Page 13

Seb

My mum and my grandma – farming people from generations of farming people – had long since gone to bed, which didn’t help me stay awake, but it did help me feel less sheepish about my reason for doing so.

To make sure they didn’t see or hear anything, I’d shut myself in my sparse bedroom – sparse because I’d moved in and out of there so many times, rationalising my belongings each time I left for a short, pointless stint in my own apartment somewhere, before remembering how much time I spent travelling and moved home again.

I’d been surprised to wake up to a message from her two weeks ago, wishing me a merry Christmas with a picture of a spindly eucalyptus branch decorated with tinsel. I’d replied with a picture of my favourite tree ornament – a Death Star bauble – expecting her to tease me, but she hadn’t replied.

She must have been busy. While I was trying my best to train in the frost and bitter cold of the windswept roads of the Ardennes in southern Belgium (or more often on my indoor set-up), she had been gearing up for the Australian Nationals in sweltering heat.

After narrowly missing out on bronze in the time trials on Thursday while I slept, she was lining up for the road race right then, Sunday morning already in Australia, and I wasn’t going to miss it this time.

Powering up my computer, I found the YouTube channel broadcasting the races and turned the volume right down.

Mamie, my grandmother, was asleep in the next room and her hearing wasn’t as bad as the stereotypes would have you believe.

‘ … and we’re all looking forward to Lori Gallagher’s return to the road today. The climbs on this route are just long enough to give her a chance to outclass the rest of the peloton, if she’s back in form. Barring a stroke of bad luck, I think we’ll see her back on the podium today. ’

A little shiver of excitement zipped through me at those words and I could picture it clearly: Lori holding her gold medal and a bunch of flowers with a huge smile. I would pump my fist and shout, ‘That’s my—’

I choked off a grim laugh at myself. My unattainable crush? My secret bang buddy?

The camera cut to the racers, gathering in rows behind the starting line, with Lori up front, tugging on the strap of her helmet.

She didn’t glance at the camera, even though it must have been practically shoved in her face.

She just slipped her wide reflective sunglasses out of her helmet and put them on, chin up, face forward.

She was 100 per cent focused – the way I knew she wanted to be.

Forcing out a breath full of nerves, I hunched over my laptop screen as the official triggered his little gun and the bunch lurched into movement.

She didn’t push to the front, as I knew she wouldn’t.

Road cycling was about endurance and it paid to save your strength and choose the right moment for an attack.

As the riders raced ahead, packed close together and picking up speed, I realised it was going to be a long, hard couple of hours – for me.

Lori would ace it, but I would be a wreck of nerves by the time she crossed the finish line.

They kept moving the camera away from her, which was endlessly frustrating. Bonnie Tham from our team was racing too, currently out in front, and while I was inwardly cheering her on, team spirit wasn’t quite my motivation for tuning in, so I just got restless.

The course didn’t help my nerves, consisting of nine laps of the same circuit, rather than the long routes I was used to but Lori was cool and effortless, holding a perfect position behind the front riders.

After the first few laps, I recognised the bottleneck curves, the climbs and what would be the sprint finish.

‘ … she’s looking almost clinical, Gallagher, but I think we all know she’ll attack with spirit at some point. She’s not known as “Top Gun” for nothing… ’

I was glued to every glimpse of her as the race progressed, trying to guess whether she was as tired as she looked, but suspecting she was putting on a show to force the other competitors to overshoot.

It looked brutally hot in the Australian bush, where they were racing.

Lori was drenched with sweat and even the commentators were starting to wonder if she was suffering, now three rows back and hemmed in by riders from a different team.

‘ It’s going to come down to the last lap. On the climb, I reckon we’ll see Burgess, Lutkins and Gallagher all have a go – if they’ve got enough left. ’

I frowned, knowing Lori was better than this, wondering if it was just a bad day for her.

We all had those inexplicable times when our legs just belonged to someone else.

At least, that happened to me a lot – and I knew it wasn’t my legs that gave up, but my mind.

I didn’t like to think of Lori having my weakness.

But in the long, winding section of the second-last lap, when the bunch spread out to alternate sharp turns and bursts of speed, she did it. Whipping out from behind Bonnie, she accelerated to the next curve, zipping out wide to lean into the hairpin, and pedalling fiercely out again.

‘ If anyone wanted a lesson on cornering, just watch that! ’ the commentator said, her voice rising with excitement.

Lori swung through the curves, her legs and body in concert, tilting and straightening and flying ahead of the others.

She was a genius and my heart was pumping and my breath caught watching her.

The corners were utter perfection: fearless, elegant and fast – so fast. Too fast, I thought for a moment, when her back wheel appeared to slip.

Everything in me froze, my throat closing painfully, as I gazed at the screen, willing her to straighten up, to do anything except go sliding across the tarmac.

She overcorrected a little but, with only the slightest wobble, she was back on the line, sailing out in front of the rest with no one daring to follow her. Coming into the final lap, she’d opened up a lead of more than 30 seconds.

‘Ouah! Holy shit,’ I muttered, completely in awe.

