When Mrs Jessop begins to talk again, Georgia finds herself sinking lower and lower in her chair. It is as though there are a hundred eyes on her. Beneath her striped blazer, her arm throbs. Her body feels so sluggish today, while her mind cannot even stay in the room, flitting between memories of the accident and images of Sophia lying in a hospital bed.
So far she has been bitterly disappointed by most of her friends’ reactions. Jennifer can’t stop crying. Poppy and Emma are trying to follow suit, but their curious, gleaming eyes and endless questions make Georgia suspect they are actually enjoying the drama. She has already stopped talking to them and plans to avoid them for the rest of the day. She is glad Sophia can’t see this – she would have found the whole circus sickening.
She jumps as someone touches her head, but it is only Bethany giving her hair a couple of quick strokes, saying gently, ‘We can go now, Georgie.’
How had she not noticed that assembly had finished? While she is summoning the energy to get up, people are already pushing past her legs. Behind Bethany is Eddie Miles, who catches her eye briefly but then turns away. She remembers Sophia flirting with him last night and wants to grab his arm, ask him if he cares that Sophia is in hospital, because it certainly doesn’t look like it. But he is gone too quickly, and the idea fades as the others file past. Oliver Sutton ignores her, while Jamie Clegg looks like he’s swallowing a smirk, but she’s thought that before – she can’t tell if it’s an expression of his or just an unfortunate facial tic.
The cacophony of chairs scraping along the floor makes her wince. She looks over to see the teachers filing out, and catches her mother’s eye again. Against her best intentions, Georgia feels herself scowl. She reluctantly gets to her feet, collecting her bag and allowing Bethany to propel her along the row of seats.
‘Jeez, Georgia, this is fucked up,’ Bethany says behind her. Georgia doesn’t reply. She is searching for Danny but can’t see him. He’s the only other person who might know something of how she feels, but perhaps he had the good sense not to come to school. She longs to go home and lie down. Her body feels all wrong – her legs are weak and her head is full of sawdust. Yet she doesn’t want to be alone, nor does she want to give her mum the satisfaction of being right.
She wanders out of the assembly room into the main foyer of the school, and glances towards the long windows on her left, which look out across the valley towards the fells and the northernmost tip of Lake Windermere. She wishes she could see the still, calm spread of the lake, but a squall of rain is lashing the windows, and all she can make out are blurry silver-grey swirls. She wonders if she’ll be running in the rain tomorrow – the championships will go ahead whatever the weather.
I didn’t think there was anyone else out there as nuts as me . . . Running in the rain.
She can hear his voice, she can see his face, and it is almost too much today. Exhausted, she stumbles over to a nearby bench, tuning out the noise around her, no longer aware of those exiting the hall, now her thoughts have turned to Leo.
? ? ?
Her mother had almost scuppered that first running date by announcing she had planned a girls’ day out shopping, then acting all hurt when Georgia didn’t respond with enough enthusiasm. ‘Surely you don’t mind missing your run for one day?’ she’d pleaded.
She was so clueless at times that it made Georgia want to scream. Instead she had said, ‘I can’t, I’m meeting a friend,’ but of course her mother didn’t just let that lie, she had to know which friend, and when Georgina had snapped, ‘No one you know,’ her father had looked up and told her off for being rude. Which was a joke considering the number of times she had heard her father bark at her mother lately. Next time perhaps she should tell him off for being rude, except of course it didn’t work like that. Parents could do and say whatever, they could make shitty jokes at your expense or get narky because you spoke in a way they didn’t like, but turn the tables and they were outraged at your impertinence. When Georgia thought about it she was surprised she didn’t yell at them more out of sheer frustration.
The conversation had ended, of course, with her mother’s usual guilt trip. A long exhale of breath, and the words, ‘Okay, then, it was just a thought. It doesn’t matter,’ conveyed in a tone that made sure Georgia knew how much it did matter, and what a disappointment she was.
Worse still, after all that, Georgia had to ask to borrow the car. To her relief, only a small amount of humiliating begging had been needed, and afterwards she had been quick to escape to her room. She had spent the rest of the evening sussing out how much make-up she could wear while still looking natural, and without it sliding down her face once she got hot.
The next morning she had crept around the house praying no one would wake up, grabbing her mother’s keys from the countertop and heaving a sigh of relief once she was out the door. She had been giddy with anticipation as she drove out to Tarn Hows, arriving ten minutes early to find he was there already, leaning on his car.