Outside, the rain was ending and the April sun glittered on the wet tarmac. Cars sent sheets of water arcing over the pavement.
Zoe came splashing through the puddles on her training bike, threw it down at the curb, and burst through the doors of the velodrome at eight minutes to twelve. She was soaked from the rain, her hair hanging wet and her kit bag dripping water onto the hard-wearing industrial flooring of the reception area.
She stopped six feet from Tom and stood looking at him, breathing hard. Steam rose from her wet jeans and her sodden black hoodie.
Tom’s anger dissolved and he rushed to close the gap between them. “What the bloody hell happened?”
She looked down and sniffed. “I nearly fell.”
“Off your bike?”
She shrugged. “Off my tower.”
He didn’t know how to react. After a long pause he said, “At least you’re warmed up.”
“Tell me what to do.”
He looked at his watch. “Can you change in four minutes?”
“Yeah.”
“Do it. Your bike’s ready for you. I’ll see you at the start. We’ll talk about this afterwards, okay? You and me. We’ll go for a coffee. But right now, I just want you to go to that place in your head where you go when you race. Nothing else exists, okay? Don’t look at Kate on your way down. Don’t look at the officials. Just get changed and walk to the start line and keep your eyes on me. I’ll look after you, Zoe, okay?”
“Okay.” Her voice betrayed the faintest of tremors.
He held out his hand. “Phone.”
She dug it out of the pocket of her jeans and handed it to him compliantly.
He put it in his own pocket. “Why are you still standing here?”
She jogged away down the stairs, and Tom followed her. Even in distress, there was a grace to the physics of her. While Tom hobbled on his ruined knees, Zoe flowed easily down the stairs, like oiled light. There was an unself-conscious sense of entitlement in her movement, as if space and time sucked in their guts to let her through, like starstruck bouncers on a nightclub door.
“Shit,” Tom whispered to himself. It wasn’t till now that he’d realized how badly he wanted her to win.
A phone buzzed in his pocket. It was Kate’s, and Jack’s name was on the screen.
He picked up. “Mate,” he said. “It’s me. I’m fielding Kate’s calls till after the race.”
There was no answer from Jack.
“Jack,” he said, more loudly. “It’s me, Tom.”
When Jack’s voice came, it was choked and unnatural. “There’s a situation here. There’s a fucking situation. I’m here at A&E and they’ve rushed Sophie away and I need to tell Kate to—”
“Right. Okay. Slow down.”
He’d reached trackside now. He turned his back towards Kate and the warm-up area and the officials and cupped his hand over the phone.
“What are you doing in A&E? Kate didn’t say anything.”
“She doesn’t know. Sophie had a fever and I was taking her in for a checkup and it suddenly got worse. I mean it’s really bad. I don’t know what’s going on, so can you please tell Kate that she needs to get here? Or, no, can I talk to her please?”
Tom hesitated. “You know what we’re deciding here today, right?”
“Yeah I know, Tom, but this is … shit, I mean it’s …”
“Yeah yeah, okay, I get you.”
Tom looked back towards the warm-up area. Kate was hopping from foot to foot, keyed up with adrenaline, watching for Zoe to come out of the dressing rooms. Her helmet was on, her eyes were hidden.
He exhaled deeply, to calm himself. “Listen, it’s your call. We’re five minutes away from racing here. I’m going to be honest and tell you that Kate’s looking pretty good for the win at this point. Do you need her there, or do you need her to do her thing here? It’s your family. You need to decide what’s best for it.”
There was a short silence on the end of the line. Then Jack said, “Not tell her, you mean?”
“I’m saying tell her after the race. If she takes it in two and skips the shower, she’ll be out of here in forty minutes. During which time you’re there with Sophie and you can handle it. Kate’s here and it’s the biggest race she’ll ever ride, that’s all I’m saying.”
“Yeah but if something … you know … happens, and I didn’t tell her?”
“Yeah, and what if everything turns out fine, and you told her this now? That’d be the third Olympics she’d miss. I’m her coach, Jack. I’m keeping count even if you’re not.”
“That’s not fair, Tom.”
Tom sighed. “I know. I’m stressed, you’re stressed. Look, like I said, it’s your call.”
Jack said, “Can I talk to her?”
Tom looked over to the warm-up area. Zoe was there now, up from the dressing rooms, suited up and pulling on her gloves. He caught her eye. She looked at him desperately.
“Okay,” he said quietly into the phone. “I’ll put you on.”
He pointed for Zoe to go to the far end of the warm-up area, while he carried the phone over to Kate. As he handed it to her, it felt like a betrayal.
“Is something wrong?” she asked.
He kept his face neutral. “It’s Jack.”
“What is it?”
He shrugged. “It’s Jack.”
She took the phone in her gloved hand. “Jack?” she said. “Is everything okay?”
Tom watched his own face in the mirror of her visor. He watched the uncertain line of her mouth. Then, as she kept the phone pressed to her ear, he watched her begin to smile.
“Oh Jack …” she said.
She listened some more, and he saw how her face blushed beneath the visor and her smile became a full grin.
“I will,” she said softly. “Thank you. Yes. I know I can.” He saw how she leaned in to the sound of his voice, pressing it to her cheek.
