It took me just over an hour to get ready for Abby’s shopping trip, which is probably my personal best for extremely slow and reluctant preparation for an outing I have no interest in and don’t want to be a part of. Twenty minutes after that, we were walking across the car park in town, heading towards the main shopping precinct.
‘Trainers?’ I was saying, trailing a good four or five feet behind her.
‘Yes.’ She turned her head to the side as she spoke to me, in recognition of the fact that I was behind her, but she refused to turn all the way round to face me. ‘You liked those trainers of mine, didn’t you? The ones you wore last week when we went out for that short walk?’
I shrugged. She couldn’t see me. ‘Mnyer,’ I said – the audio equivalent of a shrug.
‘Good,’ she said decisively, interpreting – no doubt deliberately – my indeterminate sound as a positive. ‘You need some proper trainers for the MoonWalk, and you need them straight away so that you can train in them. Tom’s told me what to look for, and where to go, so it won’t take long.’
‘Oh.’ Insanely, I actually felt a bit disappointed. Then I realised I was insane, and cheered up.
We found my perfect pair of trainers in the first sportswear shop we went in. Thank God. I had never been in a sportswear shop before then, and I felt about as comfortable in there as a flabby, spotty lamb in a slaughterhouse full of fit, attractive lambs. The salesman – Martin – made me get up on a treadmill right there in the middle of the shop, in front of absolutely everyone, then turned it on and made me walk on it while he filmed me. I felt like I was somehow starring in my very own porn film. No doubt the footage will find its way onto YouTube eventually. Truly horrific. I actually lost the ability to walk sensibly. I’m twenty-eight, for God’s sake, and have been able to walk competently on and off for the past twenty-six years; but when that rubber surface started to move, I was Bambi on ice. My feet went behind me before I had even worked out what was happening and my body stretched out until I was almost horizontal. ‘Move your feet, Daisy,’ Martin said helpfully, nodding to encourage me. ‘Try to walk normally.’ Abby clapped her hand to her mouth at this point, and said nothing.
‘How fast is this?’ I panted, desperately dragging my feet forwards in a pseudo-run as fast as I could to bring my body back upright.
‘Four K,’ Martin said. ‘About two and a half miles an hour. Get your balance, then we’ll speed things up a bit.’
I panicked. I must have done. There’s no other explanation. One minute I was upright, walking confidently and calmly, even starting to enjoy it in some insane way, then Martin leaned over and pushed a button and everything went wrong. The ground whizzed away beneath me and my feet went sideways instead of forwards and hit the non-moving edge of the platform briefly. I lost my balance and had to grab the handrails to steady myself, but didn’t manage to get a proper grip in my panic. My shoes scuffed the walking surface repeatedly and I kept staggering forwards, my arms flailing in the air. Eventually I managed to grab the handrails again and lifted my entire body weight off the platform, but my elbow gave out and I collapsed suddenly back down onto the walking surface, and fell onto my knees.
‘YAAH! HELP ME!’ I yelled out as I was gently and smoothly transported to the end of the conveyor and deposited into the insoles display.
‘Christ alive!’ Martin yelped, and leaped into the air in a rare moment of abandon, as the entire rack of insoles teetered for a few seconds, then finally tilted forwards and showered me soundlessly with weightless packets of feet-shaped foam. ‘Jesus tonight, are you all right?’ He touched down lightly by my side and bent over to look at my humiliation more closely.
I nodded. ‘I’m fine. But I need to put my bruised ego in your accident book.’
He blinked, then frowned a little. ‘Oh, right.’ He straightened up and glanced quickly at Abs, who was by now folded in half with one hand over her mouth and the other wrapped round her belly. He looked back at me, then craned his neck anxiously towards a door marked ‘Staff Only’. ‘Well then, I’d better just go and get … the …’ It was obvious he was struggling to understand whether I was serious, so I let him off.
‘No, it’s fine, I’m fine, don’t worry.’ I stood up and picked boxes of feet out of my hair. ‘See? No harm done.’
Martin visibly brightened. The thought of paperwork was clearly bringing him down. Obviously one of those types who excelled at sport at school. ‘Oh, great! Well … I think we probably got enough footage there, so …’
I was frankly astounded by that statement. As far as I could work out, the only footage he’d have captured featured me upside down in the air, which wouldn’t have told him an awful lot about my walking technique. Oh, except for the fact that I wasn’t very good at it. But I had no intention of having another go, so I didn’t argue.
Abs – red-faced and still amazingly silent – and I followed Martin over to the wall of trainers and he talked us through which pair he thought would be most suitable.
‘Now Daisy,’ he began earnestly, ‘the interesting thing about the way that you walk is …’ But it wasn’t interesting at all. My attention immediately wandered over to some movement behind the demon treadmill. Two boys in hoodies, both around fourteen or fifteen, were glancing furtively around the room, then focusing back towards the in-store pharmacy. They were obviously about to start shoplifting things. I wondered vaguely whether to mention it to Martin, but it was far more interesting to see what happened. They moved closer together so their hoodies met up and formed a kind of hoodie tunnel for them to talk in. They conversed for a few seconds, re-emerged and looked around again, then edged nearer to the display. After one more quick scan of the room they were satisfied that no one was watching, so advanced finally to the display and, in a lightning-fast and clearly well-practised manoeuvre, seized a small, familiar-looking purple box each. The boxes flashed briefly in the air between them before being instantly concealed somewhere about their person and they moved off quickly. I turned back to Martin to alert him, but then noticed that the boys were slouching über-casually over to the tills. Of course. They weren’t shop-lifting; they were buying their first condoms. Romance isn’t dead.
Eventually I had to tear my eyes away and pay the million pounds Martin wanted for the space-age trainers he’d selected. Apparently they were made with some kind of new technology, involving a recently developed innovative substance probably derived from something that fell to earth from a galaxy far, far away, and would improve my balance, increase my fitness and tighten up the overall tone of my buttocks and thighs as I walked.
‘Wow,’ I nodded, exaggeratedly impressed. ‘Are they bringing an end to suffering and world poverty too?’ I handed over a thick wad of cash.
Martin looked from side to side, a tiny frown confusing his face. ‘Er, well … no. I don’t think so. Not really. I’m not sure that’s … You know, because they’re not made in the …’
I sagged with disappointment. ‘Oh. What a shame.’ Then I brightened. ‘Well, never mind. It’s certainly a relief to hear that the scientists are all keeping themselves busy.’
Martin glanced at Abs, then back at me. ‘Erm, I’m not sure that I …’ He trailed off.
I smiled and nodded. ‘Yeah, you know, after that whole cure-for-cancer fiasco.’
‘Right, OK, well, thank you very much,’ Abby said suddenly, grabbing my arm and dragging me towards the exit. ‘Bye!’
So I had the magic trainers. In a cardboard box, in a carrier bag, on the back seat of Abby’s car. As we drove, the bag jangled softly, and little gold and rainbow-coloured sparks erupted from it then evaporated in the air. Abby kept up an excited monologue all the way back to her place, about how great it all was, and how I could now finally start my proper training, and get out on the streets every day, starting tomorrow, even if it was just for twenty minutes to begin with, and then I could build up to