CHAPTER ONE
At first he ran because the older boys chased him, then he ran because he liked it, then he ran because he was the best. He rose while the house still slept and put his trainers on; pale early morning light through the window, a low, heavy sky over wet grass. He breathed deeply as he walked down the path, filling his lungs with new air. The letter was still on the windowsill in his room. It had arrived three days earlier and he’d opened it not knowing what he wanted it to say. Either way it would be bad news. Big things have a way of smashing up little things. His future was a big thing. His current whims were little things. He shook the night’s stiffness out of his legs and then began, a few short strides to ease into it, stepping over snails inching hazardously across the pavement. The street was empty. The only sound was his light step. He thought about the letter. It was only fourteen lines long. What would she say? She hadn’t seen it yet. Like him, she’d been waiting for it.
The world was his own at that time of the morning. He passed the closed curtains, the parked cars, the handmade banner on the door saying, ‘Welcome home, Daddy’, each letter a different colour. In the silent gardens spider webs wet with dew hung like fine lace between branches and over low bushes. He moved onto the hump in the middle of the road. His arms swung loose at his sides. Tap-tap, tap-tap. He turned into the park. How many times had he done this, how many laps? By now he knew each swell, each dip where ice would gather on winter nights. He passed under the arch of oak trees. He passed the croquet lawn and the cracked cement of what had once been a tennis court. He passed the playground where he met her.
‘I know you,’ she had said to him then. It was two years ago. She was sitting on a swing, rocking gently back and forth below trees full of summer. The toes of her boots bounced over the ground as they dragged.
‘Do you?’ he asked.
‘Well, I don’t know you. But I’ve seen you before.’
‘I’ve seen you, too.’ They had actually gone to the same school, though he doubted she’d have noticed him. She was one of those girls who boys like him stared at from afar, who entertained wicked thoughts about and blushed wildly at even a hint of contact, no matter how meaningless or impersonal. He was terrified of her really, of all girls, but her especially. He recalled the litany of stories that circulated through the corridors, the things they said she did at the sorts of parties boys like him only heard about afterwards. He didn’t believe all of them, was even too innocent still to understand all of them. What did those words mean? What acts, specifically, did they signify? She was dressed now all in black; black jeans and a heavy black jumper that drowned her slight frame. He thought how out of place she looked, amidst the climbing frame and the slide and the seesaws.
‘Don’t you get bored?’ she asked him. He glanced at her quickly, nonplussed. She looked over his shoulder to the fields behind him. ‘I’ve seen you. Just running round and round?’
‘Oh. I guess I do. Sometimes.’
‘Why don’t you stop then? And don’t just stand there, you’re making me uncomfortable. Sit.’
‘I’m going to America on an athletics scholarship. I’m good enough. I’m not going yet, I’m still too young, but when I’m older I’m going.’
Had he really told her then, before he even knew her name? Surely, he wasn’t so bold or so boastful. The American Dream, that’s what his mother had called it once, lamely, he thought, but that’s what he now called it as well. It was something private, a treasure he kept hidden in his pocket. He took it out sometimes, when no one was around, to examine it, to hold it up to the light and roll in between thumb and forefinger until it reflected his best face back at him. It never failed to excite him, to restore him somehow. It was his secret superpower.
He heard his voice telling her how often he ran, and how far and how fast. He told her about some of the races he’d already won and would still win.
‘It’s not easy to get one, a place I mean, but I will.’
Suddenly he faltered. The sun was glaring at him from up high. It made him sweat. Wasn’t she hot? Maybe it wasn’t the sun making him sweat. He remembered her lips, how they pursed around the cigarette, how her cheeks hollowed as she sucked hard. He remembered the smoke filling the cave of her mouth before the wind reached in and scooped it away.
‘I actually believe you,’ she said. He was still looking at her mouth.
He turned past the car park and floated down the gentle slope that led over the path he’d arrived on. The footprints of his first lap were pressed into the grass in front of him, running away into the distance like the tracks of a faster rival. He remembered his first race. The thrill of flowing around the bend, slipping round shoulder after shoulder. The ease of it: the school, then the club, then the county – they hadn’t found anyone who could beat him. He looped again around the croquet lawn, the tennis court. He was gaining speed. His stride was lengthening, his lungs were opening. He was running fast. He could always tell. It felt like it was someone else then. The cool air rushed over his hot skin. He passed the playground where he met her.
