‘Either way,’ said Kath. ‘I should’ve been there for him. I should’ve been there for him and I left him fucking hanging by a— sorry. Jesus!’ She went to slap herself on the forehead and bonked her helmet instead which threw her head back in a weird snapping motion. ‘Sorry, it was an analogy, I – shitfuckingbullocks I wazzocked that up, didn’t I?’ And then all of the sudden the pair of them were laughing. Laughing like a pair of hyenas. ‘Thank Christ Kevin didn’t hear that,’ Kath snorted. ‘I’d never hear the end of it. Forgive me?’
‘Of course I do,’ Sue said. ‘There’s nothing to forgive.’
‘I suppose there will always be things people say that end up hurting.’
Sue nodded and then looked up at the sound of Big Ben chiming.
‘Sorry. Sorry.’ Kath pulled her phone out of a little plastic wallet hanging round her neck. ‘Bums.’ She held up the phone. ‘Dean-O.’
Sue raised her eyebrows. She’d not really seen much of Dean-O. He rode at the head of the pack with the men who had skinny legs and muscled calves and, strangely, pot bellies.
‘Really? Seven more? Blimey. That’s quite a lot. Can we get Becky to … right. I see. Okay, we’ll let everyone know in Carlisle over lunch and I guess we’ll take it from there.’ She clicked off the call and put it back in her waterproof wallet.
‘Everything okay?’
Kath made a not-so-much face. ‘Depends upon how much you’re enjoying today’s ride, I guess.’ Kath popped on the smile Sue was much more familiar with. The ‘uh-oh, here comes trouble’ smile that usually preceded Kev pulling some sort of prank on her. Maybe she used to like it, the pranks. Perhaps she’d adored the thrill of the unknown. Loved it right up until the thrill changed into something else. A nightmare. ‘There are seven more miles on today’s route than we thought.’
‘Gosh.’ Sue had only mentally prepared herself for forty-seven miles.
‘And apparently the last seven miles are pretty hilly. And by pretty I mean—’ She put her arm up at a ninety-degree angle.
‘Ah.’
‘Never mind, Sue,’ Kath said, looking strangely bolstered by the news. ‘What is it they say? Pray for the best, prepare for the worst and expect the unexpected?’
‘They can’t do that. Just change the itinerary.’ Flo knew she was being churlish and that she should be putting on her sunshiney ‘of course you can sit in an upright position for ten hours even though it’s the same position they use for torture’ smile on, but she was in the depths of a very exclusive pity party and had no idea how to yank herself out of it. ‘That’s not what they said. We are meant to stay in Brampton.’
‘You’ll be fine,’ Sue insisted. ‘You know, Trevor was saying Gilsland is where Sir Walter Scott met his wife.’ She frowned. ‘Or perhaps that was Brampton. Gilsland sounds like somewhere in one of the Hobbit books, doesn’t it?’ She made a rabbit face as a stand in for a Hobbit face, then smiled one of her dear sweet Sue smiles. ‘Don’t you think, Raven?’
Sue was quickly realising she needed someone else’s support in her ‘look on the bright side’ campaign. Flo, as things stood, was unwilling to be cajoled into smiling, let alone riding seven extra miles.
Raven nodded, but didn’t respond as she had a mouth full of baguette.
Fuelling. That was smart. Flo didn’t have the energy to fuel. Not anymore. Not now she knew she was a selfish, overpowering, control freak who was single-handedly responsible for the fact her husband no longer had any energy to do anything beyond the puzzle page and her children rarely ever visited except when Stu was around. And then it hit her. This was exactly the sort of thing Jennifer would’ve hated. A turn of events that Flo would’ve insisted was an adventure and forced everyone into no matter how miserable or broken they were. And they always came. Into the souks of Morocco where they’d become terrifically lost. Jamie had somehow lost a shoe and Jennifer, with her blonde hair, had been pulled into a carpet shop without her even noticing. (Stu had bought her back, along with an exorbitantly overpriced cushion cover they’d ended up donating to charity in the end.) They’d all trudged into the Ethiopian restaurant she’d insisted would be delicious. They’d all hated it (even Flo, but she was hardly going to admit that to her whining, why-can’t-we-have-fish-and-chips-like-everyone-else children). They weren’t like everyone else, Flo had insisted. That was the point. To be unique. To be someone to envy. But did people envy her? Not really. Did they invite her to join them in their adventures? No. She was the one who cajoled and pushed and busy-bodied around folk until all they could do was relent. Even her poor, darling, Captain George who had run and run alongside her when she’d insisted upon doing that ridiculous canal loop. All these people so willing to please and what had she shown them in return?
Nothing but disdain.
Flo had never felt more disappointed in herself in her entire life.
She was no better than Linda Hooper and her capfuls of bleach down the village hall.
‘Seven extra miles,’ Sue was saying as if seven (modern day) miles were akin to a trip down to the corner shop. ‘You’ve done that several times already today, Flo …’ she tapped her fingers along her chin, thinking.
‘Five times,’ Raven filled in for her. ‘We’ve done thirty-five from Silloth. Then it’s twelve to Brampton and another seven to Gilsland.’
A dull throbbing pain presented itself so profoundly in Flo’s knees, she barely heard as Raven talked her through the rest of the route. A bit of river this, a bit of undulating countryside that, a market town that had hosted Charles Stuart for one night during the Jacobite rising. The fact caught her attention.
‘How on earth did you know that?’ Flo asked.
Raven scanned the crowd and pointed at, surprise surprise, Trevor. ‘Cool dude.
