said to her, I have learned a lesson today.’
Kath’s brow furrowed. ‘Really?’
‘Yes. I learnt that you are made of much more strength than you think you are.’ Fola smiled that sweet smile of his and despite herself, she blushed.
‘Don’t be ridiculous. I’m no different to any of the other riders.’
‘That’s what makes you strong,’ Fola said.
‘I don’t follow.’
‘I’ve never really
