‘Not everybody here is supportive. And I don’t trust most of them.’ Right now, I didn’t feel like I trusted Nathan much, either, and that showed in my voice’s bitter crack. ‘I’m not going to sit here while they ogle me like the post-run entertainment.’
Nathan was stern. ‘This group is not like that, and you know it. Who’s been ogling Selena and Audrey, or gossiping about Bronwyn’s hitman boyfriend? This is yourteam. We’re sitting here with you, and watching the sunrise. Whether you like it or not, we’re in this together.’
‘Well, for the record, I don’t like it.’ That wasn’t quite true. I got the team part, I had lived by those rules, once. I knew that being part of something – a team, a tribe, a community, a family – was everything. And expanding my team beyond my son and my old coach in the past few weeks had changed my life beyond recognition. What I didn’t like was how the sky just kept on getting paler, causing my heart to thump increasingly erratically, and how I didn’t really know where I was, or if I was going to tumble into a full-blown panic attack. Being part of a team had been great when I was the strongest member. Letting everyone see that I was the weakest felt about as pleasant as stripping off naked in front of them all.
In the end, everyone stayed.
‘Larks forever!’ Mel chanted, until she noticed that I was crying, so instead she jiggled her chair right up close to mine and gave my shoulders a squeeze.
So, what else could I do but stay with them? I had ranted on at myself that it wastimefor several days now. I could either put up or shut up – or run home and hate myself even more than I had three months ago. Instead, I pressed myself into the back of the chair, one hand clenching a mug of tea, the other enclosed perfectly inside the loveliest, safest hand in the world. I focused on a tiny tractor chugging across a distant field, and I breathed in the crisp, clean air, and by some miracle, despite the fact that my internal organs felt on the brink of liquification, I kept on breathing out again.
‘A lark!’ Bronwyn whispered, as a lone bird began cheeping in the trees behind us.
‘Chiffchaff,’ Marjory said.
‘Well, there’s no need to be rude!’
‘No, that’s the name of the bird, it isn’t a—’
‘Shhhh!’ Dani interrupted. ‘Look.’
And there it was. The light had been getting brighter for a while now, as pinks and reds mingled with gold along the horizon. But now a slither of deep orange crested the brow of the hill. We watched, in silence, no one slurping their coffee or scraping their bowls any more, as the shadows fled and the glorious sun rose to meet us, streamers of light celebrating the arrival of the new dawn with a spectacle that outshone the greatest of human endeavours in every way.
A new day.
‘My God, it’s amazin’,’ Mel sighed, and it was a prayer not a blasphemy, as we all silently echoed our ‘Amen’. ‘Which reminds me,’ she whispered, ‘I’m on refreshments rota at chapel this morning. Best get home and jump in the shower, sort the kids out.’
The enchantment broken, the rest of the group started collecting up the plates and divvying out the leftovers, gradually drifting off in twos and threes down the trail.
‘How are you going to get these chairs back down?’ Dani asked, one of the last to leave. ‘And for that matter, how did you get them up here? Were you camped here all night?’
Nathan grinned. ‘I stored them in an old bird hide in the wood along with the food. Only took me three trips. Carried the flasks up first thing.’
Dani raised one eyebrow at me, and I knew full well what it meant:what a lot of effort, all to help you face the morning.
‘Do you want help carrying them back down?’
‘It’s fine, thanks.’
‘Right then, I’ll leave you to it.’ And with that, she blew me a kiss and disappeared into the wood.
I stayed in my chair while Nathan put everything back in the hide. Not because I was still annoyed at him, or feeling lazy, but because I couldn’t take my eyes off the view and was gulping in the grand, sweeping beauty stretching out below me like it was oxygen. There were copses of trees dotted amongst the brown winter fields. A flock of birds wheeled across the far end of the valley, their shadows chasing across the earth below. Next to a stream, a blip of yellow bobbed beside a black and white dog splashing through the sparkling water. A procession of cows swayed across a meadow, and as I watched, my heart slowed to their gentle cadence. The crisp air flowed deep into the far, neglected corners of my lungs, my stomach sighed and settled, and I couldn’t even cry, because my soul was soaring over that valley, carried on a gust of hope and untarnished happiness.
I was here. I had made it. And I had stayed.
Somewhere, during the past twenty years or so, I had forgotten the sheer beauty and the wonder of being alive, in a world teeming with life. I promised myself in that moment that I would do my utmost never to forget that again.
‘While I don’t want to intrude on the moment, if you end up frozen to the chair, it’s going to be a pain getting you back down the hill.’
I blinked, took a couple of seconds to come back to myself, and realised I was stiff with cold, my fingers grey claws. ‘What time is it?’ I sounded like a bad ventriloquist – my whole face was numb.
‘Just after nine-thirty,’ Nathan grinned.
‘Why didn’t you say something?’ I scrabbled off the chair, nearly ending up on my backside as my limbs struggled to get working again.
He shrugged. ‘This was the whole point of us being here.’
‘I’ve taken up half your morning. It must have totally messed up your plans.’
