Hold Your Breath (5 page)

Grumpily, she cut through a car park towards a large playground and sandpit. She asked a woman on a stand selling ice creams where the lido was and the woman pointed to a large white structure
in the distance. She would have seen it straight away if she’d come in at the right gate. She thanked the woman and wolfed down an ice lolly to ease her parched throat.

The lido was an ugly sort of building with two columns bordering the entrance that looked as though they had been stuck on as an afterthought.

An elderly man in a greasy baseball cap was sitting in a booth just inside the gates. He had large ears with long lobes that dangled like fleshy earrings.

Tara could make out a long slice of aquamarine just beyond where he sat. She felt a sharp kick of longing to feel cool water on her hot and dusty skin.

‘How much for a swim?’ she said. The old man eyed her suspiciously, even though she appeared to be his only customer. He spent a moment sorting something under the desk and then
produced a small rubber stamp.

‘Three pound, lockers fifty pence non-returnable,’ he said like a robot, unsmiling. ‘Hand.’

‘Pardon?’

‘Give us your hand.’

Tara held out her hand cautiously and the old man grasped it in his own clammy one before stamping it with a blurry picture of a seahorse.

She swallowed a strong urge to giggle. ‘Won’t that wash straight off?’

The old man shrugged and turned back to the newspaper spread out on the shelf below the main desk, which was open at a crossword. A chewed-looking biro lay on the top next to a pack of rolling
tobacco and a stained, chipped coffee mug.

The man started to investigate an ear with his little finger, face turned down again. Tara grimaced and quickly passed through the turnstile to the pool area. The blast of chlorine here was even
stronger than at the leisure centre. A few brown leaves lay on the top of the water. A girl in her twenties, wearing a T-shirt and shorts, was fishing what looked like a crisp packet out of the
pool with a long net. She gave Tara a nod. The only person in the pool was an old woman in a yellow swimming hat covered in huge rubber daisies. Nut brown, she bobbed along like a cork, covering
barely any distance.

There was no sign of the boy. Tara heaved a sigh. She’d walked miles, getting all sweaty and blistered for a stupid wild goose chase. Maybe he just liked that T-shirt. It didn’t mean
it had his job description on it. Didn’t Beck have one that said
Gangsta
, after all?

She looked down at the blue rippling water. Despite the crisp packet and the splodges of brown leaves, it lapped invitingly against the tiles, looking cool and refreshing. The tiles were cracked
and faded, but featured a blue and green mosaic, with a simple representation of a fish drawn in two sweeping movements. The image was repeated in every second tile. It must have been quite pretty
once. Tara had to admit it was nicer than the leisure centre. That woman had been right, even if it was all a bit cruddy and old.

Tara jumped when a screeching feedback sound assaulted her ears. There was a high-pitched screech and then tinny music floated over the pool. It was some cheesy old Eighties track her dad liked.
Maybe the bloke taking tickets felt two swimmers warranted a bit of background music, she thought. But she hadn’t even decided if she was going in yet.

The changing rooms were a series of poolside cubicles with doors that didn’t meet the ceiling or floor. Tara chewed her lip, thinking. It wasn’t a very private place to get
changed.

She was very hot though . . .

Making a snap decision, Tara stepped into a cubicle at the far end of the pool, which smelt of bleach with something sour underneath it. The floor was dirty and wet. Tara carefully undressed in
the small space, standing on top of her sandals to avoid touching the floor for as long as possible.

She didn’t have anything to tie her hair back with, which was annoying, so she tried to plait it roughly and twist it into a knot. She wished she’d brought her stout Speedo swimsuit
instead of this bikini, which was white with tiny roses all over it. She’d bought it specially for the pool party where things first happened with Jay last year. She should have thrown it
away. Maybe the memory of his approving eyes grazing up and down her body had stopped her, even though it felt like a fist was reaching into her chest and squeezing her heart painfully to think of
it. Anyway, she’d never really intended to put it on today. Even the towel she’d tugged from the airing cupboard wasn’t really big enough for practical drying purposes.

Yet despite all this, a few minutes later, she emerged from the changing room and thrust her clothes into the nearest locker. She had to deposit the fifty-pence coin several times before it
clanged noisily into place.

