Page 5 of Runner 13

Stella

Camera? Check.

Volunteer badge? Check.

Sanity? Back in California, where I left it with the rest of my boxed-up belongings. I’m here following my ultrarunning-obsessed boyfriend deep into the Sahara. The things you do for love.

Fiancé , I correct myself. Not boyfriend any more.

I lift my camera and snap a photo of him standing in front of a huge Hot & Sandy banner. He flexes his biceps and raises his leg into the running-man pose. It makes me laugh.

‘There, much better,’ he says, coming forward to kiss my cheek. ‘I know you’re worried, but look – look at this place.’

‘It’s pretty impressive,’ I concede. I don’t share that the sight of the bustling bivouac beyond the banner is only adding to the feeling of dread in my stomach.

‘Meet you at my tent after my medical?’ he asks.

I nod.

He gives my hand a squeeze. ‘It will be OK. You’ll see. And then we can start planning the wedding.’

I flash him a smile. The novelty hasn’t worn off. The ring on my left hand still feels like a foreign object – after all, he only popped the question yesterday. I should be floating on cloud nine. Instead, I’m weighted down by a sense of impending doom, like a storm is coming.

He jogs towards the medical bays for his check-up.

He’s been preparing for this for months, ever since he received that damn invitation.

It’s consumed him. Technically, no family, friends or spectators are allowed at the race, but there was no way I was going to wait at home, watching his progress from my laptop.

I managed to convince the charity he’s running for – Runners for Hope – to hire me as an official race photographer.

That way I have a reason to be here on my own terms. It’s the only way I could think of to keep him safe.

So now, despite vowing I’d never be involved with an Ampersand race, I’m here in the very thick of it. And I have a job to do. I take a deep breath and try to get my bearings.

Straight ahead of me is a semicircle of open-sided black camel-hair tents pitched with wooden poles and lined with rugs in traditional Bedouin style.

More modern white marquees sit to one side – the hubs for admin, comms and the medics – a queue of people snaking out of the front, patiently waiting in the glaring sunshine for their packs to be checked and to receive their race numbers.

In the gaps between the tents, further from the runners, I spot cars, trucks, caravans, even a helicopter – accommodation and transport for the hundreds of volunteers and staff – the cogs that keep this operation running.

Finally, burly guards patrol the perimeter, making sure no one unconnected to the race enters the bivouac.

Between the security, the runners, the volunteers, the medics, the press, the admin staff and the Berbers in charge of maintaining the bivouac, there must be upwards of a thousand people here.

It’s impossible to tell the elite runners from the ‘fun’ right now, but I’m struck by how clean everyone looks.

Bright white shirts and perfect running shoes, freshly shaved faces and neat braids. It won’t take long for that to change.

I flick the dial on my camera. Staring at the screen, I focus on a pair of runners who walk into my frame, the perfect ‘before’ shot. I snap. I always see things better, clearer, through the lens. It calms me.

As for this race, it’s a miracle it’s even happening. It’s a logistical feat that requires an army to put together. I’m shocked Boones pulled it off.

The Boones I knew shouldn’t have been capable of it.

But then I haven’t come to expect much from my dad.

I haven’t told Boones I was coming, but I have no doubt that he knows I’m here. He’s always had this uncanny ability, this way of knowing things. For someone who lived most of his life as a recluse, he’s exceptional at reading people.

A memory strikes me, of being on the starting line of a Big & Dark race.

The start was only a couple of miles from our house, a little cabin on the edge of the woods in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Six years old, sitting on his knee, watching as runners in torn T-shirts and grubby running shoes emerged from their tents, most of them puffing on a final cigarette before the race.

There’d been no polish, nothing fancy about the race or the people who ran in it.

Just a tough trail and a few folks mental enough to test themselves against it.

Even the start was casual. He hadn’t looked at the runners.

He’d only inhaled deeply, spoken the words ‘Well, all right then,’ clicked his fingers, and off they’d gone.

As one man went by, Dad had given me a nudge.

‘That guy,’ he’d said. I’d written down the race number of the person he’d pointed out in a little Polly Pocket notebook. Number thirteen.

‘That guy’ had been the only one to finish that year. Dad just seemed to know.

The races were always the good times, when Dad seemed most alive. Most present. The rest of the time? Mom and I might as well not exist. He would disappear on his own madcap expeditions, sometimes not contacting us for months.

Mom packed us up and left not long after that. We moved halfway across the world to the south of France to get away. She remarried, had another child – my half-sister, Yasmin.

Once I asked her why she never spoke about Dad. ‘The thing about Boones is that he treats people like his little experiments,’ she’d said. ‘And it’s never long before someone gets hurt.’

The message was clear: we were better off without him.

She’d been right, of course. But there was something different about race day.

That was the time I missed him the most. So Mom let me go back once a year, to be there at the starting line.

To give Boones and me a chance to maintain some sort of connection.

