I woke before dawn the next day, wretched and exhausted, unable to eat or go back to sleep. And this, despite the joy of showing Dawson the Hickleton Press email, everyone decamping to a celebratory meal at Scarlett’s, and umpteen texts from Sarah and Kiko reassuring me it wasn’t that big a deal. I was sick and tired of myself.
The black was hovering, just out of sight at the corner of my vision. It gleefully gobbled up my self-hatred, my doubt, my guilt. And it grew.
I dragged myself through the next couple of weeks, on the one hand glad the Mini had gone, and Mack with it, preventing me from messing things up any more. I hoped he’d gone because the black kept reminding me I deserved to feel terrible. To have lost him. And it was getting louder. Harder to ignore.
But on the other hand, I now lived alone in the forest with the criminals who were trying to force me out still prowling around. I didn’t want to think about what their next step would be. I was seriously rattled, flinching at every creak and bang, back to cycling the long way home, locking the door and praying Jamie would soon be free for his very own game of Hunt and Destroy.
I drifted through the motions with the kids. School had finished for the summer, so Will only needed me when prepping timetables or otherwise getting ready for the next school year. I used every last drop of energy on taking care of them, listening, playing, helping, encouraging. Dawson showed me his new Squash Harris character, a woman who lived in the woods and had special powers to take damaged things and make them beautiful and useful again. ‘She’s the Bester. Because she sees the best deep down and knows how to bring it out. She does it for houses, look.’ He flipped the page over. ‘And for people, too. She always has brilliant advice to turn bad situations into good ones.’
‘She sounds incredible. I love her hair, and her amazing blue eyes. I could do with a bit of advice from the Bester right now.’
‘Duh, Jenny!’ Dawson goggled at me. ‘You’d better look in a mirror, then!’
I buried my head in his hair instead, managing an eight-second hug before he prised himself away.
‘Jenny?’ he said, as I made to go home that Thursday, looking forward to some peace so keenly I could taste it.
‘Yes?’ I slipped into my trainers while he hovered on the stairs.
‘I’m glad Mum picked you as our childminder. I’m going to miss you when we go on holiday.’
The chunk of my heart not yet submerged in black squeezed. ‘Me too.’ I winked at him, for want of anything better to say. ‘Now go and sort that messy room out before Dad comes home.’
‘On second thoughts…’
The day of Lucille’s Tough Muck, I strolled to Frances’ farmhouse across golden fields ripe for harvest, the beaming August sun chasing back the shadows.
‘I’ll have some of that, please,’ I mumbled, as I pushed through the wheat sheaves, not really sure who I was asking. I stopped, briefly, at the farm gate and closed my eyes, feeling the warmth of the glow penetrate my eyelids. Sucked in a deep, deep breath of gentle air and a soft breath of peace kissed my frazzled brow, my knotted jaw. Hope.
‘Jenny?’
I opened my eyes to find Frances, leaning heavily on her stick, a few metres away. ‘Are you all right?’
I nodded. ‘Yes.’ And for a brief moment, I truly meant it.
‘You look worse,’ Frances announced, as we started off towards the Tough Muck location, high in the hills of the Peak District.
‘I could say the same to you,’ I retorted, with a smile.
‘My body, maybe. But look at my eyes. Not while you’re driving, please. My soul is strong. Yours is sinking.’
I pretended to concentrate on a tight junction, wary of scraping the sides of the truck.
‘Why is your soul flailing, Jenny?’
Could I ignore this until she fell asleep? I guessed not. And there wasn’t much point arguing with her, either.
‘Probably several reasons.’ I sighed. ‘Where do you want to start?’
‘At the beginning? I always find things less confusing that way.’
‘We’ve only got an hour and a half.’
‘Talk quickly, then. Cut straight to the chase.’
‘I’m not sleeping very well, since the burglary. And feeling jumpy. I can’t decide whether to sell the house, which feels a bit like running away. But isn’t running away the most sensible option sometimes? So, instead of starting to redecorate, getting an electrician in and all the other million jobs that need doing whether I’m staying or going, I’m hovering in this limbo of inactivity and indecision.’
‘Hmm.’ Frances looked dubious.
‘I really don’t like myself right now.’
