“You have to do what you’re passionate about,” she says. “That’s what matters.”
“Perhaps.”
“No, not ‘perhaps,’ Henry. Definitely.”
“Well, we’ll see. I think they’re all secretly hoping I’ll change my mind. I mean... most people who go to school here study medicine, law, or economics.”
“But do they enjoy it?” asks Emma. “Or are they just doing it because it’s expected of them?”
“That’s the question...” I pause as she smiles. “What?”
“I think I’ll have to up the pace. You’re managing more than three-word sentences.”
“Oh, no,” I say with a groan.
“Don’t worry, when we do the intervals, we’ll go to your maximum heart rate.”
“I can’t think of anything more delightful.”
“Me neither,” says Emma, and sadly, her tone doesn’t sound the least bit ironic.
She’s as good as her word, because we’ve barely reached the sports ground when she picks up the pace considerably. The first rays of sunshine are falling over the rugby pitch, but that’s not why the sweat’s burning in my eyes a few minutes later.
Emma’s idea of interval training is suicidal. And I don’t think she’s even running as fast as she can. It’s nuts, and she makes it look so easy. I’m running flat out, and she doesn’t let me slow down until I feel like my heart’s going to burst out of my chest any second.
“Make sure you keep your hips level,” she says as we’re running more slowly again after a couple of sprints.
You don’t stand still when you’re training with Emma. I soon figured that much out. There’s only full speed and easy jogging. Her cheeks are flushed and a few strands have worked loose from her plait as she comes alongside me. She puts her hands on my hips and my heart skips a beat. “You mustn’t let them tip forward. Imagine you’re carrying a full glass of water inside you, and it has to stay upright so that nothing spills over.”
“Weird image,” I pant.
“I know, but it helps, right?”
It would help if she took her hands away. But as soon as she does, I wish she hadn’t. My skin is burning where she touched me. Suddenly I think about last night, when I didn’t ask Grace to stay. Her eyes, all those things that went unsaid between us. I have to push it down—there’s no other way. Otherwise, I’d have to face the fact that I spend too many hours a day thinking about Emma, and I owe it to Grace to be honest with her. But I know what that would mean. And I can’t do it. I can’t do that to her.
“Three more intervals and that’s enough for today,” Emma decides.
“Three more?” I banish those thoughts to the furthest corner of my brain. “You’re insane.”
“No, but we need to get into the anaerobic zone,” she explains as if she were the one doing A-level biology, not me. At this moment, I twig that this is the thing she was born to do. Study sports science at that specialist college in Germany. And that I don’t want her to leave in a year’s time. I really don’t.
“I’ve been in the anaerobic zone for the last hour,” I say.
“I doubt that.” She glances at her running watch. “So, in fifteen seconds, back to full intensity.”
I groan, but what can I do? When Emma runs, I run.
“How...” I gasp as she relaxes the speed after a minute and a half, “...the hell can you be so fast?”
There it is again, the shadow that crosses her face. “It’s all just a matter of technique and fitness,” she says, and I guess that’s probably true, but I don’t believe it’s the whole truth. There’s something else there, but I’m not the guy she wants to talk to about it. And that’s OK. I just hope there’s someone else for her so she can talk about anything, even about the things she’s thinking of when her eyes glaze over in class and she gets that worried expression on her face.
“Well, no, actually that’s not all,” she says, to my surprise. “Has anyone ever properly hurt you?”
Suddenly I feel kind of shitty. Because, if I’m honest, I don’t know. Of course it hurts when I have to say goodbye to my parents at the airport. When I remember that I won’t be able to be atthis school with my friends forever. Or when Grace and I argue. Not that we do argue. Our last fight was months ago, and I can’t even remember what it was about. In fact, we don’t actually talk anymore, even though there’s so much to say. But we both know what would happen. We’d have to face up to the fact that there’s nothing left. That you can argue only if you feel something. And I’ve stopped feeling anything.
“You have to think about the pain,” says Emma, and I ban myself from thinking about Grace again. Because I get the feeling that Emma’s telling me something she never tells anyone. “About the feeling when the person you love just goes away and abandons you. You have to imagine yourself running after that train and not being quick enough. It’s getting faster and faster, and sitting inside it is the person whose fucking attention you want. But he’s being carried away. So you run, as fast as you can, because it’s all you can do. That’s what you have to think about and, if you’re lucky, you might reach the point where your head is just empty and you don’t care so much about all of that anymore.”
She’s talking about her dad, I’m sure, but I don’t dare ask her.
