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THE EXCITEMENT WAS almost palpable as Michelle joined the crowd of runners making their way up from Newcastle City Centre. Some jogged, while others, like Michelle, saved their energy for the mammoth challenge ahead.
Halfway up the hill she spotted the row of red double decker buses, waiting to transport the runners’ bags to the finish line. A mixture of nerves and excitement hit her. She was about to run in the same race as some of the world’s finest athletes. On the other hand, it was also the biggest charity run in the world and was meant to be fun. People said that the fantastic atmosphere would get anyone through the thirteen-and-a-bit-mile ordeal. But how that bloke managed it with a fridge on his back every year was mind-boggling.
Memories of running for the school cross country and athletics teams came flooding back. That sick feeling when the team selection went up in the PE changing room on a Wednesday morning. There was never a choice. If your name was on the list, you were running. Michelle’s stomach churned as she recalled the feeling of burning lungs in the four-hundred metres. Right now, she couldn’t for the life of her remember why she’d thought entering the Great North Run was such a good idea.
Before she reached the buses, she noticed the queues – around thirty separate lines with a portable toilet at the head of each one. She’d arrived forty minutes early, just in case, but that wouldn’t be long enough. She’d already been travelling for an hour and nerves were getting the better of her. She must have looked like someone in desperate need because another runner stopped to tell her about more toilets further up the bank. Great, she thought, she could get her bag safely on the bus and then dash up.
‘Good grief, is that legal in England?’ Michelle said aloud as she climbed the hill. She’d never seen open air urinals before. Phil had mentioned the worrying toilet situation when he’d done the run a couple of years previously, but she hadn’t paid much attention. Other runners were diving into the bushes – women as well as men. She could never bring herself to do something like that, there were fifty-four thousand people around for goodness sake.
Michelle had more baggage than other runners. Even after she’d tied hers to one of the poles inside the bus, she had a lot of stuff attached to her person. The belt bag around her waist would no doubt be a great source of irritation during the run. But she needed her stuff – mobile phone, iPod, a twenty-pound note in a plastic sandwich bag, some glucose energy tablets, emergency Wet Ones, house keys, insulation sheet and ibuprofen. She was also carrying a sports drink for during the run, and a water bottle for pre-race hydration. There would be water stations around the course, but every year some poor soul died from dehydration and electrolyte depletion – she was taking no chances. She had a Mars bar in her hand, it wouldn’t fit in the belt bag.
The toilets turned out to be two Portaloos, but she had no option other than to join the massive queue. She ate the Mars bar. Where did people keep their stuff? She readjusted her wrist sweatband. The Jelly Babies in the tiny pocket were making it uncomfortable. But she might need them – she’d read that just one could fuel you for two miles.
‘Gates closing in fifteen minutes, please make your way to the start,’ sounded a voice over the loudspeaker.
Michelle’s eyes darted around in search of an alternative toilet. She had trained for months for this thing. She couldn’t drop out over a stupid Portaloo situation. The flurry of runners nipping into bushes filled her with a new level of anxiety. She couldn’t possibly go in public. Two younger women behind her in the queue were having the same dilemma and were looking over, rather fearfully, towards a fence sectioning off a wooded area.
In an act of desperation, Michelle suggested they hold up her foil insulation sheet as a privacy screen. Seconds later, all three of them had hopped over the fence. By the end of the ordeal, she felt as if she had broken down some huge barrier, though to what, she didn’t know.
Embarrassed laughing turned to panic as the three women realised that the elite runners had set off, their own pen had closed, and they were going to miss the start of their wave. Michelle sprinted to her section and felt something pull in her left thigh.
There was barely enough time to stretch out the muscle before it was announced that the Red Arrows had taken off and were on their way. The crowd fell silent. Fifty-four thousand people watched the anxious expression of a beautiful young woman on the massive screen over the start line.
‘So sad,’ said one of the girls.
‘What do you mean?’ Michelle asked, following her gaze.
‘Her husband was the Red Arrow pilot recently killed during an air show. He used to join her in the race after the flyover. She’s running alone today.’
