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‘There is someone,’ I say. ‘She ran with me for a time at UTMB. I don’t think she has a coach, but she’s got a lot of talent and grit. She was telling me about the backyard races she designed for herself. She would’ve easily made the podium but she bonked a few miles out. Get her nutrition sorted and she’ll be flying.’
‘What’s her name? I’ll reach out.’
‘Yasmin El Mehdi. I think you’ll like her spirit.’
How right I was. And how angry I am that I was the one to lead that bright, beautiful spirit into the lair of an abuser.
I recruited her. It was because of me.
I think back to what Mariam said.You couldn’t have known. Couldn’t I? There had been shades of inappropriate behaviour with me – orange flags, not bright red. The odd touch. A brush of the hand. Lingering looks. But he’d never made a move, never done anything I could really call out or question. Even after Pete and I broke up, he kept a professional distance.
But he obviously hadn’t from others. What made me different?
I know now. He needed me. He needed someone the girls would trust to vouch for him. My success was what had sheltered me in this instance.
I’d put Yasmin – and who knows how many others – into Glenn’s path.
My body finally quits moving and I drop my hands to my knees, retching into the sand. A drip of saliva oozes from my lips and I spit it out. I close my eyes, pressing my fingers into my eye sockets.
I have to continue. I have to.
I open my eyes again and jerk backwards. Fuck. There’s a snake on the ground in front of me. But this one isn’t camouflaged with the sand like the other. It’s got slick black scales, like polished onyx, curled around like a letter S. I stay stock-still, panic gripping me by the throat. But then it does something Ireallydon’t expect. It rises up, neck flaring – a cobra. It opens its mouth, its long forked tongue flicking out at me. ‘Liar,’ it says.
‘No!’ I reply. I keep running, but the snake matches my pace, so much better adapted to the sand than I am. It seems to slip along the surface, skimming along it like a stone.
‘Murderer,’ it says.
I blink, shaking my head. ‘No, no,’ I repeat. ‘It wasn’t me. I didn’t do anything.’
‘What about to me?’
When I look back, Yasmin has replaced the snake. Her eyes are bright. She’s in running gear, wearing a race number – number thirteen, just like me.
‘Not so lucky for us, huh?’ she says, sardonically. ‘Boones’s pick.’ She gestures at the number.
I look down at my belly. The number thirteen looks strange from here. Like a backwards letter B. B for Boones’s bitch.
‘I tried to help.’ I offer her my hand but the apparition flickers as soon as my fingers touch the space she’d been occupying, only for her to reappear on my other side.
‘It wasn’t enough, I know,’ I say.
She runs a few paces ahead of me so effortlessly. By contrast, my steps are heavy, as though my shoes are filled with weights. I try harder to keep up with her.
‘And then he died,’ she says – or I think she says, but I can’t quite get level with her to hear.
‘Then he died,’ I repeat.
‘What an asshole,’ she says. It’s so clear, so surprising, it makes me burst with laughter. Yasmin smiles.
I look down and check my heading. I’ve drifted. I get back on it.
‘You’re keeping me on track,’ I say. ‘Thank you.’
She’s running beside me now, matching me. The wind lifts her hair, even though I don’t feel a breath of wind. Her skin shimmers; she’s not covered in dirt and grime like I am.
‘I am so, so sorry.’ The words fall out of me in a blubber. Tears stream down my cheeks. I keep repeating it – but to who? To the ghost? To the world? To myself?
‘You know the way,’ she says. She disappears then. I spin round, searching for her. Willing her to come back. The desert around me is still just a vast emptiness, my trainers leaving imprints in the sand. I blink. Next to mine isa second set of impressions. A different pattern. She had been there. She’d been running with me all along.