My blunt fingernails dug into my palms and I was up on my haunches watching, unable to sit still while she made the challenging circuit look like one of the gentle routes my grandma’s Sunday seniors group liked to ride.

‘ … an intelligent rider – strategic. She has been almost flawless in this race. We were convinced she had nothing left and— Look at that! ’

Her plait bobbing against her back, she shot up the climb.

Her fatigue had clearly been feigned to put the others off.

I wanted to see her face – to see the heat in her eyes.

At least the camera would catch every detail of her when she won.

I imagined her, arms high above her head, an enormous smile on her gorgeous face.

Legs pumping, she glanced quickly behind her to judge how much breathing space she had and flew through the wide turn with 3 km to go – and suddenly jerked to the side, her bike sliding out from under her.

‘ Something’s happened to Gallagher, ’ the commentator said unhelpfully. ‘ A mechanical? You’ve got to hope for her sake it’s not a puncture .’

She swerved again, ducking her head, one hand clutching her helmet.

The camera closed in on her flummoxed expression as she glanced up, her mouth hanging open.

And then it happened again, the camera this time catching a flash of black-and-white and Lori’s frantic hand in front of her face as she ducked.

‘ I don’t believe this, ’ the commentator continued, her voice high. ‘ She’s being swooped by a magpie. In January. That has got to be the unluckiest thing I have ever seen .’

The internet watched as she swivelled to eyeball the bird and yell, ‘Fuck off!’ clearly enough to be lip-read. Unfortunately, that only further enraged the creature.

She tried to keep riding, but the innocuous-looking bird flew at her helmet and her bike tipped, forcing her to unclip her shoe and put a foot down and that was that: the peloton roared by, whipping past on either side of her – and apparently scaring off the magpie.

I could feel the burn of disappointment in my chest as she pushed off, frantically pumping the pedals to keep up with the others, but she was still dropped, falling behind before she could find her rhythm. I didn’t need the camera on her to taste the bitterness in my own mouth.

Because she was Lori Gallagher, it wasn’t long until she caught up, careening down those curves again at speed and slipping into the peloton.

But it wasn’t enough. When the final sprint stretched before her, she weaved to the front, but she couldn’t maintain enough power to contest the sprint, and she flew over the line in fifth, her head hanging and her chest heaving, looking as though she wanted to throw something.

‘Godverdomme!’ I said, because there was nothing else I could do except swear in Flemish, as Walloons did in extreme situations where French would not do. ‘Fuck that!’

‘Sebi?’

I whirled around to find my grandma, standing in the door without her glasses on, peering at me. A quick glance at my laptop revealed it was past two o’clock in the morning.

I leaped to my feet and took her arm. ‘Mamie, go back to sleep. I’m sorry to wake you.’

‘What are you upset about, mon chou? I haven’t heard such language since Denise was in labour.’ She shuffled towards the bed in her felt slippers and squinted at the screen.

‘I was watching my teammates,’ I said weakly. ‘These are professional cyclists I was watching… professionally.’

‘I can see that, but I also know you don’t usually watch women’s cycling.’ She didn’t say it, but I could see the words, ‘In the middle of the night,’ in her expression.

‘They’re just as exciting as the men.’

‘I’m sure that’s true,’ Mamie said sagely, ‘but I’m not letting you off so easily. I knew there was something different about you since you came home at Christmas. Which one is your girlfriend?’

The hairs on the back of my neck lifted. ‘There’s nothing different. I don’t have a girlfriend.’

She studied me, which, without her glasses, felt as though she was probing my mind with telepathic powers. ‘I see,’ she said gravely.

In the quiet pause after her words, I heard the commentator say, ‘ Poor Lori Gallagher. Today was not her day for gold. I’ve never seen an out-of-season magpie attack in the Nationals in my entire career and it had to be her, it had to be today.

Wow, you can see the disappointment on those shoulders. I’d be crying too, Lori. ’

Stricken, I rushed back to the laptop to see her, chest heaving, swiping roughly at her eyes as tears made trails in the sweat and grime on her face and the enormity of her disappointment was broadcast to the entire world.

I couldn’t look away, but I also wished the camera would move off her, give her a chance to grieve in private.

‘Her?’ Mamie asked me, her brow low.

‘She’s a friend. A good friend,’ I added when my grandma kept looking at me.

Grasping my arm, she said, ‘Looks like she needs a hug.’

All I could do was stare at the image of Lori on the screen and wholeheartedly agree. I snatched up my phone to text her but, as soon as I opened our chat, I remembered my deleted message and my stomach dropped.

Ouch. She couldn’t have seen it before I deleted it. I’d realised too late that it was the middle of the night in Australia when I sent it and she probably wouldn’t want my poorly worded best wishes for the race – which was why I’d deleted them. Now I was mortified.

The commentator’s words looped in my mind: the unluckiest thing I have ever seen . I was such an idiot. She’d wanted to focus. I wasn’t supposed to be in her head and she’d told me straight up I wasn’t allowed to text her except to congratulate her on winning. I should never have sent it.