‘Ah, that’s more like it.’ Frances perked up at this, which I felt was a rather inappropriate response. But, hey, she could get away with it.
‘Why not?’
‘I’m making bad choices about how I spend my time, getting nothing done, avoiding making a decision.’
‘No. That’s not it.’
I spent a mile deciding whether to be annoyed or not.
‘Try again,’ Frances said.
I thought about it. Not why. I knew why. I thought about whether to tell Frances. ‘I’m angry at myself for doing a stupid, selfish thing and hurting a friend. They’ve moved away, so I don’t even know if they forgive me, I can’t do anything to make it up to them, and I miss them so much it makes me ill. Which means I feel even worse, because I have no right to miss them like this. I’m a horrible person. And fighting this guilt, trying to ignore the hurt, I feel like I’m going mad.’
‘Go on.’
‘That terrifies me, because I’ve only just begun feeling like a person I can live with. I can physically feel it, a black shadow wrapping itself around my heart, my brain, my lungs. Everywhere. Like something off Doctor Who. And I’m trying to fight it off, but it’s exhausting. I’m so tired. And even now I have amazing friends for the first time ever, I’m still so lonely because the shadow is cutting me off from everything. So, yeah, I hate myself right now.’
Frances handed me a lace handkerchief.
‘You need to forgive yourself,’ she said quietly. ‘Whether Mack forgives you or not is meaningless if you can’t forgive yourself. That will help you vanquish the shadows.’
Ur, I didn’t remember mentioning Mack…
‘But I don’t deserve forgiveness,’ I said, my voice breaking. ‘I did an awful thing, and am still feeling wrong things about Mack. Which makes me think wrong things. How do I stop that? I’m the worst type of person. I hate people like this. I don’t want to forgive a person like that.’
‘If Sarah told you she’d discovered her HeartBaker friend was married, and she was therefore trying to erase her feelings for him, which she felt dreadful about, but was struggling to do so, would you hate her for it?’
I sighed. ‘No.’
‘What would you say to her?’
I shrugged. ‘I’d probably give her a big hug and tell her that as long as she stayed away from him from now on, she’d be okay.’
‘There you are, then.’
‘But if I forgive myself, isn’t that saying it’s all right, what I did?’
Frances laughed. ‘No, it is not. It is saying you choose grace, anyway. If what you did is all right, there’s no need for forgiveness.’
‘I hadn’t thought of it like that.’ I let that thought wash over me, like a warm sea.
‘Precisely.’
We were the last to arrive. Or so we thought. While we were examining the course map with Sarah, Kiko, Ashley and Ellen in the car park, hoping to find a good spot to cheer Lucille on, a filthy, dented black Jeep pulled up beside Frances’ truck.
The Jamie who clambered out looked, if possible, worse than his car. He looked as if he’d already done the Tough Muck. Twice. He had a ripped T-shirt, combat trousers coated with crusting black slime, a bloody bandage over one ear and so many bruises and scrapes we couldn’t tell where the tattoos ended and the dirt began.
‘Been on holiday, Jamie?’ Sarah asked, but the joke couldn’t hide her concern.
‘Something like that.’ He nodded, throwing her a look so intense I’m surprised she didn’t burst into flames. ‘I hoped to be back in time to clean up, but, well, these bad guys have no consideration for my schedule. Is that a changing room?’
He grabbed a bag from the boot of his car, returning seconds later clean, the bandage replaced with a neat plaster, and wearing running shorts and a fresh T-shirt.
Jamie looked exactly as anyone would have predicted underneath his shirts and jeans. I nudged Sarah, who glanced at me, a smile tweaking at the corner of her mouth to match mine. ‘Shut up.’
‘Right, Frances. Shall we get going?’ Jamie asked.
‘We’re going here.’ Kiko searched the map again. ‘The Assassinator.’
‘Well, we’ll see you there, then, won’t we?’ Frances crowed, taking off her long coat to reveal a pair of tracksuit bottoms and a fleece. ‘We’ll give you a wave.’
‘What?’ Ellen frowned as Frances handed her the coat. ‘Aren’t you waiting with us?’
