Jack cursed himself for thinking it. He nosed through the slow-moving traffic and tried to grip the wheel. He carefully changed lanes to put a high-sided van between their car and one of the billboards of Zoe.
Kate said, “This lane’s even slower.”
“So I made a mistake.”
She looked at him sharply. “Are you okay? You’re being shitty.”
“I’m being shitty?”
“Yeah.”
He kept his eyes straight ahead. “I’m being fine.”
“Training go alright?”
“Yeah, I ripped it up.”
“You’re not smiling.”
“I’m knackered, Catherine. Okay?”
“Catherine?”
He raised his arms. “Sorry.”
She sighed. “Yeah, me too.”
“I’m knackered, Kate, truth be told.”
“What, even your little face muscles?”
She made a mischievous face and jabbed his cheeks, insistently, until she raised a smile.
“That’s better,” she said, and straightaway it was.
Jack’s mood evaporated. He clicked on the hazard warning lights, brought the slow-moving car to a stop in the right-hand lane, and leaned across to kiss her. They kissed while the outraged traffic blared and diverted around them. Motorists made the sign of mental incapacity, stabbing their fingers at their temples to indicate the locus of the deficiency. It made Sophie anxious.
“Come on!” she whispered. “Move!”
Jack felt for her, but he wasn’t in a hurry. Now that his irritation was gone, there was the post-training high, a cozy analgesic cocoon within which it was hard to prioritize the needs of the impatient world over his own. Reluctantly he pulled back from the kiss. In moments like this an old anxiety struck him with fresh shock: he couldn’t understand why she had chosen him, and why she had stuck with him through everything that had happened, and why she continued to stick with him. Sometimes he felt like a clawed animal who’d been given a rose to hold. He knew just enough to know it was beautiful, but not enough to know how to look after it.
Kate was welling up, and Jack wiped away her tears with his thumbs. Behind them, Sophie was freaking out. Outside, the car horns had massed into an imbroglio of indignation. Their fellow motorists were beginning to make the other sign, of the extended middle finger, with its implication that there was some rectum or some vagina into which something—possibly the finger being displayed, or possibly some other item for which the displayed finger was a proxy, signifier, or understudy—might usefully be inserted in such a way that it would expedite the plaintiff’s journey to whichever furniture superstore or cross-platform marketing meeting constituted their immediate destination. This soon after lifting heavy barbells, Jack found that it was hard to take people or their hand signals particularly seriously.
“You’d better drive,” Kate said. So he did.
“Finally!” said Sophie, in such a prissy voice that it made all three of them laugh.
The traffic seemed to ease up a little.
Trying to keep his voice casual, Jack said, “That text from Tom, this morning—did it say what he wants to talk to you about?”
Kate shook her head. “Just to put aside some time after training. I’m sure it’s nothing.”
Jack kept his eyes straight ahead.
When Dave had given him the news that morning, his first thought had been how he was going to secure his own place in London. He’d thought about how he could train harder. He didn’t care if he had to train the world to spin the other way on its axis. That place in London was going to be his.
Turning, now, into the car park of the velodrome, Jack realized how typical it was of him not to have thought about what the news meant for Kate until afterwards, in the locker room. When his head was in the game, the existence of others—even the ones he loved—could easily not occur to him for hours on end. People just flickered in and out of his awareness, like figures in a dark room where some unbidden hand turned the light switch on and off at times not of his choosing. As soon as he remembered them, he wanted to do the right thing. That was all you could say in his defense, he supposed.
He parked and went to help Sophie out of her seat. He lifted her to his hip and nudged the rear door shut. His eyes met Kate’s across the roof of the car. She was hopping from foot to foot with the anticipation of imminent training. The kit bag swung on her shoulder and her hair blew in the wind that whipped around the gray dome of the velodrome. Now would be the moment, if he was going to do it. He should tell her about the rule change and give her at least the tiny psychological edge of knowing before Zoe did.
