for a few hours and gee up the runners,’ Becky said, when she roped the rest of the house in. Jess is well up for it. Turns out she watches the marathon every year, so being there for the actual thing is really exciting for her. I volunteered last year in the St John’s Ambulance tent, so I’m slightly less excited and slightly more aware that getting from our side of London to Shadwell on Marathon day is a feat in itself.
‘It’s really good of you guys to come along,’ says Harry, the charity stand organiser. We’re spread out across three folding trestle tables, with boxes of bottled water, bowls of jelly babies and packs of energy gel all ready to go. Jess dances around, banging the inflatable noisemakers together, trying them out.
‘You might want to save that for later,’ says Harry, grinning. He’s an old hand at this. He tells us he’s been running the cheering station here for the last ten years, since he recovered from leukaemia himself.
‘Least I could do,’ he says, with a self-deprecating grin.
‘Lazy bugger,’ says a woman who introduces herself as Andrea, Harry’s wife. ‘You could at least run the bloody marathon like I did.’
She’s dressed from head to toe in the charity colours, with a ridiculous inflatable hat on her head. She’s short and round and clearly the power behind Harry. Throughout the morning, I watch him glancing to her for approval regularly. She teases him incessantly and he winds her up. They’re obviously mad about each other.
There’s a long, long gap after the first runners go through, shooting past in seconds, following their pacemakers, and the wheelchair athletes, who move so fast that Jess almost misses the whole pack because she’s gone to the loo.
‘So what happens now?’ Jess sits down on a folding chair and shades her eyes, looking up at Andrea.
‘We wait.’ Andrea tapes down a sign that’s come loose.
‘Sounds a bit ominous.’
Andrea nods emphatically. ‘Rained the morning I ran it. I got soaked at the start, then had to run the whole thing in a damp T-shirt. And I lost five toenails.’
‘Yowch.’ Jess pulls a face. ‘How did that happen?’
‘It’s fairly standard – 26.2 miles is a long old way to run.’
‘Can’t believe you did it. That’s amazing,’ Jess says, looking incredibly impressed.
‘I can’t either. It was bloody knackering,’ Andrea says, then gives a snort of laughter. ‘But it seemed a hell of a lot easier than going through six rounds of chemo like he did.’ She nods in the direction of Harry, who is tying balloons full of helium to the side of the charity banner.
‘I love watching the Marathon,’ Jess says. ‘Especially that bit at the beginning where you see everyone’s stories and it makes you cry.’
‘Oh God,’ Becky says as finally she appears. She’s been staying with a friend in Poplar, so she’s on foot, wearing a baseball cap and sunglasses to protect her eyes from the already-bright sunshine. She pinches a couple of jelly-babies. ‘Has she told you about how she sits there every year to watch the runners, weeping and eating toast?’
‘Shut up, you,’ Jess says, going pink.
‘True though,’ Becky says. ‘God I am so hungover. I need a saline drip. You haven’t learned to do that yet, have you, Alex?’
‘I don’t have one handy, no,’ I say. ‘And I don’t think the medical tent would be that impressed if you turned up and told them you needed rehydration.’
‘I’m going to go and find some full-fat Coke then. I need to be in full-on cheering mode for the lads from work.’
I nip to the loo and when I get back I stand for a moment, watching Jess chatting to Becky. I’ve been trying to work out how to talk to her about the whole thing with Emma – I mean if we’re friends, there’s no reason why I shouldn’t be telling her, but at the same time, it feels – awkward. I don’t want to mention it in front of Becky though, because of her whole no relationships thing – not that it is a relationship. That’s kind of the whole point.
‘Ready?’ Andrea turns to me, and the moment is lost. From then on we’re caught in a strange mixture of cheering then waiting, waiting then cheering.
The Mass Race runners come through first – super fit amateur athletes who zoom past us wearing our charity colours, grabbing a drink and tossing it to one side before pelting on down the road in search of