She tried to give Zoe back a look that was neither intimidated nor tipping over the other way into aggression. It came out looking slightly bovine. God, it was sometimes so hard to know how to be around Zoe. Something about Zoe always made Kate feel like a good person and a coward, both at once. When she thought about Zoe’s relationships, it was sometimes with a serene sense that thank God she wasn’t like that but more often it was with a kind of tired fascination—not that her friend was insatiable, but that she herself was grateful for so little. For the longest time, she’d just been happy that Jack was happy with her. That had been the extent of her ambition.
When she’d found out that Zoe had been phoning him, right at the start of their relationship, it wasn’t just that she’d felt threatened. She was sure that Jack didn’t love Zoe, and the proof was that it hadn’t gone further than phone calls. She was sure that Zoe didn’t love Jack either, and that she was only after him to destabilize her. What disheartened her was the realization that Zoe considered it all to be part of the race. This was before they were friends: there was no good history between them yet to offset the hurt.
It was the start of the off-season. The National Championships were behind them, and Tom ordered them to take a month away from training to let their bodies recover from the summer of racing. Kate tried to rest but it was tedious, cooped up in the flat she and Jack were renting in East Manchester. Jack had been told to relax too, and he lay on the sofa with his legs up and his earphones in, glassy-eyed from the forced inactivity, nodding his head to jigs and reels and Scottish indie rock. She tried to forget Zoe’s phone calls but every time Jack’s phone rang—his mother checked in on him constantly, and his coach made sure he wasn’t training—she imagined it was Zoe, which was probably, she thought, exactly what Zoe wanted. She read novels listlessly, or she got halfway through and chucked the books against the wall, disgusted that the protagonists could never seem to just sort themselves out. There was rarely much in the characters’ lives that Tom wouldn’t be able to fix by breaking down the problem into solvable components, or by calmly unpacking their psychology, or occasionally just by ordering them to brace up. She felt sorry for Anna Karenina and Clarissa Dalloway and Holly Golightly that they couldn’t simply phone their coach, and glad that she herself would never get so tangled up in life’s knots.
Nothing happened, day after day. The sky was slate-gray and the roads were black with rain. The radio, with a soundtrack of Christmassy bells, was already offering to consolidate all your credit card debts into one easy-to-manage monthly payment.
Kate sat at the window brooding, watching the cars crawling through the November sleet. The off-season was a presentiment of death. There was no action on the track, and the sporting press lost interest in you completely. The disconnection was as sudden and absolute as if a switch had been thrown. All summer they fought over you for photos and gossip and interviews, and then they went quiet and you lived until spring in an obscurity so complete that only you knew you were still alive. You inhabited the town like a ghost, wandering without purpose. You’d been so busy training and competing and doing interviews all year that you’d made no civilian friends to hang out with, and yet you didn’t want to see your friends from the sport. Sometimes there were off-season get-togethers but they were awkward affairs where the riders stood around making in-jokes about cycling. They were like office parties where all the nibbles were optimized for protein delivery and no one got drunk and photocopied their assets.
Kate climbed the walls in the flat. One afternoon, after a fortnight of resting, she gave up and put on waterproofs and took her training bike out into a full gale. She headed up into the hills of the Peak District, and with each turn of the pedals she felt better. Rain lashed her face and she opened her mouth, liking the untamed taste of it. She rode through Glossop and out along the Snake Road, climbing the long, steep gradient into a gusting headwind and relishing the burn in her legs. The wet road rose through the scrubby moorland and the low pines; she knew each twist of it by heart. It was the only big climb on the standard loop that all the riders did once a week in training: east out of Manchester, a whirl around the Peak, and then home. She settled into the rhythm of the hill, standing in the pedals when the road kicked up, easing down into the saddle where the gradient relented a little.
