Sixth of Eight

The first thing Fenna did wrong in Alkmaar was spill coffee on her race number. Not much. Just enough for a brown edge along the six. She held up the paper and asked Madelon if it was still legible.

'It's a six with character now.'

'A medal for being so helpful.'

They sat by their group's kit. Gita was busy with the schedule; Aydin had opened his toolbox and was trying to stop people putting cups on his work. A bike was wheeled past. Someone asked where to sign in. The usual start to a race day, everyone pretending it had taken no effort to get there on time.

Fenna looked at her own things. She had forgotten nothing. She knew because she had checked twice at home, again in the car park at Marten's, and here for a final time. It wasn't because of him. Even when she travelled alone she had a tendency to stop believing there were shoes in her bag.

Still, it had been different, being in the car together. For the first few kilometres they had talked perfectly sensibly about the race meeting. Then he had told her about a bridge he always called by the wrong name, she had corrected him and he had insisted she had the name wrong. He hadn't been right. He had known that too. She had wanted so much to touch his hand on the gear lever that she had put her own hands in her coat pockets. Later, in the car park, he had kissed her as though he had been waiting since they got in.

Now he stood with his own group. His coach, Bram Kooistra, was pointing something out on a sheet of paper. Marten listened. He had the expression she most liked seeing on him: completely absorbed, without already searching for something entertaining to add.

'You don't have to spend all day checking he's still there,' Madelon said.

'I was looking at Bram.'

'I'll tell him. He could do with a pleasant afternoon.'

Gita came over and asked if Fenna had everything. Qualifying would determine her opponent in the quarter-final. Eight women today. Fenna knew most of them, some well enough to know how they looked when pleased with their times. She didn't want to spend all day looking at other people's satisfied faces.

Saskia van Dam came to say hello. Her hair was in a neat plait and her coat was still round her shoulders. She asked about Fenna's work and said she had got up early for nothing last week because a training session had been moved. She still sounded offended by it. Fenna laughed. With Saskia it was never wise to mistake friendliness for a lack of desire to beat you.

She got ready according to the plan she had discussed with Gita. There was nothing mysterious about it, yet just before riding she could never quite imagine that it was about to happen. The track was there, the noise too, the bike beneath her hands. She felt the small scar beside her knuckle as she straightened her glove. Suddenly she thought of Marten's mouth outside the shop window. She smiled once, then returned to what she had come for.

Once she was riding, for the first few moments she had no thoughts that formed complete sentences. Wood, breath, the pressure under her feet. During the approach she felt she was properly warmed up. It guaranteed nothing. It did make it impossible to say afterwards that her legs hadn't woken up yet.

She rode her flying two hundred metres. Halfway through, she knew this wouldn't be her best attempt. There was still speed, still work she couldn't leave undone. She kept riding until the effort was over and she could return by the agreed route. Only back with her group did she look for the result.

Sixth.

Not last. Not where she had placed herself while she was waiting. She looked at the list, ran her eyes down the names and stopped at her own. There were plenty of explanations she could invent that would be partly true. She wasn't interested. Madelon was fifth. Saskia third. Fenna would face Saskia in the quarter-final.

Gita looked at her. 'Tell me.'

'Not good.'

'What wasn't?'

Fenna answered. About the part she had felt herself, about trying too hard to make the attempt perfect in one go. Gita listened and pointed out one thing she had done differently from what they had discussed. No list of shortcomings, no cheerful declaration that this could still lead somewhere. Fenna was grateful to her and simultaneously thought she was an awful person for being right.

She put on her coat and sat down for a moment. Marten came past on his way to his own kit. He didn't ask if she was happy. He crouched beside her, a little to one side rather than in front, so she didn't have to study his entire friendly face.

'Would you like me to stand somewhere else?' he asked.

'No.'

'I'll stay a minute, then.'

He said nothing more. A man walked past with an enormous lunch box tucked under his arm as though it held something fragile. Fenna followed him with her eyes. So did Marten.

'I want to know what's in there,' he said.

'His entire afternoon.'

'Mine fits in a sandwich bag.'

She looked at him and laughed, unwillingly but not because she had to. He tapped her shoe with a finger and got up when Bram beckoned. No analysis of her time. She hadn't asked him for one. She watched him go and for a moment felt something unrelated to qualifying.

