The runners streamed effortlessly down the valley toward Knole House, picking up speed on the descent.
“Don’t go too fast,” Tessa shouted over to her. “You’ll burn out.”
“No bloody fear,” Lizzie yelled back. “I could keep this up all day.” And she ran like the wind, strong and free.
Then, all of a sudden, they were faced with a sheer cliff of a climb. No longer did Lizzie feel that the runners all around her were sweeping her easily along in a human tide. Instead, she began to feel like a big boulder in a riverbed with a flood swirling by on either side.
“You’re doing really well,” Tessa called back over her shoulder. “Just keep breathing in through your nose, out through your mouth.”
“Shut up and run,” Lizzie panted back.
But soon enough Tessa had to slow to a virtual walk to allow Lizzie to catch up. When they were within earshot of each other, Lizzie begged, “Don’t wait for me, Tess. Please. Go on.”
“You sure?”
“I’m sure. Run! I want to do it in my own time.”
“Okay. If you’re sure.”
Lizzie watched in admiration as her friend accelerated away out of sight. Poor Tessa, she had no hope of making a decent time now.
The runners had thinned out at the back. Lizzie was keeping pace with an elite group now — a seriously old chap whose shorts seemed to be tucked under his armpits, a pudgy girl of about ten, and a heavyset woman of indeterminate age who wore bandages around one ankle and both knees.
But the spectators cheered them on as if they were in
Chariots of Fire
or something. That was the lovely thing. Every time they rounded a corner and puffed into sight of the people dotted around on picnic blankets under trees, they were met with a burst of applause and many hoarse cries of encouragement.
“You can do it! Don’t give up! Keep going! Nearly there now!”
Even the deer seemed to gaze after them with newfound respect as they hobbled by.
Lizzie didn’t finish absolutely last. The octogenarian slowed down to a walk in the last hundred meters and she pipped him to the post.
She was feeling quite proud of herself, standing about in her sweaty running gear with the other competitors after the race, sipping a sports drink, and discussing the course, until Ellie piped up, “Mummy, did you win?” And she was forced to admit that no, she hadn’t won, and no, she hadn’t come in second or third, or even tenth or twentieth.
“Din’t you come in
anywhere
?” Alex asked in amazement.
“Of course she came in somewhere,” Tessa said with a little snort. “She came in second to last.”
Even at three, the twins knew what second to last meant.
They gazed at her in silence.
Then Ellie said, “Is that the very bestest you can do, Mummy?”
Lizzie made a vow then and there. She didn’t know if she’d ever run five kilometers in less than forty-five minutes, but she was going to try. She was pretty sure that vying for last place with an old-age pensioner and a schoolgirl was by no means her personal best.
Lizzie was used to making vows and then turning a blind eye on herself as she broke them. She was an avid New Year’s resolutionist, and her favorite resolution had always been to lose weight. She’d been resolving to do so since the age of, oh, twelve or thirteen, with indifferent results. She’d had lean years, certainly, but the fat years seemed to outweigh them, especially lately.
The vow to become a decent runner was a first. And for one reason or another, it seemed to be sticking.
In fact, after the 5K Fun Run at Knole Park, running took on a whole new meaning for Lizzie.
No longer did she stretch her imagination for Tessa-proof excuses to skip her runs; no longer did she hope to turn an ankle or develop a mild case of asthma that would make running impossible. On the contrary, she was finally getting used to the dry taste of exhaustion. She knew how to push beyond it now. She’d also come to tolerate, even to relish, the midrun sensation that someone was sandpapering the inside of her lungs while she waded through hot molten fudge.
Lizzie was astounded by her own progress as the weeks passed by. It was such a pleasure to pound along beside Tessa, matching pace for pace yet still able to hold a conversation without puffing as if she only had half a lung. As her body rose to the unexpected challenge, Lizzie found herself
liking
it in a way she’d never dreamed possible. Most of her life, frankly, she’d felt that her body was a bit of a liability.
Of course, she’d gained a new respect for it when it went into overdrive and produced twins, but she hadn’t felt immediately connected to the work at hand. In fact, her body had seemed perfectly able to manufacture fingernails, earlobes, and eyelashes without the slightest need for any input from the conscious Lizzie Buckley. And, distressingly, all this activity had seemed to call for ever deeper layers of body fat.
