“Did you see anyone on your way in?” Liv asked Quentin.
He shook his head. “Not a soul.”
“It’s just that Mel’s gone AWOL.”
“I hope she’s all right,” Dorothy said.
Gabe got up from his seat. “I’ll go and have a scout about, shall I?”
Hannah nodded and Gabe made his way outside. Reappearing, he shrugged.
“Where could she have gone?” Dorothy asked.
Hannah sighed as she silently cursed the ground Russel walked on. “I think she’s gone home.”
CHAPTER38
Hannah stared at the running machine, plucking up the courage to get started. She’d come so far in her running journey, the last thing she wanted to do was fail. Completing the 2.5k had felt daunting enough, but to try doing it after hardly any sleep seemed like madness.
Hannah had lain awake until the early hours worrying about Mel. It wasn’t like her to disappear like that. Hannah could still feel the panic as she and Liv kept trying and failing to contact their vanishing friend. Hannah ended up leaving a voicemail threatening to go round with Liv and bang on the door until Mel let them in. Which finally and thankfully elicited a response.
Mel simply needed a bit of space to think. She insisted they both had no reason to worry, and they were to continue enjoying their evening. Yes, it was good to know she wasn’t dead in a ditch somewhere or kidnapped. As for having a nice evening, that was something easier said than done.
Pulling herself together, Hannah refused to use Mel’s distress as an excuse to get out of that day’s running challenge. She had to get on with it no matter how tired she felt. Hannah knew if she didn’t, all the work she’d put in those last weeks would be for nothing. And boy had she worked.
Thanks to Gabe’s training schedule, the previous training days had been particularly challenging. Following each initial five-minute warm-up walk, Hannah had run for longer periods than she’d been used to.
Taking a deep breath, she couldn’t believe she was about to try jogging non-stop for 2.5k. And not only that, in thirty minutes or under. Hannah sighed, deciding that whoever had come up with the one-hour cut-off point in which to complete the whole race, mustn’t be very nice.
Unable to delay it any longer, Hannah began the session with her usual tricep stretches and side lunges. Putting her hands flat against the wall, she threw in a few calf exercises for good measure. After jiggling her whole body to properly loosen up, she stepped onto the conveyor belt and tapped the relevant LCD icons.
As the treadmill sprang to life and Hannah started yet another warm-up walk, she covered her ears with her headphones. If her playlist didn’t keep her moving for the whole 2.5k, then nothing would.
At last, setting off on a jog, Hannah’s steps followed the beat of the music. Making sure to breathe in through her nose and out through her mouth, she felt comfortable at the pace she’d set herself. With her head up and chest forward, she kept her gaze away from the timer. Hannah knew from experience that when things got tough, the countdown seemed to take forever.
After a while, Hannah could feel the effects of her running. Her heart rate sped up, small sweat patches formed on her T-shirt, and there was a burn in her calves. “You can do this,” she said, refusing to acknowledge her inner voice that suggested it was time to give up.
Determined to keep going, Hannah geed herself on by thinking back to her first running attempt. On that occasion, she’d only got to the end of her street when she needed to slow into a walk. Hannah couldn’t believe how completely breathless she’d been, let alone how much her heart had pounded. Then again, she’d supposed it understandable. Most of her life was spent on her bum.
It didn’t matter how much running around Hannah did for Beth and Archie, Hannah had to admit most of it was done from the driver’s seat of her car. Going up and down stairs with the laundry and pushing a trolley around the supermarket might up Hannah’s step count, but any benefit was quickly offset with the amount of time she sat behind her desk at work. She knew that day’s 2.5k challenge might not seem a lot to most people, but Hannah felt proud. It was testament to how far she’d come.
Hannah caught sight of Aunt Dorothy who popped her head into the room. “Fifteen minutes in,” she said, raising her voice to be heard over Hannah’s headphones. “You’re already at the halfway point.” Dorothy gave Hannah a big smile and put her thumbs up as a sign of encouragement. “You’ve got this.”
A hand waving a pom-pom suddenly appeared behind Dorothy’s head and remembering her conversation with Gabe the previous evening, Hannah knew it could only belong to him. She laughed as Gabe finally revealed himself. Stepping into the room to wave two pom-poms, Hannah had an idea he’d probably gone out and bought them especially.
“You’re doing great,” he said.
“Thank you,” Hannah said, shouting above the music, before Dorothy and Gabe turned around and left her to it.
Hannah kept going despite feeling increasingly uncomfortable. As her breathing began to labour, it would have been easy to stop, but she knew she would only be letting herself and the team down if she did. Apart from during pregnancy and childbirth, Hannah had never physically stretched herself to that degree and she wasn’t going to let one racing pulse and two chaffing thighs prevent her from reaching her goal.
She’d experienced various challenges over the years, of course. Learning how to care for two babies at once had been testing. As had overcoming the countless worries, stresses and strains that came with being a single mum. But the sponsored race was the first personal challenge since her university days that involved Hannah and Hannah alone. Once she fell pregnant, life became about everyone else.
Thinking about it, it was as if the sponsored run represented something bigger. Like the start of a new beginning, Hannah considered. It felt like a springboard from which Hannah could catapult herself into a different way of doing things; an opportunity that both excited and scared her.
Ever since she’d signed up to the race, the signs that something needed to change had been there. Such as the fact that without her children, Hannah was lost. She might not have liked her mum’s comment about it not being long before Beth and Archie were off to university, but it had been a stark eye-opener. Then there was Dorothy. Her loneliness had been like a glimpse into Hannah’s future if things remained as they were. Even Hannah’s own children had put their foot down and cut her hours.
“In through the nose, out through the mouth,” Hannah told herself.
