Hard Tail(25)

Matt nodded. "You're at Jay's, right? I've been there loads of times." He headed off to pick up his battered green Ford Focus that had the back seats permanently down, the better to accommodate bike frames.

I finished what I was doing, locked the shop and drove the BMW back to Eling. As expected, I found Matt on my doorstep, but he was hopping from one foot to another, looking like he'd just ridden three hundred miles on an unpadded saddle. "Everything all right?" I asked.

"I. Um. Sorry. I can't stay."

"Has something happened?" I was a bit worried, he looked so miserable.

"No-no, it's just …  I rang Steve, just to check when he'd be in, and he asked where I was going, so I told him, and then he said he'd be home early after all, so I'd better get back."

"Oh. Right." It must have been the exhausting day that was making me feel disappointed out of all proportion to the event. "No-that's fine. I mean, of course you want to be with your …  And it's not like we were doing anything special, anyway." I told myself to get a grip, and gave him a smile that hopefully didn't look as fake as it felt. "I'll see you on Monday, okay?"

"Yeah, see you then." Head down, Matt slouched down the path back to his car.

I didn't feel like getting a takeaway just for me, so after I'd grilled some chicken breast for Wolverine-I'd started to worry an unvaried diet of tuna might not really be healthy for him-I nuked a ready meal and sat down with it on the big, empty sofa. Wolverine jumped up beside me, took a sniff at my meal and backed away hurriedly, taking his chicken breath with him. I flicked through the channels until I found something I could bear to watch-some car-crash TV program about embarrassing ailments that fed my inner schadenfreude in a misery-loves-company sort of way. "At least I've got you, hey?" I said to the cat. 

Wolverine cast me a withering glance and hopped off the sofa to lick at his nether regions.

***

Sunday found me in more positive mood, but still at a bit of a loose end. It just felt odd, waking up with no one to talk to except the cat. Wolverine was kind enough to wake me at the usual time, so I didn't even get a lie-in. "Your breath's getting worse," I told him as I struggled to focus on the pink nose twitching impatiently only inches from my eyeball. Wolverine yawned. I tried not to gag.

Even though I'd been there only half a week, it felt strange, getting up and knowing I wouldn't be going into the shop. Wouldn't be seeing Matt's infectious grin, or picking him up off the floor after his latest misstep. (Yesterday he'd managed to fall over a customer. Fortunately, the woman had been so embarrassed at thinking she'd tripped him up, she'd felt obliged to buy something.) My mood was curiously flat as I walked downstairs to the kitchen. There seemed to be a funny smell somewhere, but I couldn't locate it and eventually decided it was just Wolverine's breath hanging around, a sort of olfactory equivalent of the Cheshire Cat's smile.

Karate wouldn't start until eleven, so after I'd had a coffee, I decided to take my bike out for a spin. I'd been out with it every night when I got in from work, but the length of my rides had been constrained by the rumblings of my stomach. Today, I wanted to go a bit farther afield, so after passing by the sailing club and going up Eling Hill, I took a country lane down Marchwood way, avoiding the main road.

I pedalled easily past ploughed farmland interspersed with the odd, mysterious-looking spinney until I reached the cosily named Pooks Green. Unfortunately, I was disappointed in my hopes of seeing a hobbit or two ambling by. Perhaps they'd moved out when the railway was built; I had to stop at the level crossing to let a train clatter noisily past. I smiled as I had a flash of memory of doing just this as a child out with my gran-I could almost hear her voice telling me to "Look at the chuffa-train, Timmy!"

Such reminders of civilisation aside, it was hard to remember this pretty, rural scene was only a stone's throw away from Southampton. I turned back when I realised the housing estates I was now cycling through were turning into the outskirts of Marchwood, frustrated I seemed to have run out of countryside already.

I was going to have to get out into the forest, I decided as I sped back to Jay's. Only then would my shiny new bike be able to hold its handlebars up high next to Jay's array of well-ridden cycling hardware in the garage.

But for now, it was time to get my stuff together for karate. Having parked my bike up against the house, intending to get straight back on it and ride to the sports centre, I went upstairs and changed into my gi-only to realise I'd look pretty daft cycling through Totton in bright white pyjamas. Faced with the prospect of having to change back, then find a rucksack to carry my gi in, I ended up abandoning my never-very-strong green credentials and taking the car after all.