‘Sitting around watching other people have the time of their life? I don’t think so!’ she exclaimed, tugging on her hat. ‘Come on, if we hurry we can get a good spot near the front of the pack.’
‘What on earth are you doing?’ Kiko shrieked.
I had a glorious feeling we already knew the answer to that.
‘We’re conquering the Tough Muck,’ Jamie said. ‘Hopefully raising some money while we’re at it.’
As they reached the mass of runners, Jamie bent down and sort of flipped and lifted Frances onto his back. She let go of his shoulders long enough to send us a queenly wave over the other competitors’ heads.
‘That woman,’ Ellen huffed, wiping her eyes. ‘Incorrigible.’
‘I hope I’m brave enough to be where she is at her age,’ Kiko said.
‘I wouldn’t mind being there at any age,’ Sarah breathed, before turning a shocking shade of red and clasping one hand to her mouth. ‘I meant, in the race. Not there there. Being bold and not caring what anybody thinks. I did! Honestly! Oh, shut up.’
We laughed all the way to the Assassinator viewing point.
An hour, a flask of tea and a giant flapjack later, we watched the first competitors plop out of a huge pipe and land in a pit of mud. Squelching across to the other side, they then scaled a ten-foot wall using a rope, before carrying on to the next obstacle.
Jamie was one of the first out of the pipe, immediately followed by Frances, who scrabbled onto his back again. He waded to the rope, and pulled himself up and over the wall. With a grown woman on his back.
‘Is he ninth at the moment?’ Sarah asked, evidently finding it difficult to speak with her mouth hanging so far open.
‘Yes.’ I nodded.
‘If he ran by himself, he’d be first.’ Ashley absent-mindedly took another bite of her coconut cookie.
Sarah wrinkled her forehead. ‘What kind of man sacrifices the glory of first place to make a crazy woman’s dream happen? After rushing here already half beaten-up and looking like he’s not slept in days.’
‘A man unbothered by his ego,’ I answered.
‘A real man,’ Ellen said, looking hard at Sarah. ‘With no trace of dud in him.’
‘Imagine a man like that.’ I couldn’t help smirking. ‘Good-looking, with a successful business, who also made time for books, cooking, that sort of thing.’
‘Likes kids…’ Kiko added in a dreamy voice.
‘All right, I get it,’ Sarah said, loudly. ‘A man like that would be perfect. Okay? But not if he didn’t like me. Jamie knows I’m looking for a relationship. He clearly isn’t feeling it.’
‘Lucille!’ Kiko shouted, and we raced to the front of the fence, screaming and hollering as she sploshed through the mud.
‘How are you doing?’ Ellen yelled.
Lucille looked up, gasping. ‘I think I might just lie down and sleep in this lovely mud for a bit.’
‘Don’t you dare!’ we hollered back. ‘Think of Chris, Toronto and Summer waiting for you at the finish line. Think of the struggle of women everywhere, for thousands of years, fighting against men saying, “You can’t do it, just lie down and have a rest, little lady.” You didn’t lie down and sleep in the middle of your forty-seven-hour labour, did you?’
‘I lied,’ Lucille cried. ‘It was only thirty hours. The first time I went to hospital it was false contractions.’
‘Well, you bloody well get up that wall anyway!’ Sarah screamed. ‘You show ’em, Lucille, all the mums at school who think you’re stroppy and snobby and take the mick out of you for going to that phoney college!’
‘What?’ Lucille froze mid-stride. The man behind bumped into her, sending her headlong into the mud. What emerged a few seconds later was a beast. Teeth bared, arms pumping, Lucille thrashed her way to the wall, grabbed that rope and launched herself over.
‘Well, we know what motivates Lucille, then,’ Kiko said.
‘We’d better get to the finish line.’ Ellen headed off with Kiko and Ashley.
‘Ahem,’ I coughed in Sarah’s ear. She jumped so hard she nearly tumbled over the fence into the mud pit. ‘Thinking about anything, or should I say one, in particular?’
‘Shut up.’
From our vantage point near the finish line, we could see the last obstacle, ‘Log It or Lose It’. A spinning log, stretching across a mud pit. The only way out of the pit was swimming through a pitch-black tunnel of freezing cold water. Several runners didn’t even bother with the log, plunging straight into the mud and through the tunnel. Most who tried fell at least once, usually more. But we had faith in Jamie. At least, the figure encrusted in mud from head to toe with a woman on his back, powering over the top of the hill and towards the final straight, who we hoped was Jamie.
