Читать книгу The Park Bench Test - Sarah Lefebve - Страница 22

By the end of the day I have broken one more mug and successfully glazed a dinner plate and a kitten ornament. Keen to leave on a high point I hang up my apron for the day and get the tube back to Katie’s.

I’m staying with Katie and Matt while I get myself sorted. They have said I can stay with them as long as I want. Technically that means I can stay forever – I don’t want to be on my own. But I won’t stay forever. They are getting married soon. They don’t want me cramping their style.

They have a lovely flat in Clapham Junction, just two stops on the Overground from Potty Wotty Doodah. They bought it last year after living with Matt’s parents for almost eighteen months to save for the deposit – a period Katie affectionately describes as her ‘time inside,’ so I know how much it means to her to finally have her own place.

Fortunately I left some of my stuff at Fliss and Derek’s. Katie and Matt’s spare room is tiny – just about big enough to swing a cat. But only just. Any smaller and there would definitely be claw marks on the walls.

It has a single bed, a bedside table with a lamp and a framed photo of Katie and I dressed as witches, and a canvas wardrobe that Katie and I bought the weekend I moved in. I think we both underestimated just how many clothes I own – something we discovered when we hung the last t-shirt on the wooden pole and watched as it popped out of its sockets, spilling the contents onto the floor in a big heap.

“Matt!” we both yelled simultaneously, before collapsing onto the bed in a giggling heap ourselves.

“We’ll see you in a couple of hours,” Katie tells Matt as soon as I get home, giving him a quick kiss on the lips and throwing her bag over her shoulder.

“A couple of hours?” I ask, horrified.

Katie is dragging me to the gym. As if my day has not already been torturous enough…

Katie loves the gym. She goes at least twice a week – runs a few kilometres, cycles a couple of miles, rows the equivalent of a small river or two, does a few sit ups, a few press ups…

I hate the gym. All that puffing and panting – not to mention all the sweating. I keep telling her – it’s ever so unattractive.

And she pays £75 a month for the privilege!

This is the same gym, might I add, where Katie had her underwear nicked from the changing rooms while she was having a work-out before work one morning. I saw this as an opportunity – attempting to get out of going on the grounds of security.

“No-one would want to steal your knickers, B,” she had politely informed me. “They’re old and saggy and off-white.”

I decided not to waste crucial time being offended – that could wait till later – and attempted to come up with an alternative excuse instead.

“I don’t have any gym gear,” I said.

“I have spares,” she told me.

“I’m not a member,” I said.

“I have guest passes,” she announced.

I admitted defeat eventually, of course.

But bloody hell – two hours! Anyone would think we were training for the London Marathon.

We get the tube to the gym where Katie signs me in as her guest. Before I am allowed in I have to fill in a form with my name and address, date of birth and vital statistics – so that they can use them to attempt to con me out of £75 a month, no doubt. And I also have to sign a waiver – to say that I won’t sue them when I come flying off the end of the treadmill and break both my legs. Or words to that effect.

“You never know B, you might meet a man here,” Katie tells me, shoving her bag in the locker and slamming the door shut before it falls back out again.

Katie wants to find me a man. She thinks I need one. She says it’s just like falling off a horse – “you have to get straight back on”.

“Or what?” I asked her, “I’ll forget how to do it?” I’m not quite sure exactly what it was I meant by ‘it.’

“I keep telling you – I don’t want a man right now,” I say, pulling my ponytail tight and digging my knickers out of my backside through Katie’s cycling shorts. Her bottom is a bit smaller than mine, evidently.

“Well keep digging your knickers out of your backside in front of everyone in the gym and you’ll probably be safe,” Katie laughs.

“Where do you want to start?” she asks me.

Nowhere is not an option, I presume.

I look around at the equipment – there are rows and rows of bicycles, treadmills, cross trainers, rowing machines…all with maniacs on them cycling, running, rowing for dear life and getting absolutely bloody nowhere. It all seems ever so tedious. Whatever happened to getting outdoors – on a real bike, on a real road?

“How about the sauna?” I ask.

I have to earn my time in the sauna, apparently. Two miles on the bike and one mile on the treadmill earns me twenty minutes in the sauna, according to Katie’s Law. Well, that sounds easy enough.

There are no pairs of bikes together so Katie and I take the bikes on opposite ends of the row and get to work. Or should I say, Katie gets to work while I fiddle about with the earphones trying to find the best channel on the gym’s sound system.

I settle on what appears to be a dance album and start cycling whilst simultaneously pressing buttons on the bike – completely at random. I must look like someone who doesn’t know what they are doing because the guy on the bike next to me offers to help.

I continue to prod feverishly at the buttons.

“Thanks, I’m fine,” I tell him, even though it’s abundantly clear I’m really not.

By sheer bad luck I seem to have ended up on the hill climb setting. On level 18. Out of 20.

Bloody hell this is hard work. I suspect I may have gone a shade of puce.

I am being watched. I can tell. I look up and the guy next to me is grinning at me in the mirror. He’s quite cute. Actually he’s very cute – in a sweaty kind of way.

Now, is it not bad enough that I have been dragged to the gym against my will, in a pair of shorts that are practically cutting my nether regions in half and been left to the mercy of a machine I have absolutely no idea how to use, without being subjected to the scrutiny of a frankly rather gorgeous guy too?

I am quite possibly in danger of hyperventilating on my level 18 hill climb when cute guys leans over and gently taps my screen, bringing it down to a more manageable level 10 (okay, 4).

“Thanks,” I pant.

How utterly humiliating.

Cute guy has gone and I have clocked up a pretty unimpressive 0.8 miles (okay 0.4 – my only excuse being the cute guy – I was distracted) when Katie comes bounding over 20 minutes later. Where does she get her energy?

I quickly cover the screen with my towel.

“How are you doing?” she asks.

“Yeah, great,” I lie.

“Shall we have a go on the treadmill?” she asks, though I don’t think I actually have a choice.

“Sounds fabulous,” I say, hitting ‘cancel workout’ before she can see the pitiful distance I have cycled.