‘Look at her. Tiny. She went like a rocket, but her legs are like toothpicks. It’s the aerodynamics you know.’
Marilyn sat on his bed, moving the pot of fresh flowers she’d brought in that morning so she could get a better look. She was knitting away, her eyes focused on the screen. Frank put his good arm around her, pulling her in to his side. She kissed him on the cheek.
‘Next time, do that with the other arm.’ He rolled his eyes at her, but nodded along.
‘I’ll do it for a bacon butty.’
‘In second place, with an impressive round, and all obstacles successfully navigated, Luke Sommersby!’
They both jumped up, bouncing up and down on the bed. Marilyn threw her knitting into the chair and shouted out to Dante, who was stood with the nurse at the medication trolley just outside.
‘Second place! He got second place! Fifteen thousand euros for this place!’
Dante whooped, hugging the nurse and totally taking her off her feet.
‘Yes! Hear that, Pam?’ Pam was twerking her head off.
‘I hear new equipment, Dante, and I like it!’
Marilyn left them boogying around the trolley and dashed back to Frank’s room. He was looking at the screen, watching his son take a trophy and a huge cheque. He’d looked so confident out there, Rebecca and Hans either had remote control skis, or Luke was a very fast learner. The whole time his son had been on that screen, Frank had waited for the usual constricting fear to take him over. The feeling he had had since the day he’d driven home from the hospital with a baby in the back of his car, and his life in tatters around him. He waited for it to kick in, but when Luke finally came to a stop and had crossed that finish line, all he could remember thinking the whole time was one word. WOW.
‘You okay?’ Marilyn asked him, a she dabbed at a tear he didn’t know he’d shed. Turning to look at her, he slowly manoeuvred his arm off the pillow it was resting on, and putting it around Marilyn’s middle, he gave her a tiny little squeeze.
‘Oh Frank!’ Marilyn looked at his arm as if it was made of solid gold, and to be honest, Frank felt like a millionaire at that moment. ‘You did it! I knew you could do it.’
He didn’t tell her he’d been practising extra hard. He’d had enough of waiting for life to end. That’s what he had been doing, really. Just waiting till it ended, and he’d done his job. Kept his son safe. Now, he was a man who wanted out of this bed. He was a man with plans too. He looked at his son on the screen again, Rebecca running into his arms the second he stood off the podium. He was safe, and happy.
‘I did, but my terms have changed.’
‘You don’t want my baps now?’ she quipped, and he laughed, concentrating hard on his arm around her waist as he moved her that bit closer. ‘Go on then, what’s the new deal?’
‘A bacon butty, and a date.’
Marilyn blushed.
‘Frank, I would love to, but I do have to say one thing.’ She brushed a bit of pillow-ruffled hair back behind his ear, and he waited. This was something that he’d been waiting a long time for. It’s just took a bit of drama to help him figure it out. Marilyn had always been the one he’d talk to, call when he was feeling blue. They’d put flowers down together for their lost loved ones, and she’d never once asked him for anything.
‘Go on,’ he said. ‘Be nice though, my courtship rituals are a bit rusty.’
‘I was just going to say, it’s about bloody time!’
His phone rang, and Luke’s name came up on the screen. They reached for it together.
*
This is it. This is it. Rebecca waited to head to the top, whilst Robbie stood at the bottom. The Alpine challenge was an obstacle course on the main slope that stood here. She’d been here before so many times, but this was her first time down it since the accident. The qualifiers had been different, on the lesser slopes. Alpine Gins wanted nothing to dull down the tension of the day to come. They wanted people to salivate for the event, and that they were. The stands were packed, the café full of people, so full they spilled out onto the street.
‘You okay?’ Hans stood beside her. He looked knackered.
‘I should be asking you that. Little Thor still not sleeping?’
‘No. He might as well have a hammer. It would be less annoying. I can hear him now.’ He shoved a gloved finger into his ear, waggling it.
‘I can’t believe Holly liked the name.’
‘Luke’s dead to me now. I’ve told him,’ Hans quipped.
She grinned, thinking of Luke who was basically like Tigger waiting for her to take her shot. Hans had physically restrained him, telling him to go watch in the café with Holly and Thor. They were in the flat so they didn’t scare the customers off. They all knew he wouldn’t.
‘He did well, didn’t he?’ She had felt the dread when Luke’s turn had come. She’d gripped Hans tight the whole time, not even minding when he squashed her to him. He’d looked amazing. Hans was right, he could do anything. ‘Don’t be too mad about the name.’
‘Wait until you have kids,’ he grumbled. ‘I’m going to pick the worst name ever.’
He nodded to someone behind her, and she heard the Tannoy of the announcer come to life.
‘It’s time, you can do this,’ he urged quickly. ‘You just need to beat him.’
Hans had bowed out of the competition with his baby coming a little bit early, but he’d dragged himself out to support her.
‘Thanks Hans, for everything.’
‘Please welcome our next and final Alpine Challenge Champion Slalom competitor, Rebecca Atkins. The Ice Rebel, with a time to beat from our current frontrunner, Robbie