Now, the boot was on the other foot. The conscious Lizzie Buckley was pushing her body to its limits, and — bless it — her body was working away to make the necessary changes to accommodate these new expectations. Her lung capacity had increased, her resting pulse rate had decreased, her breasts had resigned themselves to being bound flat every day, and — the cherry on top — she was now sporting more muscle than body fat.
She couldn’t understand why the world wasn’t on fire with the joys and rewards of running. The first weeks of training had been unspeakable, of course. In those early days, she’d roll out of bed and groan, wondering why she didn’t remember being run over by a bus or falling out of a moving train. But now that she’d outrun those first aches and pains, her whole life seemed to have swung suddenly upward into a clear new place where the view was better, the air sweeter, and the colors inexplicably brighter.
“You have more energy,” Tessa told her matter-of-factly when she tried to explain the upward-swing phenomenon. “Of course you’re going to feel better.”
Lizzie had never realized that energy was such a component of mood. Perhaps energy was really what happiness was made of; perhaps if you felt strong and full of vigor, even a day in the garden pulling up weeds was a good, sweet day. Maybe the experience of falling in love shot you chock-full of energy, and that’s what made you want to sing and dance and stay up all night doing the business.
Maybe — oh Christ — maybe everything was simpler than she thought. Maybe her marriage had really fallen apart because her energy had simply ebbed away, as if she’d been on a slow bleed ever since the twins were born.
Nowadays Lizzie was taking all the herbal remedies, vitamins, and iron pills Tessa had given her when she first came to Sevenoaks. Because nowadays she tended her body like a slightly temperamental furnace that needed constant stoking with choice kindling. She wanted her body to burn at optimum speed, not too fast, not too slowly — because she wanted to run, run, run.
She’d even changed her approach to food. “God, you’re becoming a complete pain in the backside,” Tessa snorted as they toured the supermarket, Lizzie painstakingly reading every food label and rejecting anything that was too high in salt, sugar, preservatives, fat, red food coloring, or any ominous-sounding chemical. She was vetoing all kinds of blameless foods until Tessa told her that alpha-tocopherol was really vitamin E and selenium was good for you.
Nowadays, when the children had gone to bed, she either worked on her nonsense verses or immersed herself in the running literature Tessa had brought over to Back Lane Cottage weeks ago. With the zeal of the newly converted, she was taking all the advice about nutrition very much to heart. It was so much easier to be virtuous about food now that she was working toward a goal — now that a tiny voice in her head said that maybe, just maybe, she’d be able to manage at least a
half
marathon next spring without being borne away through the crowds on a stretcher.
She hadn’t yet told Tessa about her modest hopes. Tessa’s own running ambitions were burning very bright. Even though the real marathon training wouldn’t begin for months, she was pushing herself hard, often running before work in order to stuff more miles into the week. “I’d better not bloody fall pregnant now,” she said one evening as they slogged through a light drizzle, mud splattering their calves. “I’m going to run this marathon in under three hours if it kills me.”
Lizzie played the game. “Yeah, heaven
forbid
you should fall pregnant now. It’d be
years
before you’d be fit to try again, and by then you might be too exhausted to give it your best shot. Best you start taking some precautions, you and Greg.”
Tessa grinned. “Steady, Lizzie,” she said. “Fate’s not an idiot, you know. Fate knows the difference between being tempted and being
taunted
.”
Lizzie didn’t have the nerve to tempt Fate on her own behalf, let alone taunt it. She feared that the minute she opened her mouth to annouce she was sort of thinking of having a bash at a half marathon, Fate would give a giant guffaw and immediately strike her down with a heel spur or shin splints. So she kept quiet and bided her time.
The running was doing her so much good that she felt the need to show her new self off to the maddening, sheeplike Ivana. Striding into the little office one morning, she deliberately shunned the beanbag and claimed the kitchen chair instead.
“Hello again, Lizzie,” said Ivana. “Long time no see. You have more issues? Same issues?”
Lizzie sucked in her stomach and squared her shoulders. “Actually,” she said, “I just dropped in to give you a tip or two.”
