Sitting at her computer, even the blinking cursor seems to mock her.

‘You can’t do it, ‘you can’t do it, you can’t do it.’ A triptych beat pulsing through her head.  Betty sighs, looks up at the ceiling and pushes back her chair. Outside the closed door muted sounds dictate the ebbs and flows of family life.  A loud crash from the direction of the kitchen followed by a barely stifled muttering and then a terse
‘Just stand still will you, I told you to stop fiddling and now look what’s happened.’ The piercing sob of the toddler, the thud of feet, and an insistent rattle at the doorknob.  Opening the door and picking the crying child up in her arms, she lets his tears mingle with the other stains on her shirt.
‘The sergeant stripes of motherhood.’ The thought brings a rueful smile to her lips.

In the recesses of the night memories drift and float, aether like they play in the moonlight. Their movements becoming more erratic and urgent, churning and swirling in frantic concentric patterns. Betty, breathing in; chokes on the acrid taste of chaos and disorder. In the morning puppet-like from lack of sleep she goes through the motions.  After the rush of breakfast, hasty departures for work and the school run; she stacks the last of the washing up in the rack.  She glances at the clock.  10.15 – enough time to hang out a load of washing; refill; pop to the shop; and return home to repeat, before collecting the boy from nursery. She wipes weary hands on her apron.

Picking up her shopping bags she heads out the door.  The hill outside is never ending.  She stops half way, puffing and pretending to tie an errant shoelace. A runner whizzes past, ponytail swishing seductively behind her. Betty waits until the ponytail is out of sight, sighs and slowly continues her ascent.

At the library the other day someone had handed her a leaflet.  Flustered and running late she’d stuffed it deep in her coat pocket where it made friends with a chocolate bar wrapper.  Some days later in the shuffling queue of the post office she finds the crumpled bit of paper, smoothing it out and dusting off the biscuit crumbs.

Rainbow Run, Finsbury Park – 10 June 10am.
It’s not a race.  Run for fun!!!
Run in a Rainbow of Colour
Raising money for the Whittington Paediatric Ward

She secures the leaflet back in her pocket.

Typing the words ‘how to start running’ returns a googleplex of hits.
‘I can’t do this, I can’t do this, I can’t do this.’  Betty sighs, looks up at the ceiling and pushes back her chair. She walks up the stairs to bed, pausing at the top to catch her breath. Undressing quickly she slips into bed; the sheets are cool, but her husband is soft and warm. She tucks herself back into him, finding the hollow in which she has rested for many years.  When he goes to put his hand on her stomach she catches it and holds it.

The French have other words for it, they don’t say fat, they say robust or forte. But her favourite word is enrobeé – a woman richly coated in her own mass.  She’s been this way for as long as she can remember, cloaked in protective layers. She’s always thought her husband; her childhood sweetheart; must really love her, because unlike other men he saw past the soft buffering warm flesh to the woman beneath. But recently she’s felt trapped, the extra layers ponderous. Last week in the park a woman had run past.  Amply proportioned, she ran jiggling and bouncing and panting. She looked free, happy and light in soul.

Betty tries again. This time a simple ‘from couch to 5k’ catches her eye.  The ten-week programme promises a gradual easing into world of the bobbing ponytails. She passes on the offer of an app that will unleash Killer Zombies to chase her manically down the road and instead prints off an old-school week-by-week chart that she hides in a book on her bedside table.

In the morning she goes to her local sports store. It’s an anonymous place; harsh lighting and rack after rack of discounted sports wear, mostly purchased to be worn in front of huge plasma TV’s.  She leaves after half an hour, clutching a bag containing a garish pair of neon trainers, black running tights, sports bra and a black long sleeved top.
‘Like a ninja elephant.’ She smiles and goes home to don her new armour.
Leaving the house and standing half in – half out the doorway, she watches another ponytail bobbing down the street.
‘I can’t do this, I can’t do this I can’t do this.’  She sighs, heading back indoors. Changing out of the clothes and stuffing them under the bed in their boldly branded carrier bag.

After a week of restless nights she tries again.  Leaving the house she walks briskly up the hill, stopping at the top to adjust laces with shaking fingers as she waits for her heart rate to slow.  Continuing across the road she turns left onto the path that runs by the canal.  It’s quiet, a brisk bright spring morning. Taking a deep breath and feeling the cool air infiltrate her lungs she starts the timer. She only needs to run for 1 minute.  Her feet feel alien as she shuffles forwards, a gentle chafing of lycra between her thighs.  She looks at her watch; 20 seconds. Her cheeks flush with exertion and each intake of breath is piercing and hot. 40 seconds. Lungs bursting and burning, she’s sure her chest is going to explode.  60 seconds. The shuffle slows incrementally to become a walk.  Repeat. After 20 minutes she is panting and exultant. She sighs deeply – and in that exhalation something leaves her.  Tired legs carry her home.