But here she was, happy, and here was Sophie in his arms, excited to be out of the house for once, thrilled to be allowed to watch Kate training. Jack realized he wasn’t going to say anything. The next hour, the next minute, even the next ten seconds of happiness was as far as his mind wanted to think. While there was laughter in bathrooms, and kisses snatched from traffic, and smiles in windy car parks, let it persist. Jack held on to the moment and held on to his wife’s small warm hand as they walked the short distance from the car to the velodrome entrance.
Kate hurried off to change and Jack took Sophie to sit by the track. He sat her down carefully on a stacking chair beside the technical area and wrapped a black fleece blanket around her.
“Comfy?”
“Yeah.”
Sophie pulled the top edge of the blanket over her head to make a Jedi cowl. Her eyes were fixed on Zoe as she warmed up with smooth, fluid laps of the track. On the steep curves at each end Zoe swung high, all the way to the top of the banking at the apex, hung for a moment between energy and gravity, then swooped back down to the black line with a rising note from her wheels. She wore a white skinsuit and a white helmet with a black visor that flashed with the reflected lines of the track.
Sophie was transfixed. She raised her hands towards Zoe, fingers slightly bent.
“What are you doing?” Jack said.
Sophie frowned, annoyed that he’d broken her focus.
“I’m using the Force on her.”
“Why?”
Sophie dropped her hands and stared at him. “To make her crash, of course.”
Jack opened his mouth, but he couldn’t think what to say. Sophie turned away and raised her arms again. He left her to it, kissed the top of her head, and walked over to Tom in the technical area.
“Zoe’s looking good,” Jack said.
Tom reached up to shake his hand. “Excuse me if I don’t stand. Bloody knees are worse than ever.”
“Yeah, Kate said. You ever going to have them operated?”
“Mate, I’m going to have them amputated. More trouble than they’re worth. Going to get my feet attached straight to my arse, cut out the middleman.”
“Works for penguins.”
“Yeah, it’s a Southern Hemisphere thing.”
They watched Zoe working the track.
“You told her yet?” Jack said quietly.
Tom shook his head. “When did you get told?”
“Before training this morning.”
“I was going to tell the girls after. Keep their heads in the game for this session at least.”
“Might do the same if I was you.”
Tom looked up at him. “You say anything to Kate?”
“It’s on you, feller. I’m only married to her.”
Tom kept his eyes on Jack’s. “You didn’t know how to tell her, right?”
“Something like that.”
“Me neither,” Tom said, dropping his eyes. “It’s a bloody shame, is what it is.”
“You know how they’re going to work it yet?”
Tom shrugged. “There’ll be a formal qualifier for the place. In three months’ time, a few weeks out from the Games. We’ll see which one of them is quicker on the day.”
“You got a hunch?”
“Don’t ask me that.”
“But have you
?”
Tom kept his face neutral. “Three months is a long time, isn’t it?”
Jack felt his stomach go. “You think it’s Zoe.”
Tom didn’t answer. He turned away to watch Zoe riding. She was working half sprints now, slowing the bike on the straights and then powering up to enter the bends at speed before easing it back down again. She was keeping it loose and fluid, still warming up, not maxing out. She looked completely in charge.
They watched her in silence for a few laps.
“You confident about winning your own place?” Tom said finally.
“Sure,” said Jack.
Tom nodded, his eyes still on Zoe. “I was talking with Dave just now. He said you were ‘quietly confident.’ ”
“I don’t know about quiet. I told him I could turn up at the qualifiers with a BMX and a drogue parachute and still lap the other guys.”
“You always were a cocky bastard.”
“I used to be worse.”
Tom turned to him. “I remember. What I’ve never figured out, though, is why you race. You don’t fit the mold. Kate, she wants to know that she’s done her best and she wants to make you and Sophie proud. Zoe, it’s like she’s pursued. I mean she’s more scared of losing than she’s glad about winning. But you, it’s like you only race at this level because you can.”
Jack grinned. “I only race at this level because I got kicked out of Scotland.”
Tom laughed.
“What, did I never tell you the story?”
Tom shook his head.
