I was peering in the freezer when I heard Stubbs.
“You won’t find a Pot Noodle in there, Cara,” he said, laughing. Judging by the grey sweatpants and white vest, I assumed he’d been for a run over the rec.
“Have you really been up at this hour running?” I said.
“It’s nearly lunchtime,” he said.
“Why do you do it though? Running?” I asked as he paid Mr Sidhu for his water.
Stubbs was never really a sporty type at school and here he was dressed just like Emilio Estevez. Perhaps Stubbs was now an athlete and had found his ‘thing’.
He shrugged. “Makes you feel good.”
“You should listen to your friend,” Mr Sidhu said. “Some fresh air, exercise, good food. Just what you need.”
I thanked Mr Sidhu for his unsolicited and unwelcome advice and me and Stubbs made our way out of the shop. But he had a point.
“So would you say it’s like your ‘thing’ now, being an athlete?” Maybe it could be my thing too? Then when I went to the ball, I could tell people how sporty I was and everyone would marvel at my athleticism. I wondered how long it would take for me to fully athleticise. More than a fortnight, I imagined.
“Why do I have to have a ‘thing’?”
“Like in The Breakfast Club,” I said. “It’s what makes them all cool. Can you teach me how to run in a fortnight?”
Stubbs laughed and stopped in his tracks, nearly spitting his water out.
“How did you get to thirty years old and not know how to run? You don’t know how to run! Have you heard yourself?”
“Well, obviously, I could run, but I don’t have special clothes or anything.”
“You are a moron, you know that, don’t you?” he said, grinning.
I gave him a gentle dig in the arm.
“Go on, please, show me how to run. I want to see if I’m an athlete. Maybe I could have been if I’d been able to afford to go to the clubs and buy the kits,” I said.
“Okay, if you really want to know how to run, meet me in the park later. And I will teach you the noble art of putting one foot in front of the other. And maybe how not to be such a moron.”
“I think I could totally do it. Being an athlete would suit me. Like Emilio Estevez in the film. Except not a wrestler because that would be weird, but yeah, you can show me how to do running later.”
He repeated everything back to me, sarcastically. “You want to be an athlete, like Emilio Estevez in the film? And you want me to show you how to do running?”
Now he said it like that, it did sound a bit stupid, but I persisted and pretended it was perfectly normal. “Yes please,” I said. “You can help me because you are good at everything. Even PE.”
Being from our estate hadn’t seemed to hold Stubbs back in exactly the same way it did with me, but I still felt he hadn’t achieved all he could. He’d always seemed to rise above any teasing, laughing it off or batting it back with witty remarks.
“PE?” Stubbs laughed. “Yeah, well, I don’t really call it PE any more, you know. I tend it call it exercise, like normal people do. But okay, whatever, Dunham. I’ll see you later.”
I phoned Verity as soon as I got in.
“I’m going to be an athlete,” I said. “It’s going to be my thing. Stubbs is going to teach me how to run. Want to come?”
“I’d love to but it’s Sunday and I have to watch Frozen four hundred times. Why are you going to be an athlete, by the way?” she said as an afterthought.
“So I don’t look like a loser at the school reunion. It’s part of finding my thing; then I’ll go to the school reunion, Daniel Rose will find me scintillating and magnetic and I’ll have my John Hughes moment and then I can get on with life. It will be a turning point, like in a film.”
“Right. Well I’m glad you’ve sorted that out. You’re going for a run in the park with Stubbs and then your life is going to magically change?”
“Exactly,” I said. Listening to my plan remixed with Verity’s cynical words didn’t make it sound the most convincing, but it seemed as good a place to start as any. Besides I thought it would be fun going to the park with Stubbs. I still wasn’t fully convinced the athlete’s life was for me. Maybe I needed to up my game and rethink my nutrition? I stared at my Pot Noodle on the kitchen worktop and swiped it away into the bin. I was having a Pot Noodle moment to go with the battered sausage revelation.
*
“Are you still hung-over? You’re hung-over, aren’t you?” Stubbs looked like a proper runner, alternately stretching his arms across his back and stretching out his thighs, which I may have by accident had a look at for slightly too long.
“No,” I insisted. I gulped down some water and squinted in the sunlight.
“Sure?” he said.
“Positive! Though I may avoid cider and black for a little while.”
I could not believe how many people there were in the park, doing exercising stuff. Walking their dogs, having picnics with their families, power walking. “Why aren’t they all lying on their sofas watching hangover telly?” I said. “These people are sick.”
“It was your idea, Dunham. You’re the one who wanted to come out running. So when was the last time you ran?”
I had to think. “Well I ran for the bus a few weeks ago when I was going into Worcester. Although actually, that’s probably a few months back now.” I felt slightly alarmed as I thought it might have been even longer than that and I honestly couldn’t remember the last time I had left Broad Hampton. Perhaps I was going to be stuck here for ever.
“You need to stretch first,” he said. “Come on.”
I started copying what he was doing and stopped almost immediately.
“I feel like a twat – everyone is looking at me.”
“Come on, Cara,” he said sternly. “Just do it; no one’s looking at you.”
I placated him with a few half-hearted calf stretches.
“Come on then, let’s go,” he said and shot off at such a pace I considered giving up and just turning round and going the other way.
“Come on,” he shouted from ahead and I started running. He jogged back towards me and round in a circle. When I had been going for all of about forty seconds, I said I needed to stop for a rest. It was exhausting.
He continued circling around me for a while as I stood there with my hands on my thighs, head bowed like I had just finished a marathon.
“Can we walk for a bit?” I said.
“Sure,” he said. He put an arm around my shoulders and hauled me upright.
Now that I wasn’t trying to run at Usain Bolt speed, I was able to take in the sights and sounds of the park. The daffodils, the lake. “It’s nice here, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, I come most mornings.”
“Do you?” I said. “Well I did not know that.”
“There’s loads of stuff you don’t know about me.”
“Is there?” I said. “Well, it must be nice to have something to be passionate about.”
“Yeah, well I’m passionate about loads of things.”
“Like