‘Come,’ she’d said to him late one night, closing the door silently behind them. It was their first night, or his first night, at least. ‘But be quiet.’ He remembered standing motionless on the rug for what seemed like ages, peering out blindly until black shapes and objects began to emerge blacker than the blackness behind them. He followed her as she picked her way between them. His heart was drumming heavily beneath his ribcage. He could make out a table, a bookcase, the large, lighter rectangle of the French doors behind their blinds. The click of his step softened as he crossed a carpet. ‘Be careful here,’ she whispered, before descending a wooden staircase that creaked beneath her weight. He followed cautiously, hands tracing the walls, feeling the lip of each stair with the soles of his shoes. Suddenly a light was switched on and he found himself standing in a sparse basement. There was a dartboard and a chalk line scratched on the cement floor, a threadbare couch, a picture of an old sailing ship behind a glass frame. The artist had painted it small, a tiny, vulnerable thing ill-equipped to cross the vast ocean in front of it. He sympathised.
She walked past him and opened a small fridge humming to itself against the wall. She took out a bottle of water and gulped thirstily before holding it out towards him. He shook his head and she had another mouthful before putting it back. He wondered how such a small frame could absorb so much. She seemed unaffected, undiminished. He didn’t know how he’d got there. In one swift movement, she pulled her vest over her head.
She. She is Madeline. She is red fingernails and tight vests. She is purple hair matching purple boots. She is loud music and strange parties and sweat in dark corners of dark rooms. When she was sixteen she and some friends had a competition to see how many boys they could sleep with in a single summer. Madeline’s number was twenty-three. Or that was the number she told them. It was half the real number, but it was more than enough. Of course, she knew what people thought. She thought it herself. And it was all true. Yet here she was again. He was a little timid for her liking, a little young in manner. He stood there gazing at the canvas like he’d never seen a painting before. But she’d always liked the name Ben. Had she had a Ben before? She couldn’t recall. She hadn’t always known names. She took a step towards him.
Sweat soaked his T-shirt and rolled down his face but his legs felt good. He looked down and saw his knees pumping like pistons, propelling his body forward. Leaves zipped beneath him and disappeared forever. The machine powered on. He ran when he was confused, he ran when he was worried, when he was annoyed, elated, melancholy. He ran to escape things and to find things. He saw a second runner emerge from the path in front of him, an intruder, a hunched slogger labouring up the slope with neither grace nor love. He was about one hundred yards ahead. He passed the playground where he met her.
‘Was it your first time?’ she asked him afterwards. They were lying on the couch. He was limp and exposed and acutely aware of his nakedness. A slideshow of impossible images, each harder to believe than the last, played in his head.
‘No. Course not.’ But he knew it was obvious. He’d seen films, and read things.
‘Ah, that’s sweet.’
‘Was it yours?’ He scrunched his eyes together. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
He remembered the graffiti scribbled on the side of the climbing frame – ‘Maddi sucks cock for rock’. He’d read it countless times. Maddi didn’t have to mean Madeline. What else then? Maddison? He didn’t know any Maddisons. Her small body rose and fell as she breathed beside him. Her thigh stuck to his. Her arm hung over his chest. The refrigerator still hummed quietly in the corner. He looked down at himself and thought how absurd he was.
The middle-aged slogger was less than twenty yards in front. His head was rocking and his feet landed on the ground like weights. He glanced behind and seemed to slump further into his shoulders. Ten yards. Eight. Five. Two… But Ben didn’t rush straight past. Instead, he slowed his pace and settled on the slogger’s shoulder. The slogger glanced back again and waved his arm, spluttering something that snatched on his breath. But still Ben didn’t pass. He trotted lightly just behind and watched the heavy body struggle. He looked at the short, shuffling stride. He saw how the white knees buckled inwards under the weight and how the feet scraped over the top of the grass. Ben often did this in races. Sometimes he broke early and had the track to himself, but often he left it late, until the last possible moment, just watching and waiting until there was hope to snatch away. They passed the playground where he met her. ‘Maddi sucks cock for rock.’ He could surge clear at any moment. Just one subtle shift would take him away. It would be effortless. But still he waited. Gradually the slogger’s pace slowed. Ben drew level and he could see the mouth hanging open, the red, overheating face, the little belly below his T-shirt, that middle-age spread. And yet. And yet here he still was. In spite of all that. Fighting the tide. Dragging behind him the weight of all the hours and days and years spent behind a desk, in a car, on the couch. Ben saw the hair thinning on top, greying at the side. He saw the tension in the shoulders, the joints grinding in their sockets and the aging, flaking muscles struggling to match the spirit.
