Food on the Way

Marten couldn't see Fenna as the eighteen men prepared for the scratch race. It shouldn't matter to him. It didn't matter much. He only looked once more towards the place he had left her before turning his attention to his own race.

Rik van Os said something about the cold outside. There was condensation in his hair. Marten replied that he intended to stay indoors. Rik grinned and looked ahead again. Once they had spent a race pretending not to watch each other. Then they had gone clear of the rest together and Rik had beaten him on the line. Rik had rarely mentioned it since, which Marten found rather worse.

Bram hadn't asked him for a miracle today. A good race, being there when something happened, not a day after which all he could say was that it had been too fast. Marten had nodded. He knew what a sensible instruction sounded like. Carrying it out was harder when other people wanted something from their afternoon too.

In the early laps he felt he could stay with them. Not as a passenger hoping nobody would ask him anything. He could respond, see faces beside him without immediately wanting to look only at a wheel. Someone moved forwards. Further ahead, another man stayed just beyond the bunch's reach a little too long. Small things, until suddenly they made the race.

Marten went with the change of pace. He heard his own breathing, the bikes on the wood and, briefly, someone's voice beside the track. The name might have been his. He didn't look. For now he had something he could attend to that wouldn't only mean something later.

Rik was close. Pleasing and irritating at once. Marten knew he wasn't alone in trying to read the pace. He saw Rik tilt his head slightly, watching what was happening ahead. That was how he knew him. Not from conversations about talent or pleasant explanations afterwards. From this face, giving nothing away that he didn't want seen.

Halfway through the ten kilometres Marten still felt good. That simple discovery put him in an unreasonably good mood. The pace lifted at the front, the bunch changed and he had to do more than he wanted to stay in touch. Even so, there was something left. He wasn't merely holding on to a place he would inevitably lose on the next lap.

When he saw a chance of his own, he responded too late to make much of it. He felt it in the extra effort that followed at once. He didn't curse himself. He had no breath for that. He stayed with what was still happening, with the men he knew and the few he was really noticing for the first time today.

The closing laps went faster than he would be comfortable remembering. A man ahead lost some of his easy bearing. Another came past without Marten being able to follow at once. He heard the bell. The last lap, at last and far too soon together. He rode for what was still possible, and only at the line saw that more men were ahead than he had hoped.

Seventh out of eighteen. Rik had finished ahead of him. Marten didn't think it important enough to ask and did think it important enough to look up in the results.

Bram waited until he was back. They talked briefly about the race. There were things Bram had liked and one moment he had less patience for. Marten could point it out before his coach had to say it. That didn't help, but they both laughed.

'At least you were in it again,' Bram said.

Marten nodded. He had wanted to do more with it. Wanting that was better than being relieved it was over.

Once he had changed, Fenna was waiting with Madelon and Aydin. She had put his bag at her feet and leaned one shoulder against the wall. He saw her mouth move as Aydin told her something. Then she laughed and looked up. Her face changed when she saw him. Not a great change. Enough to make him want to know if he would see it next week.

'We didn't find the lunch-box man,' she said.

'Nor did I. He's probably started his dinner already.'

They went outside together. The bikes went back into the cars they had come in. Aydin was driving with Madelon; his toolbox and her bike fitted in the back with their own things. Marten was driving with Fenna. She had left her car at his that morning. Now he mainly wanted food and a chair without a sports bag beside it.

Their plan to find somewhere in Alkmaar came up against a full restaurant and Madelon saying she didn't want to go through a selection process for a bowl of soup. They agreed to stop on the way. Fenna turned the navigation towards him, lowered the heating a little and asked if he wanted music.

'Anything except that song with the flute.'

'There's more than one song with a flute.'

'I notice that every time I think it's over.'

She chose something else. After a few minutes it turned out she knew the chorus better than the singer. She sang along quietly, looked outside now and then and rested one hand loosely on her thigh. Marten would have liked to put his own over it. He didn't. He didn't want to discover it had made him miss a turning and have the two things linked for ever afterwards.

The traffic slowed. In short stretches at first, then they were barely moving. Beyond a line of red tail lights there was no visible explanation. Fenna checked her phone for reports. Roadworks. Not an accident. That was the good news; the predicted delay was the other news.

Madelon rang. Fenna answered and put her on speaker.

'We're stopping at the next opportunity,' Madelon said. 'Aydin has just said he'd eat you too if you were roasted.'

