Lifting | ONC 2024

I arrive at work ten minutes late, and hit the ground running, so to speak, which is at least an improvement from the first time I hit the ground today. The cafe is filled with the usual morning crowd, and so it isn't until my lunch break that I am able to assess the damage done in the fall from my bike.

    As I suspected, there is a large area of grazing over my hip and upper thigh, and the skin here has turned the blushing mauve colour of a bruise starting to develop. Even though I know it is ridiculous, I can't help but feel betrayed. I have owned my bike for years, it was a gift from my parents after my Cambridge acceptance letter came through, and since then, it has been a loyal and constant companion. I have never fallen off it before, not even once, before this morning.

The day passes painfully slowly — literally, thanks to the bruising on my leg — with a steady, seemingly never-ending stream of customers. Normally I would offer to stay later, anything to keep me out of the house, but I am conscious of the pain in my leg and the fact that the later I leave, the more icy the paths back home will be. I don't think my ego could handle a second tumble in one day.

     I bid my coworkers goodbye and hang up my apron until tomorrow, before wrapping myself up in my coat and leaving to fetch my bike. In the alleyway between the gym and the cafe, I freeze and stare in disbelief at the bike racks.

     My bike isn't there.

     Hopelessly, I look around the alleyway, half-expecting it to be propped up against the wall of one of the two buildings as if it is waiting for me ("What time do you call this?"), but of course, it isn't. It has just gone. I examine the racks where I chained it this morning, and see that the chain is still there, the lock undone. It hasn't been cut, there are no signs that it has been tampered with at all, which means that I must not have locked it properly. I curse my blood-blistered, cold hands for not working the lock with more ease, and Nathan Bond for distracting me while I did it.

    I didn't lock the chain, and now my bike has gone who-knows-where, taken by who-knows-who. I miss it already, the freedom it gave me, first at Cambridge, where I used to ride it from the college to the library and back across the backs, and then again in the last few months, when it saved me from being trapped in the life-size memory box that is my parents' house.

    The bike has been my lifeline of late, and only now that it's gone do I see that it was my last line of connection back to my old life, the life that otherwise lies in tatters, stripped from me like ragged clothing. The bike was the one shred of that life I had left, and whoever has taken it has taken more than just my bike. They've taken a piece of me that I'll never get back.

    I feel like crying, but I hold back my tears. Crying won't get me home any quicker, any more than it will bring back my beloved bike. Now isn't the time to get sentimental, it's the time to get home. I need to think rationally.

    The way I see it, I have three options. I could walk back home along the path I usually cycle, but I know that with my leg aching the way it is, that walk will seem even longer, colder, and darker than it is in reality. I could call my parents and ask if one of them could pick me up. I let out a harsh laugh at that idea. I'd rather settle for my third and final option: the bus. It never runs on time, and it always smells like burnt dust, but at least I can read a book and not talk to anyone, rather than in my parents' car, where I will have to sit in awkward silence and not talk to anyone.

    My mind made up, I hobble across the car park to the bus stop, one single orange bench that is too narrow to sit on, underneath a three-sided shelter that does little to protect against the elements. On one Perspex wall is a table dictating the scheduled arrival times for each bus, and on another a black box displays the expected arrival time of the next bus according to its live location. It is now twelve minutes to six. The timetable states that the next bus is due at five to. The live display says that the bus should be arriving in eighteen minutes. I may not have studied mathematics, but even I know that doesn't add up.