Water Born (3 page)

When I get to Mortimer Street, I glance behind me. Milton is walking twenty paces behind me. He sees me looking and looks down at the pavement again. God, things couldn't get any more awkward. I swing through my front gate and walk up the front path.

Dad opens the front door for me, like he always does, and Misty rushes out of the door in a blurry tangle of grey fur, craftily licking my knees and the back of my legs as she dances round me, her bushy collie tail swishing enthusiastically. Did Dad spot me out of the window, or has he actually been standing in the hallway? I've got a vision of him getting back in the morning, having dropped me at school, and taking up his post behind the front door. Standing there for seven hours. Just waiting.

‘Hello, Princess. How've you got on today?'

I don't know where to start, so I don't answer and walk past him into the kitchen, Misty following close behind.
She follows me because I'm her favourite, and because I'm likely to slip her a treat or two when no one else is looking.

Dad's ancient laptop is on the table. There's a file onscreen – looks like a table or something. I only glance at it on my way to the sink to get a glass of water, and I don't really register the heading until I'm reaching into the cupboard and turning on the tap. Then the words form in my mind, like a headline.

Death by Drowning
. That's what it says. What the hell?

Dad's followed me into the room. He casually closes the laptop lid, keeps his hand there for a little while.

‘You haven't told me how your day was,' he says quickly, and even though I know he'll go overboard, I tell him about school and my walk home.

‘Sit down, Nic. Sit down. You look pale.'

‘You're only saying that because of what I just told you. I'm fine now.'

‘They should close the school if it's too hot. If it's not safe.'

‘Dad, I'm fine. The world can't just shut up shop because it's a hot summer.'

‘I'm not saying that . . .'

‘Yeah, you are . . .'

‘I'm not. I just . . . I just want you to be safe.'

‘Dad, you've got to stop this. I'm as safe as anyone else is. Life isn't a hundred per cent risk free. I can't sit at home for ever, wrapped in a duvet . . .' I stop, suddenly aware of what I'm saying – remembering the weeks on end, before I got on the swimming team, when Dad did exactly that, ground down by another redundancy, another rejection,
another bill to pay. ‘I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Dad.'

He won't look me in the eye now. He's examining his hands like there's something interesting in the palm. ‘It's okay. I'll stop fussing. It's just . . . it's just that I care so much.'

‘I know.'

He looks so forlorn. I put my glass down and walk across to hug him.

‘I love you, Dad.'

‘I love you, too, Princess.'

It's too hot to hug, but we stay like that for a while anyway, neither wanting to be the first to let go.

‘Can anyone join in?'

Mum's in the doorway. She's got a T-shirt and shorts on, the ones she sleeps in. Must have just woken up – it's only an hour or so until her shift at the hospital starts.

‘Gosh, Nic, you look pale. Everything all right? Something happened?' This time I get the full medical once-over – pulse, temperature, feeling the glands under my ears. ‘Have you been drinking enough?'

‘Yes.'

‘Have another glass of water. It's so easy to dehydrate.'

‘I know. I know, okay?'

‘Sit down for a while. Or lie down. You mustn't overdo things. Skip training tonight.'

‘I can't. They're picking the team soon.'

‘Just one session.'

My phone pings in my pocket and I know, just know, it's from Harry. I hope I'm not blushing but I can feel an extra glow in my face. Whatever Mum says, I'm not
missing training today.

‘It's too important.'

She sighs.

‘Your health's important too, Nic. I don't want you turning up in A&E.'

‘I know, but I'm fine. If I don't feel right in the pool, I'll stop.'

‘Okay, but go and lie down on the sofa. I'll bring you something to eat and drink.'

I crash on to the sofa and flick the telly on. Misty tries to jump up and lie on top of me, but it's too hot and I shoo her away. She settles on the carpet next to me with a sigh, just within range so I can twiddle with her ear the way she likes. They're showing the tennis at Wimbledon. Above the sound of balls being hit and players grunting, I can hear Mum and Dad talking.

‘Sarita, did you see the girl, the one who drowned? Was she brought into St Margaret's?' Dad says.

‘What girl?'

‘Sammi Shah. She drowned at Turley Res.'

‘I don't know anything about it.'

‘Okay.'

Silence. Then, ‘Clarke, it's been seventeen years now. You've got to let it go.'

‘I can't.'

‘It's not good for you.'

‘I can't help it. I don't know if I ever will.'

The room is swamped with sticky heat, but suddenly I'm shivering.

THREE

‘
I
t can't be about me shouting at you. It's got to come from inside. Talk to yourself in the water. Be your own coach.'

Clive is giving us a pep talk before the final race for this session. He paces up and down the row, barking out his message, his words echoing off the tiled walls.

‘This is it. I want to see a great start from all of you. I want to see
commitment
.'

I turn round and inch towards the front of the block until my toes are curling over the edge. The heat outside, my dad's weird behaviour, the reservoir girl, even the knowledge that Harry is sitting watching me from his lifeguard's perch, all melt away. There is only this moment, the block beneath me, the water waiting, the air in between.

‘On your marks . . . set . . .' He blows his whistle to start us off. It rattles in my ears as I dive forward and then it's gone in the familiar busy, bubbling rush as I cut through the surface and am taken in by the water.

This is the best part of a practice session for me. It's not meant to be about beating the other girls, or trying to – it's about pushing for a better time than before. Trying to smash my personal best. But having the others swimming alongside boosts the adrenaline and of course I want to reel them in, overtake, surge ahead. Of course I want to be in front.

Talk to yourself. Be your own coach.

You can do this. You can do this. My own voice in my head, urging me on.

Through the oval lenses of my goggles I can see a line of darker tiles stretching ahead of me, dark blue in a sea of turquoise, like a path on the bottom of the pool, distorted a little by the movement of the water.

