“You’re too good to me.”
“Yes, I am, aren’t I?” He points to the plate that awaits me on the table and watches me keenly as I bite into it. “You need to eat it all,” he says. “You’ll need the calories.”
Uh oh. Why? I look up at him, enthralled at the suggestion that I am in for a lavish helping of afternoon delight.
“You’ll see,” is all he says to my wordless enquiry. I take a fresh look at the sandwich. Lean turkey, low-fat mayo, lettuce, tomato in a granary roll. Sinclair is all about slow-release energy it seems. Mm, that bodes well. I masticate it slowly, not wanting the knot of excitement in my chest to affect my digestion. Where will we be? Bedroom, office, living room…? It doesn’t really matter now that Nerys has gone for the day. I wonder what she thought of the new sleeping arrangements.
I drain my glass of orange juice and leap up, ready for action. Sinclair smiles rather evilly – but that’s his regular smile-style – and motions me out of the kitchen. I follow him eagerly to the bedroom. Oh. Not his/our bedroom. My/the spare bedroom. Que pasa?
My horrified ‘Oh!’ on entering elicits a low, spooky-cartoon-character laugh from him. I would have preferred a fully-kitted-out dungeon, complete with stocks and thumbscrews, to this travesty. He looms up behind me, resting his hands on my shoulders as I gaze bleakly around the room.
“What do you think?”
I make a non-committal noise. He laughs again.
“You don’t want to go to the gym. So I’ve brought it to you.”
“You’re so thoughtful.” What are these contraptions? I can see that one is for running on…but what is that bent pole thing? And the other thing looks like a modern version of a rack.
“Come on, then, get changed, and I’ll put you through your paces.”
“I’m not a pony!”
“Get changed.” His stern tone cuts through my incipient sulk and I pick up the clothing piled neatly on a bench and inspect it. Horrible, horrible gym wear. Ugh. “You expect too much of your body, Beth,” he says, switched into full lecture mode. “You think you can treat it badly and it will still do everything you want it to. But it doesn’t work that way. You’re nineteen, so you can’t imagine the long-term effects of your lifestyle. You are sure you will live forever. You aren’t fat, you don’t have cancerous lungs or a cirrhotic liver, so you think you can do as you please. But unless you start improving your behaviour now, you will soon start to see the legacy of your laziness. Blah blah blah.” I let it wash over me as I don the hated shorts and crop top, pulling my hair into a band and marvelling at the strange light/heaviness of trainers on my feet.
Standing before him, hugging my chest, I feel actually more embarrassed and humiliated than I did in that ridiculous school uniform. Now he is genuinely pushing me out of the comfort zone of my self-perception. While schoolgirl roleplay might be a ‘Beth’ thing to do, huffing and puffing on a running machine definitely isn’t. I am now not-Beth. I am just some deindividual.
“It fits you all right?” he asks with brisk faux-concern.
“Fine,” I snark.
“Good, let’s warm you up then.” Oooh. That phrase reminds me of him spanking me over his office desk before the caning. Let’s do that instead! No such luck. He orders me to do all kinds of unnatural acts like star jumps, running on the spot, punching the air and stuff. This is like a masterclass in mortification. I hate getting sweaty (outside the bedroom), and within five minutes I am purple-faced and wheezy.
“Time to ditch the cigarettes,” he observes. “They may have built the university but they’re destroying your body.” I double over floppily, my arms hanging. “Can you touch your toes?” he asks mercilessly. I stretch that little bit further, answering his question. The swine lopes up behind me and smacks my backside so hard I nearly fall forward on my knees. “That’s a position we’ll be seeing more of,” he says mockingly. Then he pulls me upright again, holding me straight by my hips. “With me so far?” he croons into my ear.
“You’re cruel,” I accuse.
“Hm, sadistic, some might say,” he replies nonchalantly. “Come and try the rowing machine.” Ah, the rack thing. I sit in it and spend an unenthusiastic ten minutes pulling back and forth. God, this is boring. How can people do this for hours at a time? I wonder if Sinclair will consider putting a TV in here. Next he makes me do about three thousand stomach crunches, using the bendy bar thing, and finally I set my tentative foot on the running machine. He sets the digital counter so that I am having to run at quite a f
ast pace. I really don’t think I can keep this up for long. “Too…fast…” I pant out after the first minute, alarmed that he intends me to maintain this pace for quarter of an hour.
“At your age, this should be comfortable for you,” he tuts.
“I can’t DO it!” I insist shrilly, gripping the sides of the machine and trying to lift my feet from the relentless conveyor belt.
“Keep going,” he says unbendingly, then he leaves the room. Does he seriously think I’m going to carry on when he isn’t watching me? I lean over and press the stop button, collapsing on to the bars while my hammering heart slows to an acceptable manic thumping. I don’t look up when he comes back into the room, but just allow my legs to buckle and kneel lifelessly on the motionless rubber. “I see,” he says unpleasantly from somewhere slightly above me. “Direct disobedience.” I can’t think of a reply, and I’m not sure I’m capable of speech yet, so I continue clinging for grim death to the bar. Until a firecracking slash across my knuckles makes me yelp and fall backwards on to my arse. I look up and see that a stony-faced Sinclair is brandishing a riding crop.
“It appears a motivational tool is required,” he says severely. “Get up and put the machine back on, Beth.”
“But…”
“No! Get up and put the machine back on.” The threat in his eyes is more than that of the machine and the crop combined. I pick myself up, mouth drooping, and lean over to the button. The conveyor belt roars back into life, straight back to the unforgiving pace I found so difficult to keep up. I want to cry as I lift my weary feet to pound the rubber spool over and over again.
“I’m too tired!” I shriek after a minute, and rather than reassurance, I get a resounding swoosh-crack across my stretch-lycra bum that makes me squeal and lift my feet higher.
“That’s it. Keep running,” says Sinclair laconically at my side. For a split second I get a mad urge to snatch his crop from him and whack him across the head with it. I put the energy distilled from my rage and loathing into my running, feeling newly adrenalised and able to jump over mountains.
“Good!” encourages my tormentor, though obviously he isn’t so impressed that he can forego five more swats of the crop before the dread quarter hour is up. Every time my feet start to drag, or I clutch more heavily at the bars for support, my backside is treated to a slice of fire, cutting across the still-present cane welts and waking them up to throb afresh. When Sinclair begins to turn the dial down, slowing the pace little by little until I stagger to a halt, I am more exhausted than I thought it was possible to be, with a sore bottom to boot. I’m sure this isn’t a training method sanctioned by the governing bodies of athletics.