Free The Outrun by Amy Liptrot Page B

out of the house, I took long cycles across the city, through my past. I cycled along Regent’s Canal, past the place where I’d fallen in. I stopped at the spot in Trafalgar Square where I’d left a bag full of new clothes and make-up after a shopping trip had turned into a solitary pub crawl. I cycled through Soho, where I passed familiar doorways to clubs and all-night bars, and down Brick Lane where,each year, a new influx of dressed-up twenty-two-year-old girls walked in groups of three.
    Standing up on the pedals, with my hair blowing in my face, I felt like I had when I was a kid – uncool and undefended. The fresh air, the wind, was where I came from and, although there were buildings all around, the open landscapes of Orkney were still inside me and I was somehow always cycling towards a hidden horizon.
    It was autumn but there were still some warm days, and when I passed the corner of London Fields where all the posing cool kids hung out, I got a flash of what they call in AA ‘euphoric recall’. I had to fight to remember that the good times there, the impromptu picnics, only really happened in the first couple of years. Later, it tended to be just me, some cans of Kronenbourg, my notebook and a mobile phone I began to hate for not ringing.
    The devilish thoughts flickered. I worried that my life was over and I’d never have fun again. I thought that if I wasn’t going to amount to anything I might as well drink. I wanted to have a glass of champagne on a pavement outside an art-gallery opening with good-looking fashionable people, maybe one of whom would take me home if we got drunk enough. I wanted cocaine. I missed the moment where inhibitions gave way, and my heart ached for that brief enlivenment. I had purposefully put barriers between myself and alcohol but was finding it hard to be restrained.
    I parked my bike and sat on a bench by the canal, drinking a cold bottle of water, reading, in
Moby-Dick
, about bursting awhale’s heart. Two lads with dreadlocks and long shorts were setting up a tightrope between two trees near the railway bridge. They called to me, asking if I wanted a go, so I ran over and slipped off my shoes. ‘You could hold onto the tree or me, but the best thing to do is to use the power from your own push-up to balance yourself,’ he told me. My legs quivered uncontrollably sending vibrations along the rope and, as Central Line trains thundered above, I tried to keep my back straight and my eyes on the horizon. I fell almost immediately.
    Back in my bedsit, on Friday and Saturday nights, I’d tensely smoke out of the window, listening to the pub downstairs, wondering if this was all there was to sobriety. I felt as if I had got myself ready for something but didn’t know what it was. I was fit, healthy, clean, and home alone again all weekend, too scared to go anywhere. If this was the future, I didn’t want it.
    Coming out of rehab was not the end of the story but the beginning. Getting sober is one thing – I did it hundreds of times – but staying sober is a daily challenge in which there are moments when it comes together and I felt certain I’d done the right thing, then times when it was painfully hard.
    It hadn’t mattered to me so much when I was drinking but now I was feeling the distance between me and my family eight hundred miles away. I was speaking to my parents more. Dad needed some help on the farm and Mum encouraged me to come up for a visit. Although it was nearly winter, a short time in the island air while I was applying for jobs might help me regain my strength and appetite.
    London wasn’t the same. I was a stranger in my old life andwas discontent. But, back in Orkney, people had been to visit Dad on the farm, surveyors and businessmen, and there was talk of money. If the farm was sold, what would be there for me? What was next? What was the point of saving my life?
    I plotted. I agreed with Mum that some space would do me good but part of me, the