As they approached Log It or Lose It, Frances slithered off his back, the only competitor still mud-free from the shoulders up; Jamie must have done something spectacular to get her this far with her head above water.
They appeared to be having a brief argument, Frances folding her arms and Jamie eventually shaking his head before turning his back on her and sprinting over the log, carrying on until he crossed the line in sixteenth place. Not that anybody was there to congratulate him. The eyes of every spectator were locked on the old woman tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ears before hurling herself onto the log.
She nearly made it, too, but halfway across she slipped and went in. The crowd went berserk, hollering and cheering and whistling as she staggered upright, thigh deep in the mud.
Holding her hands above her head in a dripping thumbs-up, Frances ploughed on towards the tunnel. The cheers faded as she disappeared inside and every single person seemed to be holding their breath.
‘It’s ten metres,’ Ashley muttered. ‘Can she even swim any more? She’s going to drown. Or freeze. Or else her heart will give out. Shittlesticks, Frances. What the hell were you thinking?’
‘What the hell was Jamie thinking, more like?’ Sarah sobbed. ‘We all know Frances is bats, but Jamie should know better. How could he abandon her right at the end?’
It felt like forever. The crowd began to fidget and mutter. Three more competitors came charging down the hill and across the logs.
‘How long until someone goes in to get her out?’ Kiko asked. ‘They must have rules. Did the race officials even see her go in?’
I grabbed onto Sarah, our hands trembling together.
Still we waited. How long had it been? Five minutes? Six? It felt like ten times that long.
‘Jamie,’ Ellen breathed as he jogged back towards the tunnel exit, crouching down to look inside. A tiny hand poked out of the rim of the tunnel and batted his away.
The people around us began to buzz as another hand joined it, soon followed by an arm.
‘The tunnel’s deep,’ someone said. ‘You have to pull yourself up as well as out.’
My heart was jammed somewhere in my windpipe. We clung to each other, praying for our friend.
‘Jamie’s there, it’s fine,’ Sarah repeated over and over. ‘He’ll not let anything happen to her.’
Frances was dying. Her own cells were turning on her, wreaking destruction and chaos. She had appeared so frail in recent weeks, as though a fit of coughing could shatter her into pieces. But we had underestimated quite how a stubborn mind, unshakable spirit and three decades of hauling haybales, sledgehammering fence posts and dealing with unruly cows could overrule a disease, telling it, ‘No, you can’t, and don’t you dare.’
Like Lazarus from the tomb, Frances groped and fumbled and would not quit until she lay in a brown muddy heap on solid ground.
‘He’s got to carry her now,’ Kiko said.
Or not, apparently. Jamie bent down, one hand on Frances’ back, hopefully checking she was still breathing, then waited another endless three minutes until she hauled herself first onto all fours, and then upright.
‘Come on, Jamie,’ Ellen urged. ‘At least take the woman’s arm. Hold her hand.’
But no. Jamie walked with Frances, didn’t take his eyes off her, but didn’t offer so much as a finger as she hobbled, shuffled, dragged and carried the proud body that had taken her through a lifetime of challenges and adventures over the finish line, Lucille careening past a few seconds later.
I was too darn relieved to be crying. But I might have been the only one who wasn’t.
We hurried over, wrapping Frances in a blanket along with so many hugs she grew irritated and ordered us to stop. ‘Well, I would say I told you so.’ She smirked. ‘But it isn’t very gracious.’
‘Frances, you nearly gave us a stroke,’ Ashley cried.
‘Well, you should have more faith, then.’
‘Is that it, now?’ Ellen asked. ‘Are you finally done with all these challenges?’
Frances tried to pull up a corner of the blanket to wipe a streak of mud off her cheek, but her arm couldn’t quite manage it. Ellen gently patted her face clean with a tissue, taking hold of Frances’ hand when she’d finished.
Frances closed her eyes. ‘Yes. Just one adventure left. The big one I’ve been waiting for. I’m ready.’