Питер Ловси: The Finisher

When Trevor next enquired how the training was going she surprised him by saying she had improved her high-intensity endurance performance. He was speechless.

“But it’s not pretty. I wouldn’t want you or anyone else to see me,” she added in case he once again brought up the suggestion of following her on his bike.

Katie, who had the classroom next to hers, later said, “What is it with you and Trevor? He tries so hard and you give him the frost each time.”

“I don’t want him hanging around me, that’s all.”

“I’ve seen the way he looks at you.”

“Yes, and it makes me squirm. If you want to make a play for him, Katie, feel free. You’ll be doing me a good turn.”

Half miles grew into miles. The training changed in character when she knew she could keep going for a respectable distance. As a change from the towpath run, she started touring the streets, smartphone in hand, using an app called MapMyRun. Bath’s streets aren’t level like the canal path, so this was a fresh challenge. Going downhill, she discovered, wasn’t the treat she expected. Her already sore shins and toes took more punishment than they did on the climbs.

One late November evening cool enough for gloves, she decided she needed a boost and she knew a way of getting one that didn’t involve caffeine, chocolate or alcohol. Using her app, she planned a two-mile training run that would take her along Great Pulteney Street, where the Other Half was going to start and finish that third Sunday in April. Pounding the roads can get you down unless you find ways of stimulating the brain. Many runners carry smartphones with a punchy playlist and she’d found this helped — except when the cable got entangled with her clothes. Fortunately she had a fertile imagination. She would have no difficulty picturing the finish line at the climax of her run, thirteen miles behind her and just the final yards to cover.

This was a treat she’d saved up. Never mind that she had run little more than a mile. All along the approach roads she was telling herself to stay strong. She pictured the noisy spectators urging her on as she braced herself for the last strides to the finish, powered more by adrenalin than any vestige of stamina. “Come on, Maeve, you can do it,” she gasped. “Go, go, go.”

She made the last turn. In reality, she was running on the pavement, but on the day she would be in the middle of the road and in her mind’s eye she could see the finish, the red towers with other half emblazoned across the gantry. The fantasy knew no limit. She had found undreamed-of reserves of energy and worked her way through to the elite group and outrun them all in the last mile, men and women, and was about to break the tape, the fun-runner turned champion.

“Help!”

A voice had penetrated her daydream, a voice demanding to be heard, more of a scream than a request.

For God’s sake. I’m about to make history.

“Please, please, please!”

Give me a break, will you?

Maeve couldn’t ignore the voice. She hated putting a stop to her fantasy, but the appeal for help was real. This could only be someone in trouble.

She slowed right up and jogged on the spot, wondering if her brain was playing tricks. She could see nothing except the stone façade of the elegant terrace that lined the left side of Great Pulteney Street, the arched doorways and windows, the fluted Corinthian columns.

The shouting had come from close by, so she stopped moving altogether and stood listening.

Another yell told her someone had to be there, so she stepped right up to the wrought-iron railing in front of the nearest house and stared up at the balcony.

Nobody was up there.

“Down here.”

The voice was coming from below ground level. Maeve peered over the railing into the shaft of the basement. Two wheelie bins and a heap of rubbish.

Feeling stupid, she said hello to the wheelie bins.

One of them moved. It almost tipped over. The rubbish heap came to life and a face tilted upwards.

Maeve asked. “Are you in trouble?”

The response was a sound of impatience, a snort. Was this a mental-health issue? Whatever the explanation, nobody should be in a place like this on a cold November evening.

“I’m coming down.” She found the gate and pushed it open. The bolt was already drawn. At the foot of the steps the talking heap made room. Not easy. This big blonde woman could have made two of Maeve.

She was dressed, like Maeve, in black jogging gear, leggings and a long-sleeved top. Her white Nike trainers looked as if they’d come straight from the shop.

“Did you fall?”

A grunt that could have meant anything. Close up, Maeve could see a trickle of blood running from the edge of the woman’s mouth down her jawline. “Have you had an accident?”

“Accident? Of course I have accident. What you think I do here?” English wasn’t her first language for sure.

“Do you live here?”

The woman peered around her, as if deciding. “No.”

“So where do you live?”

“Russia.”

“Okay,” Maeve said with the patience acquired from extracting the truth from muddled five-year-olds. “What I meant was here in Bath.”

“On Sydney Place.”

Maeve often ran past there. Not far from where they were. Top of the street, facing Sydney Gardens. Top address, too. Jane Austen and her family had once resided there. If that was this woman’s home, she was likely to be one of Bath’s super-rich, a Russian oligarch, or married to one. But what was she doing in the well of someone else’s basement? That might be too much to discover just now.

“Can you stand?” Maeve was hoping so. She wouldn’t care to lift this amount of poundage without a hoist.

“Now I try.”

“What’s your name?”

“Olga.”

“I’m Maeve.”

“You bloody English — so polite. I am here in stinking hole in ground and you want to introduce.”

Olga took a grip on the handrail, braced and didn’t succeed. She sank down again and shook with laughter. The whole manoeuvre had been comic and she knew. At the second try she got upright and gave a grunt of triumph but didn’t look capable of climbing the steps.

“Nice work,” Maeve said. “Put your arm over my shoulder, and we’ll see if we can do it together.”

Physical contact with a stranger is always difficult. Olga hesitated, so Maeve took hold of her left arm and showed what she meant. The feel of a flabby bicep against the back of her neck was not the best sensual experience she could remember. Then the pressure. A sack of potatoes wouldn’t have been any easier.

“Let’s go, then. I’ve got you.”

She put her right arm around Olga’s side. You couldn’t call it her waist.

“Is it your leg?”

“What is this bloody silly question — is it your leg?” Whatever the injury might be, big Olga wasn’t showing much gratitude. “Leg is mine, not some other person.”

“I’m asking if you can use it.”

“Okay, I try.”

Maeve had been assuming this woman was middle-aged. Close up, it was clear she wasn’t much over twenty-five. And pretty. Large blue eyes, classic nose and a finely formed mouth framed by dimples.

By treating each step as a one-time challenge and then struggling to recover their balance, they reached street level. Conquering Everest couldn’t be tougher.

“Sydney Place, you said?”

Maeve had hoped for easier movement up here. Now it became obvious from regular thumps against her hip that Olga’s left leg could barely hold her up. Oh, for a wheelchair.

“How did this happen? Did you fall?”

No answer. Olga could be forgiven for putting all her concentration into getting along the street.