“I love you too,” she said, and he watched two small tears appear from beneath the lower limit of her visor and course down to her jawbone.
When the call was finished, she turned to Tom. “Thanks,” she said.
“What for?”
“For letting him wish me good luck.”
Pediatric intensive care unit,
North Manchester General Hospital, 11:58 a.m.
Jack put his phone back in his pocket and collapsed into a chair. Static popped and hissed through his neurons. He didn’t know if Sophie was asleep or unconscious, and the ICU nurses were too busy to tell him. His daughter was silent but her body still talked through the monitoring machines. They bleeped and took dictation. Jack watched as they traced out vital signs on-screen. According to Siemens Instruments, Sophie’s heart rate was eighty-eight. She was breathing, unassisted, twenty-two times per minute. He found his feet tapping along to the rhythms of the monitors. His body swayed to strange syncopations as it willed her to live.
On the phone to Kate just now, he’d been close to telling her everything. It was unbearable to have all this responsibility.
Watching Sophie with her breath misting the inside of the translucent green breathing mask, there was a terrible acceleration. The idea that Sophie could die had always been there, ever since the first diagnosis, and yet it had seemed like a bad place on a map, an Ivory Coast, somewhere not urgently frightening because fear itself kept you away from the place. You thought of it as somewhere braver people went, or at least as somewhere you’d have plenty of time to pack your bags for. And yet here he was, suddenly, in his tracksuit, with the house keys, the car key, his phone, and five pounds seventy-three in the pockets, watching Sophie do something that might actually be dying. This was the nature of time: it was a wide, elegant, and gently descending spiral staircase whose last dozen steps were unexpectedly rotten.
He needed Kate. He needed to hold her hand. If this was the final fall, and they didn’t fall together, they’d fall apart.
He tried to keep busy. He plugged in his earphones
and stuck on The Proclaimers. He put on “500 Miles” because it was Sophie’s favorite. When it got to the chorus, he took out one of the earbuds and placed it in her ear. The rhythm of the song drifted in and out of phase with the beeping of Sophie’s heartbeat. Her expression didn’t change.
He leaned down to whisper that Kate was on her way, that Sophie should fight and hang on.
They were letting him hold Sophie’s hand now, and for a while it had seemed like a good sign—an indication that she was out of danger. Now Jack began to think that the nurses were passing him a message that he was reluctant to understand.
At first they’d made him wait outside, where he’d gestured to Sophie through the wired safety-glass panel in the door. Sophie didn’t know what was happening to her and Jack had done his best, but these were difficult hand signals to make: You’re fine, you’re absolutely fine, all these doctors and nurses rushing around you are basically overreacting, but it would be rude to contradict them now that they’ve made such an effort. It was a tricky message to pitch, through thick glass. You had to allow for refraction.
Sophie had smiled before she fell asleep. That smile, framed in wired glass, was framed inside Jack’s head now. Doctors and nurses had ebbed and flowed, and he had found it impossible to isolate one individual from the green-gowned tide and ask, Is my daughter dying or just sleeping? At this extremity, finally, there was shame. He was ashamed that his daughter had become so ill without his realizing it.
Now, whatever was happening to Sophie seemed not to be improving or worsening. The monitoring machines were constant. Jack was fearful of breaking the spell or of calling any more of time’s attention to Sophie’s particular case. He sat very still. Inside this room now, with the monitors on, time was a diamond cut by Sophie’s breathing and polished by her pulse. As long as these sounds persisted, it was crystalline.
National Cycling Centre, Stuart Street, Manchester, 11:59 a.m.
Kate was careful not to look at Zoe as they lined up side by side at the start. Zoe had drawn the inside line for the first race, so Kate had her to her left. She didn’t let herself think about the drama of Zoe’s arrival or of what might be wrong. She held on to the sound of Jack’s voice on the phone, telling her that he loved her. She let the words ring in her head until they were the only sound she heard, until all her disappointments were silenced. She looked straight ahead down the track, adjusted her grip on the bars, and made her mind go quiet.
“One minute to go,” said the starter.
Her senses were keyed up. She swung her steering left and right, testing the adhesion of her tire rubber as the torsional force squeaked it against the varnish of the track. As she turned the bars, the friction of her skinsuit irritated the fresh tattoo on her shoulder blade, sending a flash of anger through her. She tensed and relaxed her muscle groups in turn, transmuting the anger into potential. She noticed the tiniest details: the ultrafine mesh on the backs of her gloves; the sandalwood notes in the perfume of the woman in the blazer who was holding her bike up by the back edge of its saddle.
As the starter counted down the seconds from ten, she let herself look across at Zoe for the first time. Zoe was staring straight ahead. Kate felt the expansion of Zoe’s lungs and the tensing of her muscles as if they were her own. In the last few seconds before the start, she let her body fall in with the rhythms of her rival’s.