That lasted until I was seventeen. I’d flown in as normal, and Dad had put me straight to work – again, not unusual, and I used to love getting swept up in the excitement of race day. Already things had been changing back then. More cameras. More runners. More publicity.

More women on the starting line too. I was pumped by that. I wanted to see a woman cross the finishing line, and one woman – Nina Carter – looked like she had the chops to do it.

The weather had other plans. That year it was dire – so much rain that the trails turned into mudslides. Strong winds threatened to bring trees down on the route, endangering the lives of the runners. I (and a good many others) pleaded with Dad to cancel the race.

He refused. We begged him to at least let them wear GPS trackers so we could find them if they became lost. He refused. Those were the terms of his race.

None of the runners finished that day. A few – including Nina – still hadn’t showed up twelve hours after the time limit. I helped to coordinate volunteers for search parties, and we finally found them huddled at the bottom of a gully, unconscious and suffering from hypothermia.

Dad’s response? They just weren’t good enough.

And that’s when I saw him for who he truly was: a sadistic punisher who only wanted to cause pain, not celebrate human achievement, or whatever pompous justification he gave for putting people through actual mental and physical torture.

He was lucky nobody died that year. He didn’t get as lucky later on.

I stopped my annual visits to Big & Dark after that. He didn’t seem to miss me.

I couldn’t get away from running completely, though.

It became Yasmin’s passion. She would drag me out on rocky coastal paths near our home in Marseilles, running for miles with the sea breeze in our hair.

I tolerated it so long as I could take a dip in the azure blue waters of the calanques along the way.

When she started racing seriously, I became her biggest support.

I crewed her races, took photos for her social media, helped her attract sponsors – whatever she needed.

She used to pester me about the Ampersands, but I never had much to tell her. She said it was her dream to be the first woman to finish one.

My biggest regret is that I didn’t dissuade her. If I had, maybe she would still be alive.

‘Are you here with Runners for Hope?’ A young woman, copper hair in two braids lying neatly on her Hot & Sandy vest, approaches me. She taps her clipboard. ‘Stella Mamoud, is it?’

‘Yes, that’s right.’ I took my mom’s last name a long time ago. Not that it matters – no one seems to know Boones’s real name anyway.

‘Great. I can show you to your tent.’

‘Lead on. I was wondering how to find my way round this place.’

She smiles. ‘It can be a maze. But you’ll soon learn.’

She introduces herself as Camille, one of Boones’s administrative staff (he has staff?

That’s news to me), and she takes the time to show me the dining tent, where the Berber chefs are already laying out the provisions for a monster buffet, with all the Moroccan specialities – a huge tagine of vegetable couscous, grilled chicken and lamb, plus a variety of carbs that I know the runners will love: mountains of bread rolls and vats full of pasta.

It’s the only time the runners will be fed the entire race.

Otherwise they have to eat the food they’ve brought themselves.

‘And this is the comms tent, where we have the all-important Wi-Fi. So if you need to upload your images, you can do it from here. Just remember, you can’t share the password with anyone else on the race.’

‘Got it.’

A moment later, she stops in front of an open-sided tent – similar to the ones set up for the runners – with several people inside.

‘This is where you’ll be sleeping. Any issues, let me know.

And here.’ She hands me some sheets of paper stapled together in the corner.

‘This is the finalized list of runners, their race numbers and tent allocation. So you can get your interviews done for social media.’

‘OK, thanks,’ I reply, glancing at the paper.

A man steps out of the tent, stooping to duck beneath the edge of the black camel-hair cloth. ‘Camille, hi!’ he says. He glances over at me, rubbing at the thin line of beard running along his jawline. ‘This our missing tentmate?’

‘That’s right. Dale, meet Stella. He’s another race photographer. You’ll be paired up in the Jeep tomorrow.’

‘Nice to meet you.’ He extends his hand to me. ‘I was just about to get some pre-race shots. Soak up the atmosphere. Want to come with?’

But I don’t have time for that. ‘Is this a joke?’ I ask.

She frowns. ‘Excuse me?’

‘This list.’ I can see from Camille’s face that she thinks I’ve lost my mind.

‘Problem?’ Dale asks.

Damn right there is. On the first sheet of paper is a list of the elite runners. And right at the top? A name I never expected to see.

Adrienne Wendell.

Fuck. How did I not know she’d be here?

‘Boones,’ I manage to spit out. ‘Where is he?’

But Camille isn’t listening. Her hand flies to her ear – an earpiece connected to a radio.

‘Sorry, bivouac emergency,’ she says, her hands flapping.

‘I have to go.’ She darts away before I can stop her.

I can’t exactly play the don’t you know who I am card.

I don’t want anyone to know I’m related to him if I can help it.

‘You’re looking for Boones?’ Dale asks. He’s tying a bandana round his forehead, keeping the sun off his bald scalp. A DSLR camera hangs on a strap off his shoulder.

I nod.

‘Then come with me,’ he says. ‘I know how to find him.’