Gran laughs. ‘Teaching in the gym? You’ll be fine. Worrying won’t change a thing, you know?’
‘But Gran, what if something bad happens? Like what if one of them goes into cardiac arrest? Or what if I fall off the bike and split my head open while I’m showing them something? Or asbestos or something leaks into the room and we’re all poisoned?’
I stop myself before going full-terrorist attack.
‘What if any of those things happen?’ Gran asks.
I think about it for a moment. ‘I suppose an ambulance would be called.’
‘Do you want some of these, love?’ She points her spatula at the pan, flips the eggs. ‘I don’t think I’ve seen you eat today.’
‘No thanks, Gran. I’m not hungry.
‘Not hungry? What’s come over you?’
‘I’m teaching tomorrow, like I said. I feel nervous.’
‘Do you want to practise? You’ll never plough a field by turning it over in your mind.’
‘Can you pretend you’re cycling?’
‘I can pretend anything, can’t we all?’ She turns the heat off on the hob. ‘I’ll do it from my chair.’ She slides the eggs onto a plate and pinches some salt to sprinkle on them.
I run through the outline while she eats. At the end, I put on the storytelling voice I used to do when I was a teacher, and ask her to close her eyes, imagine she’s cycling into a field. There’s a patch of ground where a garden hoe lies.
‘Pick it up and loosen the fertile soil with it. Now, I’m passing you a bag of seeds where you can plant wishes in the ground. The land is so rich, these seeds will immediately germinate and sprout.’
She opens her eyes and smiles. ‘I planted seeds praying that all my family would be happy.’
‘You also ploughed a field in your mind,’ I say.
She scratches her cheek and then offers me a cup of tea.
I sleep roughly until 5 a.m. Daylight lifts the room from darkness and the birds serenade each other with their morning song. Groaning, I turn around in the bed and fall into a deep sleep. It feels like a second has passed when my alarm sounds at 6 a.m.
I huff, willing it to not be time to get up. I stumble out of bed and dress in my gym clothes. I wear a long grey hoodie over them to hide my shape.
The road is quiet as I drive to town on an empty stomach. I try to figure out a decent excuse to tell Andrea for not teaching. I could get hurt somehow, fall down the stairs maybe, or I could have an issue with the car, drive it off the bridge into the river.
I continue on to the leisure centre.
The place has been opened by the cleaners. I check around reception, the office and the pool’s deck for Andrea but there’s no sign of her.
I go to the studio upstairs and set up the bikes, dragging one to the top and five others into a semi-circle around it. I connect the centre’s iPod to the speakers and check the volume.
I want to go to the bathroom and vomit but instead I sit on the instructor’s bike and act as if I’m Andrea, cycling and warming up my body for the session.
Colin’s first in. He keeps his gaze averted, says hi and hops on a bike. He lays a big white towel across the handlebars.
Two minutes later, Djetska comes in. I say hello.
‘Where is Andrea?’ she asks.
‘She’ll be here shortly but I’m leading today.’
Djetska smiles and adjusts her bike. I wait for something, anything, some sort of interrogation but there’s none. She pedals away.
Lorna enters and quickly waves, pushes down the seat on her bike and doesn’t even seem to notice that I’m not Andrea.
There’s no sign of Andrea.
I wait for another two minutes after the class is supposed to begin, in case latecomers arrive. I hit play on Andrea’s playlist; the same music as usual blasts out over the speakers.
I clear my throat and increase the level on my bike.
Colin is sleepy looking but the two women are set.
‘Sorry, hi, I’m Natalie, your instructor today. We’ve met before, if you remember me? I know you might be looking for Andrea and wondering what I’m doing here, and sorry about that, she’s asked me to cover and…’ They pedal and wait for instruction. I need to shut up apologizing and start, so I shout the plan for the session and they turn the level up on their bikes.
I blurt, ‘We’ll be doing approximately sixteen kilometres today. Or cycling to Milltown.’
It makes them laugh, which makes me laugh and that calms me down.
In keeping with this idea, at the midway point of the session, I say where we’d be geographically and joke about passing the villages en route and going off the track to climb a big hill on the way, with a good view of the Mayo–Galway border countryside from the top.
The class flies by.
We stretch during the cool down, and afterwards Colin says, ‘I liked that Milltown thing.’
Lorna smiles tepidly and puts her bike away.
Djetska scratches the tip of her nose.
I say, ‘We could go somewhere different next week, if you’d like?’
None of them reply, but they smile, or, aren’t grimacing at least, and so it begins.
I shower and find Andrea downstairs.
‘Where were you?’ I ask.
‘I was going to come in but thought it might put you off. It can be intimidating to be observed. Especially on your first try. Did it go okay?’
‘I loved it, Andrea. Do you think I could try it again next week?’
‘Why not? I wouldn’t mind a sleep-in before Aqua Aerobics.’
‘Thank you,’ I say and squeal with excitement.
Andrea smiles.
In the café next door, I order breakfast to eat and pass the time before my office work begins at 9. While I’m waiting on my food, I click around the internet, see what Ireland’s most interesting tourist attractions are. I copy and paste some things into my notepad app.
During the week, I try to select the right music to go with the session. It’s still Andrea’s instructions, with different tunes and a little script in between.
I practise the outline on Gran in her armchair, the evening before. This time I get her to close her eyes and imagine the whole thing. I play the music to check for consistency.
In the morning, the same trio rock in.
‘Ye might recognize this one,’ I say and hit play for Riverdance. During the slow bits, I begin my script. ‘Today, we’ll go for a cycle alongside the beautiful west coast. Looking inwards, see the flora and the fauna of the Burren, utterly unique in Europe and mystifying geologists since its discovery. Look at the craggy limestone landscape that has hundreds of plant and animal species, look at the deep blue and baby pink petals of the wildflowers. The yellow headed cowslips. Bats, badgers, feral goats, who knows what we’ll find on the track. Maybe we’ll see the slow-worm, the legless lizard who looks like a snake, one of our only Irish reptiles. Let’s cycle through, on this specially created cycling trail for today.’
The trad music turns trance-like as it speeds up. ‘Increase resistance. Keep increasing resistance.’
‘There, look, the Aillwee Caves, let’s take a dip in through them. The underground chill of them. Hear how echoey it is. Stalactites drip drops onto our heads as we cycle underneath. The cave is damp and black but there are lamps on our helmets. I want your resistance kept high for this for twenty seconds on, ten seconds off.’
They pedal away.
‘Almost there,’ I say towards the end of the climb. ‘Now we’re skidding a little on the rock underneath but see that big light outside, that’s where we’re going. Towards it. It’s growing bigger and bigger. We can see the sunlight and the earth, the pale blue sky. Okay, everybody, we’re back outside again, take a deep breath, let’s visit the Cliffs of Moher. Formed by erosion from the mighty Atlantic. Let’s cycle around the edges. Can you feel the sea breeze, can you smell the salt in the air, feel it tingle on your face as we cycle? Look out there at the sea over the cliffs, see the waves breaking on the shore, the white foam, and across the water, the Aran Islands. Let’s sprint on this landscape. Go.’