Page 27 of Close to You
‘No – it’s just Yasmine and me. Our parents died before I met you, so it’s literally just me and her.’ He has a mouthful and then puts his fork down on the plate. ‘We should probably be closer – but she has her life and I have mine. What will be will be, and all that.’
I don’t know how to reply. It’s not that I have any reason to disbelieve him but something doesn’t feel quite right.
He pauses and then adds: ‘You’re my family now.’
David stares across to me with such focus that it’s as if I can feel his loneliness. We’ve not really spoken about it properly but we stumbled across one another at a time where I think we both needed it.
‘Will it help if I talk to her?’ he adds.
‘What about?’
‘To ask why she came to your class?’
‘Just leave it,’ I say. ‘If she comes back, I can talk to her then. If she wants to be in contact with you, I suppose she will.’
He nods and has another bite of food. ‘Whatever you want,’ he says, before turning to me and smiling. ‘Anything for you.’
Thirteen
THE NOW
The customers who take my classes have usually pre-paid for blocks of ten. That means the same faces appear over and over. It creates a group in which everyone knows who I am, as well as a community who can compete with and support one another. That doesn’t mean there isn’t the odd newcomer – though it is the exception, rather than the norm.
Yasmine clips into her bike as if she’s been here dozens of times before. As soon as our eyes meet for the first time, she turns away and stares at the front. I can hardly abandon the session, so find myself going along with it all. Much of the script and structure for the spin class is already in my head. The choice of music dictates when we should go faster or slower. A large part of it is going through the motions, while keeping half an eye on everyone – which is probably why I find it so relaxing.
It’s the opposite this time, however. I can’t stop glancing off towards Yasmine, who steadfastly refuses to look at me. She’s in lycra and seems trimmer and fitter than when I last saw her. Her hair is definitely longer and is tied back into a face-tugging ponytail.
I make my first mistake at the initial song change, thinking the pace is about to go up instead of dropping. The woman directly in front of me peeps up from her hunched cycling position, noticing that the tempo isn’t tied to the music. Others do, too, so I call for everyone to dial down the resistance and try to act as if it never happened.
By the time the class is thirty minutes in, I’ve messed up the pacing three times; got two different people’s names wrong, and somehow unclipped myself from the bike, slamming my ankle into the pedal. It’s as if I’m a novice once more, going back to the days when I was nervously taking my first classes and overthinking everything.
All the while, Yasmine has studiously avoided looking anywhere other than the screen in front of her that’s displaying the stats about her speed and distance.
When we get to the end, I realise that I’ve barely noticed the pool of sweat around my bike. I do my usual trick of mopping the floor with a towel to get rid of the worst of it, but, by the time I look back up, Yasmine is already on her way to the door. Even though people are still warming down, I hurry after her – and there’s a moment of déjà vu as I remember our first meeting. There was a spin studio then and a chase along corridors.
This time, I catch her outside the studio on the edge of the car park. I reach for her shoulder and she spins to face me. We’re underneath a street light that’s pouring a dim orange glow down towards the path. Up close, there are a concentric collection of wrinkles around her eyes. Although she was older than David, she always looked younger – but much of that youth has disappeared since I last saw her. She’ll be closer to fifty than forty, so I suppose it’s little surprise. Age is the one thing we can never escape.
I suddenly realise that I don’t know what to say.
‘What do you want?’ Yasmine asks.
‘What are you doing here?’ I reply.
‘What do you mean?’
‘You’ve come to my studio; my class. It can’t be an accident…?’
She shrugs dismissively; something that certainly runs in her family. David was always a master at scorning subjects about which he didn’t want to talk.
‘I joined on the phone,’ she says. ‘Someone took my details earlier. It’s a free country, isn’t it?’
‘But why here? Why now?’
Another shrug: ‘What does it matter? I wanted to get back into training after having Eden. You should be flattered that I chose here. I saw you in the news all last week – someone posted it on my Facebook. Some award thing you were up for…’
I spoke to someone from the local paper and a photographer came to take some pictures. He kept trying to get me to lean over for a down-top shot – but I was too far ahead of him to go for anything like that. I was also named in a couple of the trade publications. Everything ended up online, so Yasmine might well have read about me. I also know that she gave birth around a year and a half ago. Probably around the time I last saw her.
It’s all plausible… and yet, combined with everything else that’s been happening, it doesn’t feel right. David reappears in a photo, someone steals my car – and then David’s sister, who never seemed to like me, walks back into my life, all within twenty-four hours.
