Twitter? Nothing.

Well done, Lana. Maybe at last you’re learning to be a good girl.

Finally she checked her emails.

Oh God.

There it was. Lying shamefully in her Sent box.

To: Judith Metcalf

From: Lana Lloyd

Date: 21.05.2017

Subject: I’m Such a Twat

Dear Judith

Okay so i’m pissd – there’s a spanish barman in my bathroom and all night i’ve bin thinkin bout you an’ me an’ us an’ Cat an’ the party in a coupl wks, and look i’m gonna go ok? And cat said you goin too. i want us 2b friens again jude, i miss you – do yu think its tooo late 4 us? i dunno, I jus dont no. one thing I DO KNOW is that i am a twot..twut.TWAT. i hate myself.

zBut i love you jude I do do do.

Lana xxxxxxxxxxxxx

Oh God. Oh God. Oh God.

44

Catrin

They had intended to have a party for their twenty-fifth. But Catrin had been ‘indisposed’ at the time. Her own silly fault.

Seven years ago she’d taken up running again. She did it to counteract the onset of the menopause at the age of forty-three. ‘Most women don’t get it till they turn fifty!’ she’d complained to Judith. ‘A patient of mine is still having periods at fifty-three, it’s not fair!’ She tried to make a joke of it, but inside her heart was breaking. Because there was something so cruel about the menopause. Like it wasn’t enough to have accepted she’d never have another child: going through this big hormonal change where all her ‘equipment’, as Lana described it, began to shut down, was an additional and very harsh blow – In case you thought you weren’t a woman any more, here’s confirmation of the fact!

Solomon told her she was being ridiculous. She countered this by pointing out that he couldn’t possibly know what it was like, seeing as he was ‘not actually a WOMAN!’ It was after that that she decided to take the bull by the horns and out-run her frustration. Literally.

She’d started off painfully and slowly. A single jog around the block left her scarlet-faced, gasping for air and vowing never to repeat it. But something urged her to keep going. Until she could manage two circuits, then three. It became a kind of lucky charm, that she had to run three times a week, or else.

‘Or else what?’ Sol had laughed.

‘I don’t know. Armageddon? The Apocalypse?’

‘OK, well, I can handle that.’

The running had progressed to 4k. Then the park run every Saturday, then her first 10k. A year later she’d run a half marathon, and a year after that a full one.

Then, two weeks before they were due to celebrate their silver wedding anniversary with a big, bold bash, Catrin had signed up for an Iron Woman, competing with a group of girls from the running club. And having managed two years of regular and strenuous activity without injury – apart from the occasional blister – Catrin came off her bike in training, breaking her right arm and her right femur.