Despite being a strong swimmer, Tara wasn’t a diver so much as a careful stepper-in when it came to cold water. Leaving her sandals right at the pool’s edge, she climbed slowly down
the ladder, gasping with shock as the water crept up over her knees and then her thighs. It was so much colder than she’d expected – a burning iciness that was more extreme than any
pool she’d ever been in before. More like seawater. For a second she fancied she caught a briny smell on a breeze that drew the hairs on her arms up, even though they were miles from the
coast.

Tentatively, she lowered her shoulders under the water, shuddering from her toes upwards at the zinging shock engulfing her.

She swam off, slowly at first, and then warmth flooded her limbs. She sliced strong strokes through the water. It had been years since she’d done this but muscle memory kicked in, guiding
her effortlessly. She’d loved swimming once. But when she got to Year Six, self-consciousness about showing her body had taken over. She hadn’t stepped into a swimming pool for years,
right up until the day when she’d gone to that pool party . . .

Sadness welled up inside at the memory of Jay’s closed eyes as he’d come in to kiss her. The heat of his mouth by her ear whispering, ‘You’re all I want. No one
else.’

Oh, get out of my head, you loser
, she thought.

Tara stopped by the side of the pool, holding on to the rough edge for a moment, then took a breath and plunged downwards. Bubbles spiralled from her body as she went down.

Grasping the ladder that reached to the bottom of the pool, she wedged her feet at the bottom and clung on, resisting the powerful pull that tried to bring her back to the surface.

When she was younger, she used to lie on the bottom of the bathtub and count as high as she could before her screaming lungs forced her upwards. The splash used to soak the bathroom floor and
annoyed her mother no end. Her record had been one minute and thirty seconds.

But now, her lungs cramped quickly. The pain overrode the ache of thinking about everything and brought a masochistic sort of relief.

She stubbornly held on, counting twenty, then thirty, then forty seconds, all the while fighting the pull of the water, which was trying to throw her back to the surface like an unwanted
mermaid. The feeling of control was good. She couldn’t control much in her life, especially the guilt that ate her like a cancer inside. But she could fight this with her lungs and her
will.

Opening her eyes, she let the stinging water flood into them, welcoming the discomfort. Her hair had come undone and floated around her head like dark weeds.

But there was something there. A dark shape wobbled above her. A face. Someone was leaning over.

To hold her under.

E
rupting through the water like an arrow, Tara swallowed water that scorched her throat and nostrils. Gasping, she struggled to breathe.

‘Hey, it’s all right!’ said a male voice, loud and startled. ‘I didn’t mean to scare you!’

As her vision cleared, she realised it was a boy.

No, it was
the
boy.

He was crouched down at the side of the pool, dressed in the same T-shirt and shorts as the other lifeguard. He had a pair of flip-flops on his tanned feet. His expression was shocked, his eyes
wide.

‘I shouted for ages but you didn’t hear me!’ he said, looking horrified.

Tara gulped air into her tight lungs. She rubbed water from her face, wishing she could just make a hole in the side of the pool and swim away. She looked around. There was no one else here now
and the sky was filled with tumbling clouds in shades of silver and black.

‘What do you want?’ she managed to squeak.

‘You have to get out of the pool,’ he said, bouncing on his calves and standing up in one fluid movement. ‘There’s a thunderstorm coming. It’s not safe to swim in a
storm. Thought I was going to have to jump in and get you.’

‘Oh,’ said Tara tightly. ‘Okay.’

He walked away and started to pull grey sheets of tarpaulin over grubby-looking plastic sun loungers which were speckled with insect bodies. Tara climbed out of the pool, self-consciously
rearranging her bikini bottoms as soon as she had a hand free. Not that he or anyone else was looking at her. Not that there was anyone else
but
him.

She scurried past the boy and collected her stuff from the locker, shivering all over. The air felt charged and her skin sang with it. She was freezing. She knew she looked awful, with her hair
plastered to her skull. And she’d just made a total muppet of herself. But despite all this, she felt energised. Better, in fact, than she had for ages.