The camera focused on the woman’s face, as she searched the sky above the two-mile line of runners. The deafening roar came from nowhere as the Red Arrows jetted down the length of the line-up. The sound and sight of them made the hairs on Michelle’s neck stand on end. Pain was etched across the young widow’s face as the Red Arrows flew past in missing man formation. The mass feeling of empathy from the crowd was tangible. Michelle thought of Dan. He’d been responsible for jets. She looked from the woman’s face to the solitary red arrow, disappearing off to the side to leave a gap in the display. That’s what true love looked like. Dan had never been hers.
The music recommenced, and the crowd cheered as they all set off. For Michelle, the slow pace caused by so many bodies on the course made it easier, there was no chance of speeding up for quite a while.
The runners’ ‘oggy, oggies’ as they passed beneath the motorway bridges lifted the mood even more. By the time Michelle reached the Tyne Bridge, she was overtaking lots of walkers, some in tutus, others pushing prams or carrying charity buckets, and some who clearly hadn’t trained. She felt as if she could speed up if she wanted to and realised she’d become quite fit. Even though Dan should have been there with her, she couldn’t stop smiling. She was finally there, doing the Great North Run.
The sun came out, the steel band played, and Michelle was loving every minute. Even the notorious hills weren’t too bad because all you could see ahead was a sea of bright colours and bobbing heads. They dragged her along with them as she made her way along the spectator-lined streets to the sound of clapping and cheering.
Every now and again, a picture on the back of a T-shirt caught her eye, each one bringing on a fresh bout of tears. Despite having believed for as long as she could remember, that if she was seen crying, people would consider her to be weak, she’d wept buckets over the last few months. She smiled, no longer minding what anyone thought. She was particularly moved by one picture – a handsome, dark-haired man with a seventies-style moustache, holding a cute little toddler with curly blond hair, and the caption ‘For Dad’.
Michelle dropped back, coming to a standstill next to a small clearing on the roadside. She could only ever remember seeing one photograph of her own father holding her as a child. She turned towards the bushes and silently sobbed – for the little girl she used to be. She couldn’t remember what it had felt like to be in her father’s arms. Had she ever squealed in delight, as he swept her up in a hug, his heart bursting with love, like hers used to when Sara was young? She doubted it.
People could see her crying and she couldn’t make it stop. Michelle started to giggle between sobs – she wasn’t strong, or weak. She was just herself. And that was okay.
A mixture of atmosphere and emotion carried Michelle along to the six-mile mark. Up until that point she’d felt physically good, but she became aware of a nagging ache in her left thigh, in the spot she’d felt pull when she sprinted to the starting pen. Soon she was limping, and then the other leg also began to ache as she compensated for the left one. It helped to know that there were St. John’s Ambulance points and pick-up vehicles along the course, but this didn’t allay the worsening pain.
The colourful mass that had been supporting her now looked alien. She felt lost and alone. Miles from the start, the finish and home. What was she going to do? She felt cold and was getting in the way of other runners as she limp-jogged along.
The mile markers that had flown by earlier now seemed much further apart. She passed a couple of competitors lying on the pavement, covered with silver sheets. More than once over the next three miles, the crowd and runners had to move to one side to allow ambulances past, their lights flashing and sirens screaming. By nine miles her legs felt like they’d turned into wood. The pain was excruciating.
Everything sounded quieter now, except for the heavy breathing and plodding feet of passing runners. She stopped to walk, devastated. There was no way she would reach the finish line. Desperate for something to wash down her painkillers, she managed to struggle on to a water station. Popping two into her mouth, she accepted a bottle of water from one of the outstretched hands of the volunteers.
‘You’re doing well, don’t give up,’ said a familiar voice. Victor Morgan was standing in a volunteer T-shirt, smiling at her.
Flabbergasted, she took a swig of water and swallowed the pills. ‘Thanks,’ she croaked.
He handed her a Jelly Baby. ‘Eat this. You can fuel yourself for two miles on one of these.’
She laughed. ‘Thank you. I had some, but they’ve gone all claggy in my wrist band.’ She pulled it off and threw it in a bin bag.
‘Once you see the sea, you’re nearly there.’
It was the boost she needed. As she limped away, she felt refuelled, not only with water and sugar, but with a renewed determination to get to the finish line. The ibuprofen dulled the pain and she settled into a pattern of walking and then jogging. Who would have thought her nemesis was capable of volunteering to help people, she thought, wondering if she could have been so exhausted she’d hallucinated him.