When the starter’s whistle blew, Zoe eased away from the line and Kate followed her at a distance of six feet, ready to close the gap quickly if Zoe pulled away. Zoe kept the speed to a crawl, craning her head back, watching for any twitch Kate might make to indicate that she was about to accelerate. Around the first curve they both hung low in the trough, and when the straight opened up again, Zoe steered right and made for the high side of the track. Kate followed her up and they held their line there, accelerating to keep adhesion around the second curve, then maintaining the speed into the home straight. When they crossed the line at the end of the first of the three laps, they were gradually picking up the pace, and Kate was still tucked into Zoe’s slipstream.
Halfway round the second lap they were still cruising on the high side of the track, with Kate following and watching for any sign that Zoe was going to break. As they reached the apex of the curve that would take them back into the home straight, Zoe angled her head and set herself to dive down the banking to the well of the track. Kate reacted instantly to follow her, and she was fully committed before she realized that it had been a trick. Zoe kept her height, and as Kate dropped down to the black line with her muscles screaming as she snapped them instantly to full power, Zoe dropped in behind her and tucked into her slipstream just as the bell went for the final lap.
Kate understood the consequences immediately. Now that she’d lost the advantage, the only thing to do was to ride hard for the finish. There were no tactics left: they were both down in the well of the track, winding up to top speed around the shortest line, and Zoe was tucked into her wind shadow. If she couldn’t put down some extraordinary power now, Zoe would simply hang there until the last hundred meters and then accelerate out of her slipstream to slingshot past her for the win.
Now that there was nothing to think about, Kate was very calm. She wound herself up to the absolute limit of her power and used the image of Sophie to turn off the messages of agony exploding from her legs and her lungs. As they came into the last curve, sparks were detonating in her retinas from the effort. She flashed out of the curve into the last straight, sensing the disruption in the airflow and hearing the roar of the wheels as Zoe came out of her shadow and pulled alongside her. For fifty feet they were side by side. Kate pulled every atom of herself inside out and slowly, inchwise, Zoe’s attack began to falter. From being alongside she dropped to an inch back, a wheel-length back, and with a cold, silent flicker of wonder in her heart, Kate realized she was going to win. She crossed the line a bike-length ahead of Zoe and began to wind the pace down, easing her pressure on the cranks and letting the bike pedal her around two laps as the speed slowly came off. As she slowed, she looked across and saw how Zoe rode in defeat, with her shoulders slumped and her head down.
Zoe looked across at her, gasping. “I’ll get the next one,” she said.
Kate shook her head, too breathless to speak, but inside her a small, careful hope was forming.
Pediatric intensive care unit,
North Manchester General Hospital, 12:05 p.m.
Sophie came awake with a groan, and Jack’s heart leapt. Her voice was muffled by the mask, and he had to lean in to hear what she was saying.
“Dad?”
“Yes?”
“Can I tell you something?”
“Yes.”
“When you die, it’s just the same except you get a glowing line around you.”
“I know, darling. I’ve seen the films.”
“They’re not just films though. The Force is real.”
Jack looked into her eyes and saw the fear in them. He swallowed. “Yes, darling. It’s real.”
Slowly, Sophie smiled. “Truly?” Her voice was a clockwork doll winding down.
Jack said, “Truly.”
She closed her eyes. “I’ve never felt like this.”
“Yes you have. You’ve been through much worse.”
“How do you know?”
“My job is to remember for you.”
“How do you know you’re remembering right?”
“I know. When you’re a grown-up, you’ll understand. Everything is much clearer to us.”
“Am I going to die, Dad?”
“No, you’re not.”
“Would you tell me if I was?”
“Yes.”
“But would you?”
Jack found the power not to hesitate. “Yes,” he said. “I’d tell you.”
They fell back into silence. The air smelled of urine and bleach. They searched each other’s faces for doubt.
It was a relief when Sophie closed her eyes agai
n, a respite from the grueling work of projecting confidence. Only later came the shock as Jack realized what the closing of eyes might mean now. His mind was slow to adjust to the situation. It was still reacting to ordinary things according to their ordinary context. It saw his child’s eyes closing and it thought rest. It didn’t think rest of your life.
A few minutes later Sophie’s eyes came open again. She looked around her in confusion.
“Why isn’t Mum here?”
Jack squeezed her hand. “She is here, darling. She’s been with us all the time you’ve been asleep. She’s just gone out of the room for a few minutes.”
Sophie looked relieved. Her head sank back into the pillows.
“Dad, it’s so quiet in here.”
“Yes.”
A long pause. “Why aren’t there more doctors?”
“Why do you want more doctors?”
“So they can do more stuff. Make me better.”
“They are making you better. They found you had an infection. They’ve put you on antibiotics.”
“What if they’re not here because there’s nothing else they can do?”
“They’re doing exactly what they should. Right now the best thing to do is to wait and rest.”
“Then why are we here and not at home?”
“We’re just in here as a precaution.”
“How do you know?”
“Because the doctors told me.”
“Would the doctors tell you if I was dying?”
“Yes they would.”
“How do you know they would?”
“I just told you! Grown-ups know things. It’s like we have the special glasses and we can see the whole thing in three-D.”
Sophie opened her mouth to deny this, but then Jack saw the quickest flash of cunning in her eyes. The look vanished and Sophie’s face became childish again and simple.
“When do I get the special glasses, Dad?”