‘Left a bit. No, sorry, I meant right.’
‘Oh, for fuck’s sake!’
‘Give me a break.’
Sarah heard the muttering but didn’t dare turn round to see who was talking. The woman in the sales team put her foot out of the hoop formation and had to go back to the beginning.
‘Go, Charlie! This is your chance! Take her!’
That was unmistakably Rachel’s voice. High-pitched and reed-thin.
Finally Charlie was out of the netting and negotiating the hoops, at which he was surprisingly adept. Come to think of it, he had very small feet for a man, which probably helped.
By the time they’d been over the climbing thing, Charlie was neck and neck with his rival. Almost against her will, Sarah found herself getting drawn into the drama of the whole thing, her voice rising as she tried to navigate Charlie towards the fancy dress. ‘Forward, forward. No – too far! Left a bit . . . a bit more. Right, pick up! PICK UP!’
Poor Charlie lumbered to a stop and swooped down on a pair of discarded sailor’s trousers.
‘On! On! On!’ came the chant from behind Sarah.
Charlie dutifully flailed around to find the opening, only instead of stepping into them, he put them over his head, clearly imagining them to be some sort of sweater or jacket instead.
‘Aargh. Ghmph,’ he said from inside his polyester prison.
Sarah felt the adrenaline mixing with her heightened nerves and lack of sleep. She started laughing. He was so funny, staggering around with a pair of trousers on his head. Then she found she couldn’t stop.
‘Tell him what to do!’ yelled Ewan.
But Sarah couldn’t speak. Tears were running down her face as she convulsed with laughter. The giggling from behind her subsided as the sales’ team candidate started pulling on her fancy dress costume at a rate of knots and now there came irritated entreaties to ‘get a grip’. Still she couldn’t stop laughing, or perhaps she was crying. Charlie was trying to get the trousers off but his head had become stuck in one of the legs. Her knees suddenly wobbly, Sarah sat down on the damp grass. She heard Rachel say, ‘Bloody brilliant,’ in a voice that dripped with disgust as the sales woman stormed across the finish line to resounding cheers from her team.
‘Classic,’ said Amira in Sarah’s ear, but even she sounded like she was biting back disappointment.
‘Never mind, guys. Good effort,’ said Will brightly. ‘Remember, we’re all on the same side so let’s pull together. It’s all a bit of fun. Rachel and Ewan, you’re up next.’
‘Yes, but we can’t win,’ said Rachel, mock-pouting for Will’s benefit.
‘You’re all winners to me,’ he replied.
‘Fuckwit,’ said Charlie, flinging himself down next to Sarah. He looked puce-faced and flustered, his hair sticking to his forehead in damp curls. ‘If I catch an STA from those trousers, I’m going to sue.’
‘Everyone seems to be taking it very seriously,’ whispered Sarah. Now she’d calmed down, the nauseous feeling was back, clogging up her throat like something she’d accidentally swallowed and couldn’t cough back up. She thought about her boys and wondered what they were doing right this moment.
Ewan and Rachel predictably won their race, with Rachel doing the actions and Ewan bellowing commands from the sideline, his limbs in perpetual motion as if he could remotely propel her to victory. Chloe had turned her back on them to chat to Will. From the way her head was cocked to one side and the toe of one trainer was tracing a pattern in the grass, Sarah surmised there was some high-level flirting going on. Well, good luck to her. Rejection was a bitch. Sarah could still remember on her wedding day that sudden rush of relief that she never again had to go on a shitty date, never again had to feel the hot shame of having allowed herself to fall in love only to realize she’d read it all wrong. She thought about Oliver and the way he’d looked when he turned around and saw her coming down the aisle of the church, the gratitude in his face, and for a horrible moment she thought she might start crying again. Love was so tricky, with all its layers and pockets where things could get lost or tucked away so tightly you forgot they were even there.
‘They may have won the battle, but we can still win the war,’ said Will, when everyone was assembled again. ‘Am I right?’
‘Yesss!’ yelled Chloe, her voice tailing off when she realized she was the only one.
‘We were going to mix it up a bit here with an indoors activity, but the forecast is for rain later on, so we’ll carry on out here while we’re still all so pumped up.’