Free Gold by Chris Cleave Page A

training, I’m just messing with your head.”
    Zoe threw her a dark look. “When I let you mess with my head sometimes in training, I’m just winning.”
    Their road bikes were chained to a railing outside Tom’s flat. It wasdark, and the drizzle was colder now. They unlocked their machines, wiped rain off the saddles, and set the front and rear lights flashing. Kate strapped on a helmet and zipped up a yellow reflective vest; Zoe didn’t bother with that stuff.
    Zoe grinned when Kate looked up.
    “What?” Kate said.
    “Race you to my new place.”
    “What, your sky palace? Your high-rise Xanadu?”
    “Go on, take the piss. If you had these cheekbones you’d be living up there yourself.”
    “I’m not like you. I don’t need the affirmation.”
    “God!” said Zoe. “If you weren’t a bike racer you’d be one of those chubby yet strangely judgmental columnists.”
    “If you weren’t a bike racer you’d be working through your esteem issues in porn films, getting banged by men with calf tattoos.”
    Zoe threw back her head and laughed the bright, carefree laugh she only used when a joke frightened her, but when she looked back at Kate her face was composed.
    She said, “Yeah, but we’re racers, so let’s race.”
    Kate didn’t see how she could say no. She’d overstepped, and now she had to give something.
    “Okay,” she said. “If you really need to.”
    “Ooooh!” said Zoe, twisting her toes with excitement and flapping her hands at her sides like a chick attempting flight.
    Kate felt the tension released and she could only laugh—Zoe really did love to race. The stuff they couldn’t talk about was more unbearable by the day. At least they could duel it out on the bikes. It was more dangerous than fighting but safer than conversation.
    “Let’s go,” Kate said.
    “You know the way, right?”
    “Yeah, yeah. Just give me your apartment key, will you?”
    “Why?”
    “Well I’m going to get there before you, aren’t I? I can go up and put the kettle on, have a nice cup of tea waiting for you.”
    “Save it for the bike.”
    The two women clipped into their pedals and rode out into the cold black drizzle, streaks of red trailing from their taillights. By tacit agreement they took it easy for the first couple of minutes, keeping each other close as they wove through the slow traffic rolling into the city center. Then, as they rode past City of Manchester Stadium, they looked across at each other, nodded, and picked up the pace. Theirs was the easy, loping style of riders who made no distinction between their skeletal systems and the bones of their bikes. They dug in and accelerated to race speed.
    They had a clear run for a mile now, west along Ashton New Road into the city center, and although it was only one lane in each direction, there was a wide band of chevrons between the lanes. They raced along that median strip, side by side, one rider now dropping back to slipstream the other before accelerating into the lead. Twice they had to swerve into the margin of their lane to dodge oncoming motorbikes filtering in the other direction along the central strip. Zoe clipped a wing mirror, a horn blared out, and she screamed with excitement.
    Zoe was happiest when she was street racing. It was dirty and it was fast and everything you could see wanted to kill you. The car drivers were either dozy and inattentive or alert and seething, and either affliction might make them suddenly swerve out and hit you. The white chevrons you rolled on were slick in the rain and slippery with spilled diesel and strewn with broken windscreen glass that could shred your tire and spill you into the path of traffic. If you fell you could only roll like a gymnast and hope you hit the curb before you hit a car. The rain got in your eyes and made the approaching headlights a blur of speed and glare, and in the midst of this chaos you were racing another human being at the top of her game, so your heart rate was on