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Sarah came back into the room looking the spitting image of her mother. “What do you think?” she asked, doing a twirl. “Mum was going to take these to the charity shop, but they’ve got plenty of life in them yet. She gave me one of Dad’s shirts for you. Want to try it on?”
“Um, it may not be the best choice for cycling,” Mark said, wrapping his arms round himself to protect his faded Hitchhiker’s Guide T-shirt from being forcibly withdrawn.
“No, you’re probably right. You can wear it tonight when we go out for dinner.”
“Great.”
“Can you go downstairs and ask the woman about leaving our bags here?”
Mark inwardly sighed, then made his way back downstairs. He paused outside the door to their host’s quarters. He felt awkward disturbing her yet again. This must be at least the fifth time he’d been to see her. At this rate, she’d start to think he had a thing for her. He knocked quietly and waited for the woman to appear.
“Just a sec,” Kate called through the door. She appeared moments later in a dressing-gown, a towel wrapped round her wet hair. Mark blushed, feeling like a perv despite the greying dressing-gown being the least attractive thing she could be wearing.
“Hi, um, we were wondering if, um, it would be OK to leave our bags here, um, just for a few hours while we go for a bike ride?”
“Oh, OK. Yes, sure. Do you know roughly when you’ll be back for them?”
“Our train is at five, so four at the latest.”
“OK, well I may be out, so hang on to your keys, then leave them on the coffee table once you’ve collected your bags. That OK for a plan?”
“Yes, thank you so much.”
Kate smiled at him and closed the door. Mark was sure he heard her whisperbuggeras the door clicked to, but he could’ve been imagining it.
*
“Hurry up,” Sarah called as Mark chased after her, a ball of hot, sweaty effort compared to her unflappable resolve. He didn’t have her pegged as a decent cyclist. The only exercise she’d done in their two years together was running for a bus.
“Sorry,” said Mark when he finally caught up with her. “It’s… much… harder than… I thought.”
“Dear dear, I didn’t realise you were this unfit,” said Sarah, shaking her head. “You’ll have to do something about that when we get home. I need my man in prime condition.”
For all the running around you make him do?Mark kept his thoughts to himself and plodded on behind her.
“You got a puncture, mate,” yelled a portly Lycra-clad man as he whizzed past.
“Crap.” Mark got off his bike and checked his tyres. Yep, there it was, the back wheel sagging with a lack of enthusiasm shared by Mark himself. He could see Sarah’s back disappearing round a bend, and trotted along, bike in hands, trying to catch her up. He found her resting her bike against the fence of a small train station.
“What happened to you? I’ve been waiting ages!”
Mark checked his watch. She couldn’t have been there longer than five minutes. “Look, why don’t you go back to the pub we passed and get a drink? I’ll wait here and find someone to help me with this puncture, then come and join you.”
“How long will you be?”
Mark sighed. “I don’t know, Sarah, as long as it takes?”
“No need to snap,” said Sarah, retrieving her bike and heading off down the path with a curious backwards glance.
Mark gave the useless bike a kick. What had got into him today? He stopped a couple of blokes who, if their outfits were anything to go by, looked like they knew their way around a bike. They pored over the tyre, muttering to themselves. Eventually, after prodding, poking and spinning the wheel round hundreds of times, they stood up.
“Sorry mate, in my expert opinion, that tyre’s screwed.”
“You mean it can’t be fixed?”
“No, needs a new inner tube. Sorry, buddy. Hope it’s not too far home.”
Mark shouted a thank you as they sped off. The thought of returning to Sarah with an unfixable bike was as tempting as sitting down in the patch of nettles beside him. Mark turned to look at the train. He couldn’t, could he? He jumped over the fence and jogged over to a man in a smart blue uniform, whistle in hand.
