“You have to come to this dinner party,” Alex said. It was Wednesday evening and I was lying stretched out on my bed, my phone on speaker on the pillow, because Joan had as good as broken my arms and I couldn’t hold it to my ear anymore. “Liz and Andrew want to reveal the gender of their baby, possibly even give us a name. I can barely contain myself, oh, the excitement.”
“I want to, but they may have to arrange special transportation, like a wheel chair.”
“I’ll carry you on my back, if I have to.”
“Who else is coming?”
“Ben and me. Katy. Possibly Lou.”
“What has Lou got to do with Liz?”
“There’s been a bit of a development since we last spoke.”
“Oh fuck. Do I want to know?”
“I think Katy and Lou may be an item.” Joan had already physically drained the life out of me, but this news slapped me in the face much more than any work-out she forced on me.
“But, huh, how’s that possible?”
“Come and find out on Friday, Leesbian. Entertainment guaranteed. Poor Andrew won’t know what’s hit him, again, but by now he should know better than to invite us all for a quiet dinner amongst friends.” When Alex rang off and the news sank in properly, I knew I only had one option. I needed to find a date for Friday − I wasn’t going to face Lou and Katy’s parade of early courtship on my own. I had forty-eight hours and a body full of muscles in distress.

“So much energy for a Thursday. I’m impressed. I told you to stop drinking.” The next day in training, Joan was irking me in every way possible again, spurring me on with loud howls and obnoxious hand claps. I snapped when she made me do ten thirty-second wall squats in a row and sat on my lap for the last two, the back of her rock-hard behind pressing into my thighs, while screaming, “Mind over matter, Lee, mind over matter. Don’t you dare tell me you can’t do it.” With my last ounce of energy, roused from the deepest, most offended pits of my gut, I shoved her off me before sinking to the floor.
“I’m so fucking sick of this, of you,” I yelled back. “I quit.” I sat in a puddle of my own sweat, my gym clothes reduced to wet cloths chaffing my skin with every move. “You can go shout at someone else.”
“First of all,” Joan barked, “never ever push me!” Then she lowered her voice, and, to my surprise, let a pinch of gentleness seep through. “Second, wipe off that sweat, get on the treadmill and tell me what’s going on.”
“I told you, I’m done with this.”
“You only stop when I tell you to stop, not earlier,” she half-whispered. “In this gym, I’m the boss of you. You should know that by now.” Her words sounded as determined as ever but her demeanour had changed, as if she’d had an injection of humanity, as if someone had filed off the sharp corners and padded them with the softest cotton. Then, out of nowhere, she smiled. Maybe she had smiled before, behind my back or when I’d had my eyes closed on the spin bike, but I’d never noticed before. Mostly, I wasn’t interested in her smirks of victorious satisfaction. It broke across her face like the sun can suddenly crack through a dark angry mass of clouds, lighting up your skin so unexpectedly it leaves you the fuzziest kind of warm beneath your flesh. “Come on, spill it. As silly as you think it is. I’m listening.”

To be continued…