“I started riding when I was maybe ten,” said Jack. “I was into the street racing up in Leith, and we used to crash every day. Pops got sick of taking me to A&E, so he talked me onto a Scottish Cycling program. Decided I’d be safer racing indoors. And Pops was a chain-smoker; I mean I can only imagine him sitting in the coach’s office, reeking of cancer and telling him what a healthy wee family we were. Anyway, they gave me a proper bike and I beat every junior in Scotland. Pursuit, sprint, any individual event—it didn’t matter. I was physically incapable of losing. I hit sixteen and the coaches were feeding me substances hitherto unknown—you know: vegetables and fruit. Feeding me properly was like cheating, that was what the main coach told Pops. Riders were giving up competing against me at that point, and races were getting canceled all across the Highlands and Lowlands. That was when all the Scotch coaches got themselves together for a parley. They said to themselves, ‘For the sake of our own careers, we have to get this young man out of Scotland.’ ”
“And that’s how your call-up came for British Cycling?”
“I didn’t even want to go. I was mostly out on the town, chasing girls, and I got home off my head one night and this letter was waiting for me. I’d been entered for the Elite Prospects Programme at the Manchester Velodrome, and could I please bring with me a towel, a wash kit, and appropriate riding clothes for a full day of racing. I guess you wrote the thing yourself, right? And at breakfast I had a hangover and Pops said, ‘What was that letter?’ And I was like, ‘It is from the English, Father. They are begging me to be their lawful king.’ And Pops said, ‘No, but seriously?’ And I told him what the letter was and how I wasn’t going to go to Manchester. I mean, it had never occurred to me to leave Scotland, the same way it had never occurred to me to leave my senses.”
“So what persuaded you?”
Jack smiled. “What Pops did was, he got on the phone. A fortnight later, the day before Prospects, a pal of his knocked on the front door and this pal just happened to be the former light middleweight champion of the whole of Scotland and the Outer Isles. You know the kind of guy, I mean he had tattoos on his neck and his arms depicting imaginative acts of violence. Jim was his name. I answered the door and Jim grinned at me with these two rows of gold teeth. And Pops said, ‘Jim’s here to put you on the train to Manchester.’ I tried to do a runner, but Jim grabbed hold of me. He was like, ‘You’ll enjoy England,’ and I was like, ‘No, I fucking won’t.’ So Jim grabbed the back of my hair and stood me up off the floor and squashed my face against the wall. ‘You’ll like England,’ he said. ‘The climate is mild and the folks have delightful manners, which it shall be their gentle pleasure to teach you.’ And I was gasping for air by this point so I just went, ‘Yes, yes, I’m sure I shall love it terrifically.’ And Pops said this thing that’s always stayed with me. He said, ‘It’s for your own good, Jack. I will not see you end up like me.’ And I said, ‘But I like you, Pops.’ And he said, ‘Well, you’ll like me more when you win gold.’ ”
“And did you?”
Jack sighed, watching Zoe making her slow loops around the track.
“I never told him how much it meant to me, and of course he died the year after Athens. Gasping his lungs out through an oxygen mask. If it hadn’t been for what he did, I’d be headed the same way.”
“Mate,” said Tom, “sounds like he wasn’t all bad.”
Jack watched Zoe as she leaned into another fluid lap. “You do what you can, don’t you?” he said finally.
Kate emerged onto the trackside in a blue skinsuit, tying her hair back. She hurried up to Tom and kissed him on both cheeks.
“Sorry,” she said.
Tom tapped his watch. “Nine minutes late, honey.”
“Sorry, there was traffic and—”
“It was my fault,” Jack said. “I was late to take over with Sophie and—”
Tom silenced him with one raised finger and used his eyes to push him back outside the technical area. Now that the training session was on, the dynamic had shifted.
“We got your bike ready,” Tom told Kate. “On the off chance you were planning to show up.”
He pointed out a heavy black butcher’s bicycle with a huge wicker delivery basket on the front, propped up on its kickstand beside the warm-down bikes in the center of the velodrome.