It really was a stupidly small towel that she’d brought with her though, she thought as she tried to dry herself with ineffectual dabs. Teeth chattering now, she ended up pulling on her
T-shirt over damp skin. Her cut-off jeans seemed to sandpaper her mottled, goose-bumpy thighs as she dragged them on.

The crack of thunder made her flinch. He’d been right to get her out, even if he
had
given her a fright.

By the time she came out of the cubicle, trying to drag her fingers through tangled, wet hair that clung miserably to her neck, the rain was falling in javelins, bringing a smell of earth and
metal so rich her nose almost twitched with it. It felt like the world was being woken up from the heavy, drowsy warmth of earlier, literally electrified into life.

The boy was waiting inside the entrance with his back to her, a heavy set of keys in his hand. He tapped them against his leg as if in rhythm to music playing in his head. Tara noticed how his
strong shoulders and back sloped in a V to his narrow waist. He had long legs, in jeans now, and the flip-flops had been replaced by black and red trainers. He turned to her, his face impassive,
and then quickly looked away.

‘I’m supposed to lock up,’ he said gruffly, ‘but you can hang about if you like, until this lets up. I’m not going anywhere in that lot.’

‘Thanks,’ said Tara, glad she didn’t have to step into the rain. It was drumming down so hard that it splashed back up, as though reversing its journey. The opportunity to talk
to the boy had been handed to her so easily, but she couldn’t think what to say. The very idea of playing detective was about as appealing as doing a naked dance in the rain.

And he wasn’t exactly Mr Chatty. It seemed unlikely he would be the one to begin a conversation. They stood there in silence for several minutes. There was no let up in the rain. Over by
the car park, Tara could see a man sheltering under a tree with his hood up.

Eventually, the boy spoke.

‘Do I know you?’ he said, eyes slightly narrowed, as he looked at her.

‘I, uh . . .’

Tara’s ability to speak had been snatched away as though by some malign magic. Did he recognise her from the riverbank? She prayed he didn’t.

The boy’s gaze took in her sports bag.

‘Oh, you go to Foxton Heath,’ he said. ‘You probably know my sister, Mel Stone? Melodie?’

Tara’s insides looped the loop. She suppressed a mad urge to laugh triumphantly at this conversational gift.

‘Yeah, we’re really good mates.’ The lie flew out of her mouth before her rational mind could stop it. He definitely didn’t remember meeting her on the river path; that
was clear.

So this was Melodie’s
brother
. They couldn’t have looked more different; she was blond, and he was dark and Mediterranean-looking.

‘I’m Leo,’ he said. She forced a knowing look, as though she’d heard about him, many times before. He had a quiet speaking voice and Tara had to listen hard to be able to
hear his words.

‘Tara,’ she said, heart thumping almost painfully hard in her chest. For a split second she’d almost lied and said ‘Karis’. She was glad she resisted. He’d be
bound to know Melodie’s real friends.

Leo frowned. It was obvious he was trying to remember his sister mentioning her. Tara’s breath caught. She was useless at lying, but Leo didn’t seem to have picked up on anything.
‘Was sure I’d seen you before,’ he said.

You have
, thought Tara.
Just not in the way you think you have.

Seizing on the advantage, she said, ‘How’s it going in Brighton then?’ even though her face was starting to heat up, treacherously. Of the many things she hated about herself,
her tendency to blush at the wrong times was high on the list. Her dad was Scottish and joked that his nation went from blue to white in the sun. Tara’s delicate pale skin stained crimson at
the slightest provocation. Dad called her his ‘apple-cheeked beauty’, which didn’t help a whole lot.

But Leo wasn’t looking at her. He stared ahead and sighed deeply. ‘Dunno,’ he said. ‘Good, I expect. We’re not exactly . . .’ He bit the rest of the sentence
back and looked away. ‘She’s probably having a great time. She usually gets the best out of situations, does our Mel.’

Tara forced herself to stay silent, hoping he would say more.

Leo glanced at her. ‘You don’t seem like her usual sort of friend,’ he said after a moment.

Indignation blasted through her like hot air. ‘Why? What’s wrong with me?’ she said.

‘Nothing – I mean, you’re . . .’ Leo was blushing too now.