Unfortunately, by the time she reached John Reid Road the painkillers were wearing off – the hill was every bit as horrendous as people said. But as Michelle reached the top, something amazing happened. She caught a glimpse of the sea ahead and the sky above it. There was a red heart in the sky, expertly drawn in jet exhaust fumes. Overwhelmed with emotion, she strained her eyes to see the shapes, distorted but beautiful through her tears.
When she turned onto the coast road for the last mile, the pain disappeared. Victor was right, she was on the final stretch. Jogging along the coast road, watching the Red Arrows drawing pictures in the sky and listening to the cheering crowd, while the Squadron Leader commentated over the loudspeaker, was to become one of the most memorable events of Michelle’s life.
Years of misery and heartbreak were purged from her heart, as she cried and laughed all the way to the finish line. The finish line. She’d made it. Her legs stopped working the moment she crossed it, but it didn’t matter.
She eventually managed to hobble to the photo area for the finisher photograph that no one else would ever see. When she saw it a week later, it shocked the hell out of her. But not that many other people in her wave were looking their best by the end either. The fit runners had finished long ago. Some of them were still doing their cool-downs, clad with silver capes, others stood outside the bars with a well-earned pint. Every single one of them, fit or walking-wounded, wore the same look of exhilaration. Apart from the ones being stretchered away to ambulances. The sun was shining again, and life was an amazing, beautiful gift.
Michelle didn’t mind that she had no friends or relatives waiting for her at the end. She’d discouraged them from coming because it was known to be a nightmare to get home – the roads gridlocked with vehicles and queues for buses and metros winding right through the town. And then there was the real reason, the one she didn’t want to admit even to herself. What if Dan were to turn up after all?
She limped down to the beach with her rucksack of goodies to watch the Red Arrows execute their final acrobatic manoeuvres. Sitting on the sand with a two-litre bottle of Irn Bru and a family-sized bag of Walker’s cheese and onion crisps, she watched them bid farewell with a final roaring flypast.
As the multi-coloured images gently dispersed into the heavens over the ocean, she rolled up her running tights and paddled into the freezing North Sea, the pain easing as her legs numbed. She gazed out to where the sea met the horizon, her mind much too tired to house the usual barrage of tormenting thoughts. They came and went without consequence. Nothing mattered, everything had slowed down. It was a lovely reprieve from the constant onslaught of self-recriminations from the past – the hurts, blame, failures, broken promises and efforts come to naught. Michelle’s mind finally reached the point of not being able to dredge up any more self- punishing insults, and it felt wonderful.
The faces of her father, Fermín and Dan floated by on the clouds – none of them evoking any feelings in her. But there was a funny one that made her really giggle, Trevor biting a leg – her leg.
‘It’s just me and the sea and the sky. And I did the Great North Run,’ she said, smiling up to the heavens. ‘I don’t need to keep doing it, do I?’ She didn’t quite know what ‘it’ was, only that it had been wearing her out, and no one else seemed to have noticed or cared. Then she looked down and the sight of her blue-tinged legs brought her back to reality. She waded out onto the sand.
The beach was deserted. Once she’d dried herself off and pulled on her jeans, she took advantage of the numbness, and the return of a mobile signal, to call her father.
‘Hello,’ he said in his customary flat tone.
‘Hi, Dad. Listen, I would have liked to have spoken to you in person, but I can’t get down to see you this weekend, and it’s important.’ She considered telling him about the run but decided not to risk her achievement being dismissed, not when she was feeling so great about it.
‘Sounds ominous.’
‘It’s about the funeral arrangements, and your will.’
The sound of jingling coins. ‘Don’t worry, as I’ve already explained, Pauline will help you.’
‘I think it’s something a close family member, like Pauline, should do, not me.’
Big sigh. ‘Well, I think Pauline might be upset by that comment. She has never thought you were any less of a family member of mine than she is.’
Michelle felt irritation stir in her stomach. ‘But you did.’ She wasn’t trying to hurt him, but she needed him to understand. ‘It isn’t my responsibility to take this on. It’s Pauline’s. Maybe with Gary’s help? I think he’d be honoured. I’m surprised you didn’t ask him, given that he’s defended your every move since the day you abandoned him. Thank you for asking me, but I don’t want to do it.’