Kate groaned. “You’re not actually going to make me, are you?”
“Count yourself lucky. If you’re late one more time, I’ll make you race on it.”
Kate sagged her shoulders theatrically and walked over to collect the bike. It was a long-established penalty—for every minute you were late, you did a warm-up lap on the butcher’s bike. As Kate wheeled the bike up to the track, Zoe, still circling, took her hands off the bars and began a slow handclap that echoed around the empty velodrome. Kate winked across at Sophie.
“Want to come for a ride?” she said.
Sophie’s eyes widened. “Can I?”
Kate wheeled the bike over to where she was sitting, and held it up while Jack lifted Sophie carefully into the wicker basket on the front.
“You okay, big girl?”
Sophie nodded and clung to the rim of the basket, only half-sure.
“You’ll be fine.”
Jack steadied the bike as Kate climbed on and eased it out onto the track. She kept it steady and careful, hugging the black line at the bottom of the track, and a slow grin spread across Sophie’s face. Zoe played along with it, swooping down towards them, overtaking, and then allowing herself to be overtaken in return. She swerved and twisted in their slipstream while Sophie yelled with delight and called to Kate to ride faster.
Forest moon of Endor, Outer Rim Territories, Moddell Sector,
43,300 light-years from the Galactic Core,
grid coordinates H-16
Sophie opened the throttle on the repulsorlift engine and sent the speeder bike flashing between the trees. The airstream felt good on her face as the acceleration kicked in. Behind her own machine, an Imperial scout was giving chase. Sophie gripped the handlebars tight and threw in some evasive maneuvers. This Imperial scout was good. Whatever Sophie did, the following bike matched her turn for turn. Her pursuer seemed to know what Sophie was going to do, almost before she knew it herself. Sophie felt a sense of awe along with the excitement. This wasn’t just any Imperial soldier. Maybe this was Vader himself.
“Faster!” she shouted, and she felt the speeder bike a
ccelerate.
Down on the forest floor the droid C-3PO was looking concerned, anxious bag of bolts that he was. Are you sure you know how to ride that thing safely? That’s what his silly mechanical face seemed to say.
“Relax,” came Han Solo’s voice through the rushing air. “A joyride isn’t supposed to be safe.”
Trackside, National Cycling Centre, Stuart Street, Manchester
Jack’s chest tightened as he watched the three of them riding, and he was relieved when Zoe glanced across at him. He implored her with his eyes. She stared at him for a moment, inscrutable behind her visor, and he shivered.
He was relieved when she called off her mock pursuit. She pulled alongside Kate and Sophie, matched their pace, and started up a running commentary in the style of the TV pundits.
“And Sophie Argall is in the lead as they go into the straight. This has to be the most awesome performance by an eight-year-old that the Olympics have ever seen. She’s destroying the opposition now, and watch that determination on her face as she powers around that final bend, and now here she is in the home straight. Can she make it? They said it was impossible but oh my goodness she’s done it, the girl wonder from Manchester, she’s only gone and taken gold!”
As they crossed the finish line, Sophie raised her arms in a victory salute. Jack noted Zoe’s smile beneath the line of her visor as she peeled off to carry on her warm-up. It was rare to see Zoe connect with Sophie like that. It was rare to see her connect with anyone.
He lifted Sophie carefully out of the basket and sat down with her by the track. The excitement had left her shattered. Jack pulled the fleece blanket back around her and held her on his lap.
He watched Kate and Zoe sparring. Kate got her real bike up to speed for a few laps and then Tom had the two of them do power intervals—ten seconds at full exertion followed by a minute to bring the heart rate back down. Jack kept his arms around Sophie as he watched. Every time the two riders flashed past, Sophie whispered, “Come on, Mum, you’re so much quicker!”
Watching the two women, Jack wasn’t sure. It had never been easy to choose between them.
In the hospital, after the crash, Zoe had held his hand. He’d woken up from anesthesia and seen her looking down at him with an expression more like sarcasm than sympathy.