Before the quarter-final she had plenty of time to find herself annoying again. She got out her food, took a few bites and put it away. Madelon sat beside her with her eyes shut. She too would be racing a higher seed. Fenna asked if she was asleep.

'No. Practising my satisfied face for later.'

'You look as if someone's giving you a bill.'

'That shows you how convincing I am.'

They briefly squeezed each other's hands before Madelon got up. Fenna looked at the track, at the wood that seemed so innocent as long as you sat beside it. She had done this before. That usually helped, until just before a start all she knew was that she had to do it now.

Saskia was ready beside her. She nodded. Fenna nodded back. At the whistle their heat began. Three laps, far less time than her mind wanted to make of it. She didn't look at the people beside the track. Saskia was enough to look at.

For a moment Fenna thought she understood the race. Hadn't won it, not yet, but understood what Saskia intended and how to answer it. The moment was too brief. She reacted to something she had already expected and only then noticed Saskia doing something else. The bell for the final lap sounded loud and close.

Now there was no room to work out how it should have gone first. She rode. She felt her thighs, the pull of her breath, the frustration that demanded still more from her legs. Saskia stayed ahead. Not by a humiliating distance. Far enough. Fenna crossed the line and needed nobody to tell her who had won.

Back with the group, Gita picked up her coat and held it out. Fenna took it. She didn't want to put it on. She wanted a different race, with the same start and another moment when she would see what was happening.

'She decided what happened,' she said.

'Yes,' Gita said.

'I saw it.'

'You do now.'

It was the hardest thing Gita said to her that day. It was also true. Fenna rubbed a hand over her face. There was a long stretch of winter ahead. She knew that. For today she was finished.

Saskia came over later while Fenna was putting away her things. She didn't say it had been a fine contest. She described the moment that had been difficult for her. Fenna looked up, surprised, and asked one question. Saskia answered. It didn't make her defeat less real. It did turn it back into a race that two people had ridden.

'Next time,' Fenna said.

'We'll see.'

Saskia was still enjoying herself. Fenna would have been too in her place. Once Saskia had gone, she walked a little way along the passage. She needed a change from the sight of her own bag. Away from the bustle of racing, someone was eating a sandwich while trying to end a phone call. He couldn't get a bite in because he kept finding something else to say. Fenna stood by a window and looked outside. In the car park an older couple stood beside a car with a map on the bonnet. The man pointed somewhere the woman apparently didn't want to go.

She took out her phone. There was a message from Naja, following their conversation last Monday. Then, she had mainly wanted to know how Fenna managed ordinary weeks of training. Today she was asking for a recent schedule. No question about results. It was an ordinary message. That was precisely why Fenna read it twice. This one afternoon wasn't everything.

She replied that she would send the schedule tomorrow after talking to Gita. Then she put her phone away and went back. Aydin was bent over the bike of someone in the group. He had a cloth over his shoulder and the expression of a man who knew someone was about to interrupt him again.

'I'm not going to ask you anything,' Fenna said.

'That's usually the introduction.'

'Will you have time to eat with us later?'

He straightened. 'That's a good question. When I've finished here.'

Madelon wanted to come too. She had lost her quarter-final and was no less angry than Fenna, only in a different way. She had already described three times what she thought the other woman had tried. By the third telling she had started laughing herself. Fenna promised to hear the fourth version after dinner.

Marten sat with his own group, putting on his shoe. He still had his scratch race to ride. She stood beside him and waited for him to look up.

'We're going to find somewhere to eat later,' she said.

'We?'

'Madelon, Aydin, me. Possibly the man with the lunch box, if you've invited him.'

'I didn't dare.'

'Pity. I'd have liked to find out too.'

He smiled, and she saw him studying her face to work out what he could and couldn't say now. She put a hand on his shoulder. 'You can talk. I've only lost a race.'

'I was going to say I'd love to join you.'

'Say it, then.'

'Consider it said.'

She leaned towards him and kissed him. For the first time it felt a little public, among their bags and the sounds of the race meeting. She found she didn't care who happened to be watching.

'I'll wait for you,' she said.

He briefly put a hand against her hip and nodded. Then he turned to Bram, who wanted to discuss his own race with him. Fenna went back to Madelon. The day hadn't gone as she'd wanted. She didn't want it over yet.