The summit of the pass came into sight two hundred yards ahead, with another rider cresting it from the opposite direction. It was windier up on the top, without the shelter of the hill, and the other rider was getting blown all over the road as she began to descend, too fast on the wet road, yellow waterproof whipping in the gusts, no crash helmet, eyes screwed up against the rain.
“Zoe!” Kate shouted as the rider flashed past her.
She stopped, panting, and watched Zoe skid to a halt fifty yards downslope. Zoe turned her bike in the road and pedaled back up the hill to her, smiling.
Kate half regretted calling out. Maybe she was stupid to try to be friendly. It wasn’t as if she’d forgiven Zoe. Still, the adrenaline of the climb made her bold, and maybe the fortnight of isolation had left her glad to see anyone.
Kate returned Zoe’s smile as she approached.
Zoe shouted over the noise of the wind. “What are you doing up here?”
Kate was still out of breath. “Two weeks. Sitting around. I was going mental. You?”
Zoe laughed. “I’ve been out here every day. Don’t tell Tom. I’m a nuclear submarine. Stop running the turbines, I melt down and take civilization with me.”
Kate smiled again. “Headed home?”
Zoe nodded. “Unless you fancy some company?”
Kate sniffed and wiped rain off her face with the back of her glove. She looked down at the ride computer on her handlebars. “I’m doing another forty-five, fifty,” she said.
Zoe scanned the sky to cross-reference this information against the strength of the wind and the heft of the rain clouds.
“Via a nice hot coffee?” she said.
Kate hesitated, then laughed. “Go on, twist my arm.”
They rode to the top together and cruised the four downhill miles to the Snake Pass Inn. They left the bikes outside and sat down either side of the fire. They didn’t talk at first. They arranged their shoes to dry, took off their waterproof tops, and steamed as the coals glowed.
Zoe held her coffee in both of her hands to warm them, watching Kate over the rim of the cup.
“What?” said Kate finally.
“I’m sorry,” said Zoe. “I’m sorry for the phone calls.”
Kate looked sharply at her. “Going to make a habit of it?”
Zoe dropped her eyes. “No. It’s done. I’m over it.”
“Fine, then.”
Kate took off her gloves and draped them over the brass fender of the fireplace. They sizzled as the water boiled out of them.
“You sure?” said Zoe. “I’m forgiven?”
Kate smiled, feeling the weight lift off her too. “Yeah.”
Zoe raised her coffee cup. “Drink to it?”
Kate smiled at Zoe’s bedraggled hair and her hopeful expression. For the first time, she realized that Zoe might be okay.
“Not with coffee,” she said. “Let’s have a glass of wine.”
Zoe looked panicked. “Wine?”
Kate nodded. “French people make it from grapes. It comes in red or white.”
Zoe frowned, trying the feel of the word in her mouth. “Wine …”
“Oh come on,” said Kate. “It’s off-season. Live a little.”
She went to the bar before the adrenaline of the climb could desert her and ordered two glasses of pinot grigio. She hadn’t drunk in a pub since her sixteenth birthday and she was surprised by the size of the glasses the barman gave her: there was almost half a pint of wine in each. She dug into the back pocket of her gilet for money, paid with a damp twenty-pound note, and was surprised by how little change she got back.
Back at the fire she passed a glass to Zoe and sa
t down.
“Cheers,” she said.
“Cheers.”
They clinked. Zoe sniffed the wine, eyed it skeptically, then drained the glass. She put her hands to her mouth, rocking. “Ew. God. Yuk.”
She reached into the pocket of her waterproof for a caffeinated energy gel. She tore the top off the sachet, sucked out the gel, swallowed, and made a face.
“God,” she said. “They taste better on the bike, don’t they?”
Kate laughed. “Most people go for bar snacks.”
“Most people didn’t just ride eighty miles in that wind,” said Zoe. “I could eat the actual bar.”
She got up and went in search of food. Kate sat looking into the fire, feeling the warmth bringing her fingers and toes back to life, sipping her wine and liking the unaccustomed glow. They were the only people in the pub, and outside, the storm was building. Water streamed down the windows and the wind delivered buffeting gusts that drowned out the sound of Robbie Williams on the jukebox.