'Very unprofessional,' Fenna said.

'I've finished work,' Aydin said in the background.

Marten laughed. He was hungry but in no hurry to be alone at home. Fenna found somewhere both cars could stop and arranged to meet at the entrance.

Two empty tables stood side by side. They pushed them together and chose food they could point at. Aydin put down his plate with the care of a man no longer willing to negotiate anything. Madelon had chosen something with sauce and asked if anyone thought the tomato beside it counted as a vegetable.

'Today, everything does,' Fenna said.

They ended up discussing the worst food they had ever been given on their travels. Aydin won with a breakfast where the eggs had been handed out still in the packaging. Madelon thought that might be good news provided the rest of the journey could cope. Marten described a hotel with a large photograph of breakfast in the dining room, but nobody to be found who could make it.

Fenna listened with her chin in her hand. She looked tired, and attractive in a way he couldn't do anything about here. When he couldn't find a word, she supplied a completely wrong one. He carried on with it. Madelon rolled her eyes and asked if they could perhaps sit somewhere else if this was going to last all winter.

'We've only just started,' Fenna said.

He looked at her. She took a bite and held his gaze. It might have been a joke. For the moment he didn't want to ask.

As they said goodbye, Aydin spread his arms to show he was no longer holding any tools. Nobody asked him to fix anything. Madelon pulled up her hood and went to the car with him. Fenna and Marten stayed by the entrance a moment longer. Through the glass they could see their table already being wiped.

'I'm glad we came together,' she said.

'Yes.'

'I'd become such delightful company after that quarter-final.'

'You didn't hit the dashboard.'

'I've learnt to keep my hands to myself.'

He kissed her. She put a hand against his stomach just inside his coat. The door opened beside them and they both stepped a little out of the way without letting go at once. An older man passed and wished them a pleasant evening in a tone Marten felt no need to comment on.

In the car the conversation returned naturally to travel. He told her about the flat he had once shared with three other riders. Four wet towels, a hob that worked on its own terms and a freezer containing one bag of ice nobody would claim. It had often been funny. After six weeks he had wanted a chair nobody had left wet trousers on so much that he'd dreamed of one.

'And then you finally had your own place?' she asked.

'Then I got to sleep somewhere else first.'

'You're making it sound very appealing.'

'It wasn't bad. That's the difficult thing. You can't keep saying you want out when you're getting so much from it too.'

She watched the road. 'I'm so curious, though. About riding somewhere I don't have to get through my working week first.'

'Yes.'

'Not because I hate everything here. I'm not running away from my whole life.'

'I didn't think you were.'

He meant it. He could picture her in another hall, with the same determination with which she hadn't wanted to put on her coat today. He knew how good it could be to be completely immersed. She would gladly take those six months. He wanted to unpack after a trip without already thinking about what had to go with him again in a few days.

It was late by the time they reached his place. Sorting out the bags could wait. He asked if she wanted to come in. She said yes before he had thought of a reason she might.

He made tea. She surveyed the view from his living room and said the people opposite had an excellent light for interrogations. He looked too. Upstairs in the house across the way, a bare bulb shone brightly over a table. He had never noticed it.

'You've lived here a while,' she said.

'I don't usually inspect other people's lighting quite so closely.'

'I was trying to say something polite about your view.'

'You succeeded.'

They sat on the sofa. Too short to sleep on, big enough to sit beside each other and move ever closer. He put down his mug and waited until she had set hers down too. Then she pulled him towards her by his jumper. He only wanted to feel her kiss him again when nobody was calling her name or asking about his bike. She slipped a hand beneath his jumper. He put his against her back and noticed how slowly she breathed out.

When she rested her forehead against his shoulder, he let her stay like that for a moment. He had no story ready to make this easier. Holding her was easy enough already.

She should go home, she said later. She wanted her own things, an unhurried morning tomorrow. He nodded and walked her to her car. Beside the door she kissed him again.

'Thursday?' she asked.

'I'll have food in.'

'My place. Then you can see how it's done.'

He laughed and raised a hand as she drove away. Inside, the two mugs stood on the table. Hers was half off its coaster. He picked them up, put them in the kitchen and left the bag of race kit where it was for now. He was thirsty, hungry and looking forward to Thursday. Seventh place was on his phone. He didn't have to look at it again tonight.