***
IT WAS AS THE METRO pulled away from the station that the mobile phone signals fully returned, announced by a chorus of dings, dongs and jingles. When Michelle saw the long list of messages wishing her luck and asking how she’d done, she felt cocooned in a huge hug. She replied to everyone with the photograph she’d snapped of the finish line and a ‘Yay!’ – a word she hated to see in texts, and on social media, but one that was called for today. She’d have sent the selfie she took of herself after the finish but didn’t want to cause undue concern.
A new text pinged in as she was putting her mobile back into her pocket. Her heart thudded when she saw Dan’s name. Maybe he’d sent her a good luck message, too. Or had he come up after all? Perhaps just for a while, to see the end of the run? Or, was he waiting at the hotel? The possibilities hurtled through her mind.
Not a single mention of the run. Apparently, Penny had ‘really done it this time’, and Tamara was right behind his latest ultimatum. Michelle briefly wondered what Penny had been up to, but if she was honest, she wasn’t that interested.
She decided to reply later. Right now, she wanted to bask in her own glory. She’d completed the greatest half-marathon in the world – she’d done the Great North Run.
***
IT WAS WITH GREAT DIFFICULTY that Michelle lifted her traumatised legs into the bath. The water sloshed over the roll-top sides, as she clumsily tried to ease herself in. As she sank into the bubbles, the pain melted away into the warm water. Never had a bath felt so wonderful.
The light glinted through the window onto the crystal flute of Prosecco, standing on the decorative glass shelf. It resembled a Christmas scene, all festive and sparkly. The Spanish Queen herb-infused olives filled the delicate ramekin, which she’d bought to match the glasses.
Michelle looked around the luxurious bathroom, with its walk-in power shower and wall-mounted TV. She was doing her best to enjoy it, but Dan had upset her. Had he ever really planned to do the run? He’d shared the cost of the room, so he surely must have. But then again, he wouldn’t miss the money, he could have just been stringing her along.
Prosecco slopped into the bath as Michelle refilled the flute. In what seemed like no time at all, she’d polished off the whole bottle. Despite her tipsy state, sensible thoughts ran through her nurse’s mind. Bath full of water, empty wine bottle, long run, bag of crisps and chocolate: dead on arrival, head smashed against the ceramic, drowned in bubble bath, Spanish Queen olive identified in trachea by coroner. She could see the headline now... ‘Disgraced, ageing woman found dead in hotel bathtub following alcohol binge – Senior NHS nurse; our lives in their hands.’
After carefully hauling herself out of the bath and concentrating hard to hobble through to the bedroom, Michelle wrapped herself in a fluffy bathrobe and flopped onto the Queen-sized bed. There were still a couple of hours before the evening meal, just enough time to sober up. Perhaps she should reply to Dan – while she felt mellow and chilled from the soak in the bath and alcohol.
When she picked up her mobile, she noticed a text from Gary. Her father had told him about their earlier conversation. Apparently, he couldn’t fathom out her reasoning and had assumed it must be because she was still harbouring a childish bitterness towards Sylvia. He’d told Gary he had more important things to worry about, what with Sylvia’s continued flightiness – not only had she refused to give up the library job, she was wasting even more time there.
Gary had found the whole situation amusing. Michelle laughed too and wondered why on earth she’d worried about what her dad would think of her. Then Gary sent a second text, which made her heart swell with love for her little brother. He told her that he’d turned down their father’s request to sort out the funeral.
It reminded me of something you were once wittering on to me about – dogs eating fallen scraps from tables or something. Bloody hell, Michelle, I had to blinking-well suffer ribbing from my mates, ‘cos Mam used to play football and cricket with me after he nicked off with Sylvia. I love our little mam. x
She replied with an air-punching emoji.
Michelle also replied to Dan. Hope she gets help this time. Stick to your guns. x
A long text came straight back; all about how difficult it was for him and Tamara, whose holiday had been ruined.
Sorry, can’t chat now. Shattered from running over thirteen miles. The room is lush. Going to have a nap before dinner.
She switched off her phone, crawled under the chunky quilt and fell into one of the best sleeps she’d ever had.