Betty doesn’t share what she’s doing, carving the time out her day with military precision.  Lists for each morning, ten minutes saved here, another five there. Running clothes washed, quick dried and hidden under the bed long before anyone returns home. Trusting The Plan, the time running gets longer, the walking shorter.   She begins to smile at the people who pass her, ponytail bobbing along behind. At home she finds herself humming a Bruce Springsteen classic as she goes about her daily chores. Her clothes feel looser and she can feel the layers peeling away. A gentle unfolding different to the unravelling she has always feared.

Week six brings her longest run yet.  22 minutes non-stop.  She’s ready, buoyant and able to take on the world.  She walks up the hill, ponytail swishing behind her.  15 minutes in her chest starts to burn and she panics, a misplaced foot, a stumble and suddenly she is sprawled out on the ground.  A couple of gawky kids on the other footpath grin and laugh pointing at her. ‘Have a nice trip – Send us a postcard miss’ they giggle, running away. She gets up and limps slowly home. Sitting, injured foot raised on a chair she looks up at the ceiling.
‘I can’t do it, I can’t do it, I can’t do it.’

Lying in bed she is visited by ghosts of failures past.  Taking the form of the two boys, they hover above her taunting.  But something else is growing inside her.  A dragon’s fire that leaves her mouth and consumes the room leaving only the faded embers of the jeering ghosts.  In the morning she pulls on her running shoes and heads out the door.

Race day she wakes early, slipping out of the warm bed, leaving behind the gentle indentation of her love.  Making her way through a quiet house to the cold bathroom, she puts on her race outfit.   In the stark white race t-shirt, she feels bare and exposed, like a grub on a flipped over leaf.  The note she leaves says, ‘Have gone out – Back by 12’

Betty walks steadily to the park.  Making her way to the starting line she feels comforted by the anonymous crowd. Everyone is excited – gathered together; a flock of strange albino penguins, chattering and calling to one another.  A loud siren goes off and they surge forward.  Letting their vivacity carry her she’s under the rainbow arch and running free.

The first kilometre is steady, and then a first burst of colour.  Sideliners throw paper bombs loaded with dye the colour of summer sunflowers; they explode over the runners – showering them with sunshine. A rich buttercup yellow that whispers promises of summers past and present.  She sees in her minds eye a painting of sunflowers on her bedroom wall.   She remembers running in the sunshine, her mother laughing and happy. When did she stop running? When did they stop laughing?  It comes to her; a flash of pain hitting her in the solar plexus, so unbearable it almost doubles her over.

She tries to access the memory again. Meanwhile strong legs continue to propel her forwards. 2 kilometres; a shower of blue.  Another memory. A vermillion blue sky seen through the strip at the top of the ambulance window.  She is holding her mothers hand and there’s blood, lots of blood.  She remembers thinking how lovely it would be to run with her friends in the sun.

Her legs continue to push her forward, as memories crowd her head –fighting with one another to escape.  This is what has weighed her down. 3 kilometres. Baby pink, marshmallow pink, the same pink as the nightdress she was wearing the evening her mother is in hospital. The night she wakes and finds her stepfather by her bed. In the morning she lies looking at the sunflowers on the wall, in her minds eye they are weeping blood.

Four kilometres. Red. The colour of fury, of danger, of anger.  A bomb hits her directly over her heart, the red spreading across her chest like an open wound.  A second bomb hits high on her thigh causing a river of deep blood red to run down her leg. She runs faster, heart pounding, legs carrying her forward. All around the colours are swirling, and whirling, a brilliant swarm of butterflies catching waves in the summer sun.

She’s crying. Mini-rainbows held captive in the teardrops. She feels it all, the child running in the yellow sun, the child in the bubble pink nightdress.  The woman who is angry, the woman who is letting go, the woman who is not running and hiding anymore.   On and on she runs. The colours mingle on her face, rivulets of rainbow tears sparkling and falling across her cheeks and down on her chest. They flow free like a river meeting the sea.

The rainbow cannot exist without the rain – and she is the rain, she is the rainbow, she is the woman and she is the child.  She crosses the finish line and keeps on running. Running all the way home.