The Race Around the Common

Imogen had been training all summer for the Race Around the Common. Every morning she had been out of bed by half past six, fastening the laces of her old red trainers and stretching her calves at the front gate. Her older brother, Felix, who was sixteen, had laughed at her at first. By the third week he had stopped laughing. By the fifth he had begun setting his alarm for the same time and running alongside her, partly out of pride and partly, she suspected, because he could not bear to be the only person in the house still in pyjamas at seven o'clock.

The race itself was a village tradition, run every August Bank Holiday for the last seventy-two years. The course was exactly three miles: out across the meadow, down past the duck pond, up the steep incline behind the church, around the row of beech trees at the top, and back along the dusty footpath to the village hall. The winner of each age group received a small silver cup with their name engraved on it, and a packet of liquorice from Mrs Maturin at the post office.

On the morning of the race, the sun rose into a sky as pale as washed paper. Imogen sat on the kitchen step, lacing her trainers for the last time before the start. Her stomach felt as though someone had dropped a small bird into it, and the bird was beating its wings.

"You'll do well," Felix said, handing her a glass of water. "Just remember the incline. Save something for it. Don't try to win the first half-mile."

"What if I'm last?" Imogen asked, without looking up.

"Then you'll be the first last person who trained for it," he said, very seriously, "which is a much better thing to be than the first first person who didn't."

She thought about that for a long moment, and then she laughed.

When the starter's whistle blew, Imogen did not surge ahead. She let the older Year 6 boys race past her like a startled flock. She let the determined ten-year-olds, red-faced already, overtake her on the meadow. She kept her breathing steady — in for two, out for two — and she remembered the incline.

By the time she reached the church, the first three runners were already walking. Two were holding their sides. One was being sick into the hedge.

Imogen ran straight past them, up the steep incline behind the church, and on toward the beeches.

She did not win. She came fourth in her age group — the last to receive a packet of liquorice, the first not to receive a cup. But Mrs Maturin, handing her the small paper bag, looked at her with a quiet, careful smile.

"Next year," she said. "I should keep training, if I were you."