‘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.’
