It was on the fourth morning Patrick jogged past our house that I thought it might be more than coincidence. I had heard his voice the first day and limped blearily to the window, peering through the blind. And there he was below me, stretching out his hamstrings while talking to a blonde girl with a ponytail; she was clad in matching blue Lycra so tight I could pretty much work out what she’d had for breakfast. They looked like two Olympians missing a bobsleigh.
I stood back from the window in case he looked up and saw me, and within a minute, they were gone again, jogging down the road, backs erect, legs pumping, like a pair of glossy turquoise carriage ponies.
Two days later I was getting dressed when I heard them. Patrick was saying something loudly about carb-loading, and this time the girl flicked a suspicious glance towards my house, as if she were wondering why they had stopped in exactly the same place twice.
On the third day I was in the front room with Granddad when they arrived. ‘We should practise sprints,’ Patrick was saying loudly. ‘Tell you what, you go to the third lamppost and back and I’ll time you. Two-minute intervals. Go!’
Granddad rolled his eyes meaningfully.
‘Has he been doing this the whole time I’ve been back?’
Granddad’s eyes rolled pretty much into the back of his head.
I watched through the net curtains as Patrick stood, eyes fixed on his stopwatch, his best side presented to my window. He was wearing a black fleece zip-up top and matching Lycra shorts, and as he stood, a few feet the other side of the curtain, I was able to gaze at him, quietly amazed that this was someone I had been sure, for so long, I loved.
‘Keep going!’ he yelled, looking up from the stopwatch. And, like an obedient gun dog, the girl touched the lamppost beside him and bolted away again. ‘Forty-two point three eight seconds,’ he said approvingly, when she returned, panting. ‘I reckon you could shave another point five of a second off that.’
‘That’s for your benefit,’ said my mother, who had walked in bearing two mugs.
‘I did wonder.’
‘His mother asked me in the supermarket were you back and I said you were. Don’t look at me like that – I could hardly lie to the woman.’ She nodded towards the window. ‘That one’s had her boobs done. They’re the talk of Stortfold. Apparently you could rest two cups of tea on them.’ She stood beside me for a moment. ‘You know they’re engaged?’
I waited for the pang, but it was so mild it could have been wind. ‘They look … well suited.’
My mother stood there for a moment, watching him. ‘He’s not a bad sort, Lou. You just … changed.’ She handed me a mug and turned away.
Finally, on the morning he stopped to do press-ups on the pavement outside the house, I opened the front door and stepped out. I leaned against the porch, my arms folded across my chest, watching until he looked up. ‘I wouldn’t stop there for too long. Next door’s dog is a bit partial to that bit of pavement.’
‘Lou!’ he exclaimed, as if I was the very last person he expected to see standing outside my own house, which he had visited several times a week for the seven years we had been together. ‘Well … I’m surprised to see you back. I thought you were off to conquer the big wide world!’
His fiancée, who was doing press-ups beside him, looked up, then back down at the pavement. It might have been my imagination, but her buttocks might have clenched even more tightly. Up, down, she bobbed furiously. Up and down. I found myself worrying slightly for the welfare of her new bosom.
He bounced to his feet. ‘This is Caroline, my fiancée.’ He kept his eyes on me, perhaps waiting for some kind of reaction. ‘We’re training for the next Ironman. We’ve done two together already.’
‘How … romantic,’ I said.
‘Well, Caroline and I feel it’s good to do things together,’ he said.
‘So I see,’ I replied. ‘And his and hers turquoise Lycra!’
‘Oh. Yeah. Team colour.’
There was a short silence.
I gave a little air punch. ‘Go, team!’
Caroline sprang to her feet and began to stretch out her thigh muscles, folding her leg behind her like a stork. She nodded towards me, the least civility she could reasonably get away with.
‘You’ve lost weight,’ he said.
‘Yeah, well. A saline-drip diet will do that to you.’
‘I heard you had an … accident.’ He cocked his head sideways, sympathetically.
‘News travels fast.’
‘Still. I’m glad you’re okay.’ He sniffed, looked down the road. ‘It must have been hard for you this past year. You know. Doing what you did and all.’
And there it was. I tried to keep control of my breathing. Caroline resolutely refused to look at me, extending her leg in a hamstring stretch. Then, ‘Anyway … congratulations on the marriage.’
He surveyed his future wife proudly, lost in admiration of her sinewy leg. ‘Well, it’s like they say – you just know when you know.’ He gave me a faux-apologetic smile. And that was what finished me off.
‘I’m sure you did. And I guess you’ve got plenty put aside to pay for the wedding – they’re not cheap, are they?’
They both looked at me.
‘What with selling my story to the newspapers. What did they pay you, Pat? A couple of thousand? Treena never could find out the exact figure. Still, Will’s death should be good for a few matching Lycra onesies, right?’
The way Caroline’s face shot towards his told me this was one particular part of Patrick’s history that he had not yet got round to sharing.
He stared at me, two pinpricks of colour bleeding onto his face. ‘That was nothing to do with me.’
‘Of course not. Nice to see you, anyway, Pat. Good luck with the wedding, Caroline! I’m sure you’ll be the … firmest bride around.’ I turned and walked slowly back inside. I closed the door, resting against it, heart thumping, until I could be sure that they had finally jogged on.
‘Arse,’ said Granddad, as I limped back into the living room. And again, glancing dismissively at the window: ‘Arse.’ Then he chuckled.
I stared at him. And, completely unexpectedly, I found I had started to laugh, for the first time in as long as I could remember.