Page 6

Tom Ford the history teacher, not the designer—though they probably both look equally good in a suit.

Chapter 3

Tom

“Hurry up, slowpoke!” Kath calls from ahead of me, her chestnut ponytail bouncing mockingly with every stride.

I grunt and try to put on a burst of speed, something which my lungs immediately start complaining about. There’s no way I’m going to be able to verbalise a response, so instead I just wheeze. Kath and I try to run together every weekend, but today our 5k has turned into a 20k. I was not mentally prepared for this, especially after drinking half a bottle of wine with Claire last night.

We’re running along the Thames Path. The sun’s out and the river looks beautiful, all things I’m not able to appreciate because my legs feel like jelly. My sister looks annoyingly unbothered, maybe because she’s just signed up for another half-marathon and has been training for the last few weeks. Or maybe it’s because she’s dating an Olympic swimmer and has absorbed some higher level of cardiovascular fitness just by being in his presence.

In contrast, I don’t even have the energy to attempt to wave at the other runners passing us on the path. I’m just trying to remind my legs that they can keep going, my heart that it’s fine to beat this fast and my hamstrings that I’ll stretch them later. I know Kath’s going to persuade me to enter the race with her. And I know that I’m not going to be able to refuse… again.

“Whose idea was this?” I gasp out, eyeing the next bench like it’s a finish line.

“Mine,” she chirps. “Which is why I’m winning.”

I roll my eyes and try not to keel over. I don’t have the breath to tell her that you can’t win a training run.

By the time we make it to the holy grail that is the coffee shop, I’m distressingly sweaty. I need a snack and some caffeine. I remember Claire’s jumper from last night and try not to laugh. “But first, Coffee”. I wonder who got it for her. It isn’t her usual style, which is more “high fashion” than slogan shirt.

“How’s life?” Kath asks as we wait for our drinks.

“What, since last week?” I take a bite of my sandwich. I’m too hungry to wait until we sit down. I inhale half of it in about two seconds before slowing as a young child looks at me in horror.

Kath rolls her eyes.

“Fine,” I tell her. “I’m just plugging lesson planning, and attempting to figure out how to persuade seventeen-year-olds that the French Revolution is the most interesting topic of all time. The usual.”

As we make our way towards the table I tack on casually, maybe too casually, “Oh and I bumped into Claire yesterday. She was getting herself a bad date consolation pizza from the same place I was grabbing takeaway from.”

“Really?” Kath arches a brow. “That’s funny. She texted me about how bad it was yesterday when she was leaving.”

“It sounded terrible.” I grimace. “Apparently this guy monologued for an hour, so she made up an excuse about her sister getting locked out and ended it early. I can’t believe he bought it.”

I hesitate, watching my sister’s expression carefully over my cup. The run, whilst it destroyed my lungs, did give me a proper chance to think about Claire. By the time I got home last night it was late and my mind was spinning, but everything’s always clearer after a night’s sleep.

It’s strange how you can know someone for years, slot them into a tidy box, and then realise, slowly and inconveniently, that your view of them is changing. I’ve always known Claire was beautiful, kind and talented. Her “doodles” covered the corkboard in Kath’s bedroom at home and at uni, sketches of friends or ridiculous film characters that always made me smile. But she was Kath’s friend, not mine, and I tried very hard not to think about her in any other way.

Still, there were moments that slipped through the cracks. The night she made me laugh so hard at a party my ribs hurt. The time she stayed behind helping Kath tidy the kitchen before an early morning flight, smiling the whole time. The way she always asks how I’m doing and seems to actually care about the answer. A crush slowly started to grow a few years ago, and I always tried to pretend it didn’t exist… even though it was growing harder and harder to ignore over time. But last night something shifted.

Maybe it was how close we came to kissing, and the realisation that my attraction to her might not be one-sided.

Maybe it’s that I had more fun with her watching a film than I have in months with anyone else. Or maybe it’s how it feels like she just gets me.

I went to bed thinking about her, and I woke up thinking about her. By the time I’d laced up my trainers I’d already decided I was going to tell Kath. I then spent the entire run talking myself in and out of it.

On the first kilometre I was working out how to bring it up. At the fifth I was worrying about how Kath would take it. As my lungs began to give out at the tenth I was wondering whether it would affect our relationship as siblings. When my knee started twinging at the fifteenth I knew I had to say something today, but I didn’t have the breath to get it out. When the coffee shop came into sight at the twentieth I had rehearsed a mini speech in my head.

“It was nice hanging out with her.” I watch my sister’s face closely. I want to ask Claire on a date, but what Kath says will affect that plan.

“Yeah, she’s pretty great,” my sister answers, her expression unreadable.

“I was going to ask her for a drink.” I feel my cheeks heating as I rip off the plaster and blurt it out.

I watch as Kath takes a sip of her drink before putting it down and retying her ponytail.

“Really?”