He began to slow, letting the slogger pull away again. Two yards. Five yards. Eight. Ten. He saw the slogger look around as he passed the croquet lawn. Twenty yards. Ben let the gap open further. He passed the playground where he met her. He was hardly moving. Fifty yards. He stopped and walked for a few paces and then sat down on the grass. Steam rose off his skin. He didn’t know he wouldn’t run again for more than twenty years.
CHAPTER TWO
Tim woke up at 4.07am. Not by choice. He remained motionless on the mattress, listening to her snore softly beside him. When he could stand it no longer he got up. He was deliberately clamorous. He muttered. He sighed heavily. He bumped the bed with his knee. At the door he stopped and turned around. She hadn’t stirred. ‘Urgh,’ he said resentfully. Sleep, he thought, is like sex and money; it only matters when you don’t have it.
Downstairs, he stood in the centre of the living room, still a little dazed, trying to decide what to do next. It was dark. All around him the house carried on with its clandestine doings; electronic devices set and reset, creaks creaked in far corners, pipes clunked hollowly behind walls and beneath floorboards. The drawer of the cabinet was still on its side on the floor. He looked at it ruefully, absently running a finger along a cut on his hand. Yesterday he’d tried to open one of its drawers. It had snagged on its rollers and all at once something inside him, something that wasn’t him but had recently inhabited him, something ominous that he was wary of, had erupted forth. It had shaken the drawer with unconstrained rage until it broke away and then it had lifted the drawer high and slammed it into the floor. The panels had shattered and bounced and a jagged splinter had ripped his skin.
‘Daddy?’ Ruby had been standing there. ‘Why are you shouting?’
He yawned deeply and walked to the back door and opened it. A blast of cold air hit him. He closed his eyes and let his head rest against the frame. It had started happening more frequently, these early mornings. He’d turned the clock around, he’d tried herbal teas, mindfulness, even acupuncture, but whatever it was that crept out of its hole to unsettle him in the dead of night still came. He knew what waking early meant, or could mean. He didn’t feel depressed though. Tired, yes, all the time. But who wouldn’t be if they kept waking up at this ungodly hour? And what did depression feel like anyway? He was of a generation that grew up thinking some people were happier than others, some better behaved, some more confident. He was mistrustful of labels that explained away personalities.
‘You should see someone,’ Beth said to him.
‘I’m just not sleeping well, that’s all.’
‘You seem to be doing okay when Ruby cries at night.’
In the garden the grass was long and wet. It soaked his toes as he walked. Petrichor. That was the word for this smell. It had something to do with rainfall and sediment. How did he know that? In three hours he would leave for work. It would be another eighteen hours before he could go back to bed. The prospect filled him with such desperation that he tried to cry it out but just coughed once, a sort of choked splutter, and then fell silent. A soft purple was creeping up the horizon. There was birdsong. Away over the rooftops a church bell rang. Someone would be up there now, at the top of that ancient spire, heaving away at the rope.
He considered going for a run. He leant down towards his toes, got only as far as his knees and then stood up again. He hated running. He should’ve started earlier or not at all. Now it was all just gear crunching. His joints had set and weren’t inclined to unset. He remembered that young buck who had been running in the park the last time, prancing on his shoulder, mocking him with his youth and fitness. He looked down at his belly, it was still there, the stubborn, antagonising little shit. Not so little. He tried again to touch his toes, hung in limbo for a few moments with his arms dangling. He imagined how the pavement would jar his legs and make his hips ache. No, there would be no runs today. He stood up again.
Ruby, wrapped in her duvet, was standing on the grass behind him.
‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Hello. What are you doing up?’ He couldn’t see her face clearly in the gloom. ‘Couldn’t sleep? Nor me. I guess my brain is too full up with things.’