Ivana flashed her spectacles and took up her diary. “Ah?”
“You want to tell the unfortunates who come in here that most of their ‘issues’ would go away if they’d just get up off the sofa and go running.”
“Ah?”
“Yes. Look at me! Can’t you see the difference? I’m a new person! I’m fit and I’m lean and I’m much, much happier.”
Ivana lowered her glasses and peered at Lizzie with the disconcerting periwinkle blue eyes. “You have lost the weight?” she asked doubtfully.
Lizzie bridled. “Of course I’ve lost weight! Can’t you tell? But that’s not the only thing. I’m full of endorphins now. Just bursting with them. You know all about endorphins, right — the hormones your body sprays around when you start exercising too much? To deaden the pain of all the exercising? Anyway, they make you feel a lot happier, I can tell you. As a therapist you should be
prescribing
that people go running.”
“I see.” Ivana found a pen and noted something down. From her vantage point on the kitchen chair, Lizzie found she could now see the pages of the familiar diary. She narrowed her eyes and tried to read the spidery letters.
“So altogether I’m in a much more positive frame of mind,” Lizzie insisted. Really, Ivana could at least acknowledge her client’s progress in some obvious way — pat her on the back or give her a high five. Maybe just look up and crack a decent smile for once in her life. But Ivana just kept writing. Lizzie peered at the book. She made out a loopy E and maybe an X.
“Yes?” Ivana murmured in a preoccupied sort of way.
“Yes. And I’ve been thinking.” Lizzie cleared her throat. “Tessa’s right. I’m pretty sure I gave up on James too easily. I mean, maybe I turned out to be a bit of a dud for him, but — but I
know
he loves the children, and he
used
to love me. So, I’m thinking maybe I could persuade him to give things another shot if I could just convince him that I really haven’t been myself since the twins were born. That e-mail I sent him about how I’d rather clean out the sock drawer than sleep with him . . .”
Ivana paused in her notes. “ E-mail? You sent him e-mail?”
Lizzie heaved a deep sigh. “Yes. I didn’t tell you because — well, I thought it would complicate your take on the marriage. But the thing is, this whole crisis blew up in the first place because I sent him an e-mail that was supposed to go to my sister, Janie.
Accidentally
sent it, of course. I was having a bit of a rant — you know, saying how I’d gone off marriage, how my feelings just weren’t romantic anymore, how the quality of my life would probably improve if he, you know, sort of disappeared. Just — just the usual stuff.”
Ivana removed her glasses and gave Lizzie her undivided attention.
“Please to continue,” she said.
“Well, he didn’t like it, obviously. Couldn’t understand that it was all just hot air. Talked about not wanting us to end up like his parents. They have separate rooms at the manor, you see. He even implied that there were huge problems with the marriage on his side, too. Anyway, it was all nonsense, but I couldn’t make him
see
. . .”
“Ah.” The glasses were back on. “You were angry when you wrote this — this ranting?”
“Angry? Well, I suppose. I must’ve been.”
“Why angry?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Things were just getting too much for me. For one thing, he was always traveling so he could never help with anything at home. He was the breadwinner, his sleep was sacred — he never got up to deal with the fallout at two o’clock in the bloody morning. So I felt a bit like a single mum anyway, without any of the perks. And — well, I’ve already told you about his mum poking her nose into things all the time.”
“Aha!” cried Ivana. “Lots of anger, lots of blame. You need to introspect this rages. This anger is good, it helps you understand.”
Lizzie took a shaky breath.
“This is usual in the marriage,” Ivana was explaining. She seemed rather excited. “This is the old, old struggle of man and woman. But I’m thinking you never spoke of these things with James.”
“No, of course I didn’t. I didn’t want to be a nag.”
“But this anger becomes like exploding device if you are bottling it up. You need to open the bottle.”
“Yes, but can we get back to the depression? I’d like to concentrate on the depression more. You see, I’ve been thinking that if you could, maybe, give me a bit of paper, a letter or something, saying I was definitely depressed at the time? Then I could show it to him, and he’d finally
understand
about that stupid bloody e-mail, that it wasn’t the gospel truth or even close, and maybe he’d give me another chance.”