Zoe came back from the bar with a tray of sandwiches and two more glasses of wine. Kate’s eyes widened.
“What?” said Zoe. “I got him to make them with wholegrain.”
“You know what I mean.”
Zoe motioned to the window with her head. “Yeah, but who wants to go back out there right now? There’s freezing cold water actually coming out of the sky. I should never have moved up north.”
Kate snorted. “This is the south, love. You should try it up in the Lakes. Our rain comes in from the Arctic.”
“I’m from Surrey,” said Zoe, sipping her wine with her little finger extended. “Our rain comes in bottles labeled Evian.”
Kate laughed and finished her first glass of wine to catch up.
Zoe eyed her. “It’s not a race, you know.”
Something in Zoe’s eyes struck Kate as a challenge, and she drank her second glass of wine straight down without thinking about it too hard. Zoe followed, and they put down their glasses at the same time.
“Photo finish,” said Zoe. “Crowd goes wild.”
“I think you might just have edged it,” said Kate, thinking the opposite.
They sat together, looking into the fire.
After a while Zoe said, “What was it like?”
“What was what like?”
“Growing up in the Lakes.”
“I don’t know. Wet.”
“Any brothers or sisters?”
Kate shook her head.
“Me neither,” said Zoe. “Only child. Were you happy?”
Kate thought about it. It wasn’t a question with an easy answer, and it freaked her out a bit that Zoe had asked.
“Why?” she said finally.
Zoe held up a hand. “Sorry. My mouth.”
“No, it’s okay.”
The wine’s first rush ebbed away from her. With the warmth of the fire creating a burgeoning gravitational field and the wind outside shrieking, she started to regret the second glass. She ought to think about riding home to Jack. She imagined him lying on the sofa. She imagined coming in from the rain, soaked to the skin, and letting him warm her up. He would take her in his arms and help her peel off her kit and … well. It was nice to have someone to go home to.
Zoe was eating a sandwich. She sighed, threw the crust down, and nodded at their empty glasses.
“Best of three?” she said.
Kate smiled. “We should head back. It’ll be dark in a couple of hours.”
“We could dial a taxi. Put the bikes in the back.”
Kate hesitated, thinking of Jack. “I really should get going.”
It came out sounding rather formal, and the tiniest flicker of desperation in Zoe’s eyes made Kate wish that she’d been able to find a warmer way of saying it.
“Of course,” Zoe said quickly. “I was only kidding.”
“Oh, right,” said Kate, dropping her eyes and giving a small self-deprecating laugh that she hoped was enough to make her out as the one who had embarrassed herself.
Zoe began collecting her gloves and waterproofs. “You heading home?” she said.
“Yeah,” said Kate. “You?”
“Oh, I’m going to my boyfriend’s.”
“Great,” said Kate, thinking about the ride home. “In town?”
“No,” said Zoe, gesturing south. “It’s that way.”
Outside, after the glow of the fire, the wind and the rain were even stronger. Zoe turned left and Kate turned right and it wasn’t until half an hour later, while she was rolling down from the hills and the first of Glossop’s streetlights were drawing the rain out into bright splinters, that Kate realized there was nothing at all in the direction Zoe had indicated—nothing for fifty miles except the bleak and rainswept Peak with its sodden hills black against the wet gray disk of the setting sun. She wondered if there really was a boyfriend or whether Zoe was still out there in this weather, riding a lonely arc from the fading glow of the alcohol to the clutch of the gathering night.
