Her vision blurs and she can no longer feel different parts of her body – she is one mass of tearing, striving pain.
Every now and again they have passed marshals wearing fluorescent vests, holding two-ways and marking off numbers. She longs to see the next one; if she can’t finish the race, then at least she can wait with them. She tells herself that all she has to do is reach someone who will help her get down from here. She doesn’t give a toss about a medal or a sponsorship any more.
The fog is dissipating, and her eyes strain beyond its edges. And then she sees him. She hadn’t realised he was going to be one of the marshals, and the sight of him is confusing. A hallucination. She daren’t catch his eye, in case he knows what she’s done.
‘Dig in, Georgia, you can still catch them!’ Leo yells, which are pretty much the first words he’s said to her all term. She glances at him and he looks quickly down at his clipboard as though disturbed by the sight of her. He waves her on. ‘Just keep going,’ she hears him add, as he claps her on at the point she is closest to him.
He sounds exactly like the old head of sport had last year. He is pragmatic, not livid. He hasn’t seen the photo.
Yet.
She doesn’t know what she had expected him to say, but he is simply a teacher encouraging his student. Nothing more.
Even out here, when they are alone for a few seconds.
In the past days and weeks, she had imagined that today would be her moment to shine; to prove her strength to him, to show him what he is missing. She had envisaged him applauding her over the finish line, congratulating her afterwards, the opportunities they would have to talk. She’s had a taste of everything they could be together and she can’t believe it’s gone. It was real, she knows it – too real for him to switch it off just like that. She understands he has been angry, but she had thought that surely it couldn’t last forever.
But at the sound of his voice, finally, she gets it. She has been trapped in a fantasy. The gulf between them is too wide to ever be bridged.
Don’t fall apart, she tells herself. Her will triumphs over her wailing body, and she lengthens her stride, feeling his eyes on her back.
She can’t help herself: she looks around, but the fog has swallowed him already. She wonders if she imagined him. She gulps in air, swiping at her face to clear the tears, desperate to hold it together.
He has locked himself away from her, and there’s nothing she can do.
Everything is pointless.
The next marker appears and the course turns downhill. Almost immediately, the fog begins to dissolve.
How can she have been caught in a silly daydream for so long? Why had she taken that photograph? It hasn’t ever been a talisman, it is toxic. And now it’s out there. Her secrets are floating forever beyond her reach, and she is in so much trouble.
She is such a fool.
A-fool-a-fool-a-fool chants her brain, running in rhythm with her feet as she charges mindlessly down the hill, vicious thoughts snapping at her heels. It is a sensation she has become used to these past few months – she is falling, her mind and her body tumbling away from her, intangible things inside her swirling like dead leaves in a storm. But this time the sensation is speeding up, as though the trajectory she has taken since summer has steepened, and now she fears that in the end she will drop away into nothing at all.
He never really cared for me. And soon he’ll despise me, when he realises what I’ve done.
The thought buckles her knees, causes her to stagger and put one hand against a tree trunk to stop herself from hitting the ground. She straightens quickly, but as she sprints on she knows she is getting ever closer to the edge of the wood, to where the crowds are watching and waiting. Has Zac said anything to her parents? Or have they seen the photo – are they speculating too? Can she bear the disappointment in their eyes?
She can see the other girl in front of her. Perhaps it wouldn’t take much to beat her, since the downhill is Georgia’s specialty. But she cannot face it now. Not the crowd cheering her down the final embankment, nor pretending to be triumphant when her heart is breaking. Everywhere she turns she will wonder who has seen that photo; who knows her innermost secrets. She cannot do this. She has to escape.
With just a few minutes to go, she diverts abruptly from the course, leaving behind the white flags, the crowds, the chance of one more victory, one more record, one final school medal to add to her collection. She bids goodbye to her sponsorship deal, and she chooses the woodland track that leads to the spirit road. She takes the path towards home.
33
CALLUM