‘No Lark left behind!’ Marjory called again, and this time I managed to drag my eyes off Nathan and keep them on her long enough to notice what she was holding out.
‘The race is about to start,’ I jabbered back.
‘You can take the second leg.’
I looked at the swimsuit in her hand. Moved my gaze to take in ten Larks. My friends, my squad, my rescuers. From age twenty-two to seventy-five, from an Olympian to a woman who couldn’t even swim. Women who’d made fearless choices, and terrible ones, who’d faced crap that they never would have chosen. Strong, courageous women who’d picked themselves up, dusted themselves down and kept on running. Who had forgiven the past mistakes, especially their own. Who had learnt that life is too damn short, and too darn tough at times, to give a monkey’s banana what a random crowd of spectators, or online gossip-scavengers, or trash-paper readers would think of them. Women who knew who they were, and what they wanted to do, and let nothing and nobody stop them from doing it.
Of course I would take the second leg!
‘No Lark left behind!’ I grabbed the suit, pausing to find Joey in the crowd, already on his feet, fists in the air, face shining with joy. ‘GO, MUM!’
I waved at him, grinning, before turning back to Marjory. ‘But you can start without me just this once.’
It took an excruciating three minutes to wrestle out of the dress, another hurried two while I tried to adjust the swimsuit to cover as much as possible. Ten seconds to get my head in the game.
It wastime.
* * *
‘Amy – you’re up!’ Dani poked her head into the changing room.
I hurtled out, across the tiles and, barely taking the second to check whether the lane was clear, took a deep breath and dove straight into the water.
Oh.
Oh.
Oh.
No sound.
No thoughts.
Just water.
My long-lost friend.
Instinct.
Joy.
Power.
Peace.
Oh.
At the millisecond before my lungs would burst, I broke out of the water, relishing the hit of cold air like an addict’s first shot of the morning. The sound of the crowd hit me, sparking a tidal wave of adrenaline, and without any conscious thought that, ah, yes, this is a race, I’d better get a move on,my arm swung up, legs kicked, and I was shooting through the water like a world champion after fourteen years of imposed confinement on land.
* * *
An hour later, we started the cycling leg of the triathlon smack in the middle of the rankings. I’d completed ten of the thirty lengths of the pool, with Nathan swimming eight, Mel, Audrey and Selena two each, and everyone else a single fifty-metre length. And if Isobel had needed a bit of a hand to complete the final forty-eight metres, well, all’s fair in family fun fit triathlons.
I think we managed to maintain third place for, ooh, at least three minutes of the cycling leg. While certain members of the Larks – i.e. the ones who were supposed to be cycling, and had therefore actually done some training on a bike – whizzed off ahead, and others who were naturally pretty fit whatever the sport, followed not too far behind them. Mel and Audrey were soon left puffing away either side of the person who’d not ridden a bike since she’d pulled wheelies up and down her cul-de-sac on a BMX.
‘This is easier than it looks!’ Mel grinned, giving her bell a good jingle after freewheeling down the first slope, sky-blue helmet balanced on top of her plaits. ‘All that fuss about learnin’ to ride a bike, nothing to it! Come on, guys, keep up, we’re in a race here!’
To be fair, it may have taken me longer than Mel to get back into the swing of cycling, but I wasn’t the one using kids’ stabilisers. And poor Audrey, I wasn’t sure if it was sweat dripping off her as she lumbered along in the freak Easter heatwave, face scrunched with determination, or whether she was literally melting. Thank goodness that for most of the ten kilometres, the roads were free of spectators, so we could huff and groan and grimace with no one watching. My muscles had regressed back towards flabbiness over the past few weeks, and it was amazing how quickly I became breathless.