The more you got to like Zoe, the harder it was to know how she made you feel. In the changing room, Kate let her eyes fall away from Zoe’s in the mirror, while Zoe combed her hair. She watched herself. She hated these mirrors with their harsh halogen lights: they showed you nothing but the truth. Her face had aged in the last few months, this was undeniable. She’d kept the looks of her early twenties beyond their return date and now life had chosen this year, of all years, to call in the loan. The mirror didn’t admit to the possibility of a time when she had been radiant, when there had actually been a difficult choice for Jack to make between Zoe and her. Now she really looked like a mum, and Zoe still looked like a model. She tried not to feel resentful. It had been her choice, after all, being a mother. No one had forced her to do it.
And here she was, thirty-two and looking it, and here was Zoe asking if she would come with her and get a tattoo. Time clawed at the back of her neck in the sharp, insistent strokes of Zoe’s comb. Zoe watched her in the mirror, waiting for her response with that same almost perfectly concealed desperation she’d shown by the fireside on that rainy training ride, the first day they’d become friends. Silence settled and the inchoate moment persisted.
“Yeah, fuck it, Zo,” Kate said suddenly. “I’ll come to the tattoo place with you.”
Made in Manchester tattoo studio, Newton Street, Manchester
Zoe called her agent and her agent had a photographer dispatched to the tattoo studio. He arrived after forty minutes, on a scooter. He was young and convinced of his charms. Zoe needed good shots, so she smiled as if she concurred. Kate smiled too, and the pap took the pictures while the tattoo artists worked.
Zoe was having her forearm inked with a triple X, beneath Olympic rings the size of fifty-pence pieces.
In the chair next to hers, Kate was getting the rings done small, the size of five-pence pieces, exactly where Zoe had known she would: high on her shoulder blade where a T-shirt would cover them.
When the shots were done, Zoe signed the pap’s shirt for him with a magic marker. She handed it to Kate so she could sign too, but the pap was already turning to leave. Zoe watched the hurt flicker across her friend’s face, then the quick recovery. She felt for Kate. Something caught under her ribs, and she allowed the feeling to swell for a moment. It reassured her that she felt something. It wasn’t as if she was heartless.
A moment later, Kate seemed to be over it. She got on the phone to Jack, giggling as she admitted to him what they were doing.
“We’re just down the road! We’re having tattoos.”
She whispered the word, elongating the oo into a delighted exhalation of wonder at their own daring.
Sometimes Zoe wondered if Kate was ever going to grow up. She listened to her friend on the phone. There was a hesitancy in her voice—a timidity, almost—in the way she broke the news of a little ink to the man she’d been married to for eight years. Jack, for goodness’ sake. As if he had any right to judge her.
She sighe
d. The needle buzzed away on her arm, hurting when it came close to her wrist but not hurting so much as, say, sprint cycling. She didn’t know what to do for Kate. Just because Zoe was the one who had taken Kate’s confidence away, it didn’t mean that she knew how to give it back. It was easier to believe that Kate didn’t suffer too much from it all, that she was unaware of how unfair it had all been on her. It was easier to hope that Kate didn’t see how tired she was starting to look next to Zoe or didn’t notice how much the burden of Sophie was slowing her down.
It was all a bit shitty to contemplate. If Kate really understood what had happened to her—what was happening to her still—then the fact that she wasn’t crying about it made Zoe want to cry.
There it was: a prickling in her eyes. Zoe charted it and connected it with the other points of reference—the pangs and lurches and catches of breath that she felt when she let herself think about Kate too hard. There did seem to be a constant pattern inside her—a constellation of disconnected emotions which, when viewed in its entirety, seemed to form the shape of someone who cared. But then again, you could connect the stars any way you liked. Some people saw a big dipper, while others only saw a plow.
Zoe was wary of the idea that on some level she might be a good person.
She eavesdropped as Kate’s call with Jack turned sour.
“What’s the matter?” Kate was saying. “Oh, don’t be like that. It’s just a bit of fun.”
Zoe watched her face fall.
“It’s just for an hour or something. You guys can wait that long, can’t you? Okay, Christ, I mean tell Tom we’re sorry. We shouldn’t have sneaked out like that.”
Another silence.