Come on. Come on.

I come up to the surface and now my ears are assaulted by the sounds of the world above – the splashing, the shouts, the reverberations of a busy, buzzing building.

I take six fast strokes before I twist my head round to breathe. I'm trailing behind Christie. Her feet are kicking spray into my face. Now it
is
about someone else. I don't want this turbulence, her second-hand water. I want to get out of her wake. I want to take her.

You can do it.

My muscles tense as I try to increase my power. My arms are stiff, like paddles. My hands slap on to the surface
of the water. I thrash my feet faster and faster.

Come on. Come on.

I turn my head to breathe again. She's pulling away from me. Either she's getting faster or I'm getting slower.

No! Don't let it happen!

I'm getting close to the turn now. One good breath, a couple more strokes and I tuck forward, using both arms to turn a somersault in the water, reaching back with my legs to find the end wall and push off.

I'm at the surface too quickly. To compensate, I increase my stroke rate. I can feel the tension in my arms and legs. I'm moving like a swimming machine, a robot, my muscles rigid and unyielding.

Do it! Do it!

I'm running out of breath too soon, having to tilt my head every third stroke, then every second. It feels like the air isn't going into my lungs. It's whistling in and out of my windpipe but having no effect, so I have to breathe faster.

There's clear water between me and Christie now. I'm furious.

You've let her get away! You're an idiot! A loser!

I'm so caught up with talking to myself, so angry at the way my body's responding, that the end of the pool comes as a surprise. My fingertips smash into the wall and I quickly brace against it to stop my head following. I gasp and take in water. It catches in the back of my throat and I'm coughing and spluttering like a fool as everyone else bobs quietly in the water, holding on to the edge or floating gently on their backs, getting their breath back,
letting their hearts slow down, basking in the luxury of staying still.

My throat's raw and sore where the treacherous water has tried to invade my windpipe. I try to inhale again and cough it out. I hawk up some phlegm, turn away from everyone and spit into the water.

‘What happened?'

I spin round. Clive is crouching down at the side of the pool, clutching his stopwatch and clipboard. I was in such a state at the end, I didn't even look at my time.

I prop my goggles up on the top of my head. ‘I don't know. I was trying to talk to myself and it just made everything worse. I got frustrated that Christie was ahead, got angry. Everything went wrong. My stroke, my breathing. I dunno. I was just rubbish. I couldn't do it. I just couldn't
do
it.'

I smack the water with the flat of my hand, splashing Clive, making him jump back from the side.

‘Hey!' he shouts, and I know I'm in trouble.

I can't deal with it. Nothing he can say is going to be harder on me than what I'm already thinking. I duck under the surface, wishing I was at the deep end so I could sink down to the bottom, stand there with a metre of water closing over my head. Instead I fold my legs in front of me and drift down so I'm sitting on the tiles. My anger is turning to self-pity now. Without my goggles, the chlorinated water stings my eyes, but at least it washes away the tears that are starting to come.

I hold my breath and look around me, up and down the line of bodies huddling by the end of the pool. Black
swimsuits and pale limbs. Skin scraped clear of hair. My thighs are lean, the muscles of my calves swelling gently outwards. I used to be really skinny and I'm still slim, but I'm stronger now. I like myself better this way.

I grab hold of my goggles and swimming hat and wrench them off my head. I was so bad today. So bad. I'm a swimmer now, that's who I am. If I don't have this, if I can't do it any more, what have I got? What's left?

My hair's tied up in a plait. I tug at the elastic holding it all together and run my fingers through, unravelling, freeing it, until it floats around me like a mermaid's. I move my head one way and then the other, and my hair swirls around me. And everything starts to feel right again.

This is where I belong. Today sucked, but it was just one race. It was just training. It's not spoilt for ever. I just need to do better next time.

I push against the floor and come up to the surface.

Clive is there, waiting, furious.

‘You're lucky it's the end of the session, or you'd be on a timeout right now.'

‘I'm sorry. I just want to win.'

His face softens.

‘It's okay. I know. And you will. Trust me, you will win, Nicola, but not like that.'

Up in the gallery Dad is gathering up his things. Even from this distance I can see the black storm clouds hanging over his head. It's going to be an uncomfortable ride home in the car.

I haul myself out of the water and start trailing towards
the changing room behind the other girls. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Harry climbing down from his perch. I don't turn to look at him, but I walk a little slower, all my attention on him as he walks along the side of the pool towards me. We meet at the corner.

‘Hey,' he says.

I look up, pretending that I hadn't noticed him.

‘Oh, hi.'

‘Bit of a temper tantrum you had going on there.'

I pull a face, feel myself blushing.

‘No,' he says, ‘I like it. I like a bit of . . . passion.'

The way he says it, it sounds like the dirtiest word in the English language. I'm sure my face is scarlet now.

I don't know what to say.

‘Okay. I've . . . um . . . got to go now.'

He laughs and pretends to block my way, then stands aside. I walk past him, cursing my gaucheness. Why didn't I say something smart back? I could've just said, ‘I bet you do,' and he would've thought I was sexy, sassy, instead of a bumbling, stupid kid. God.

My costume is hitched up round my bum. Do I leave it like that as I walk away? I can't. I pull the wet material down and as the elastic edge snaps back into place I hear Harry whistle appreciatively. I bet he thinks I did that deliberately. Well, I suppose it did make him look, didn't it?

‘So what happened?'

Dad's gripping the gear stick so tight his knuckles are white.

‘I dunno. I think I was trying too hard, and then when I started falling behind I just kind of panicked.'

‘You were over one and a half seconds slower than your last practice race.'

‘I know, okay? I know it was bad. It was just one race, okay? One bad race.'

I'm tired. I'm hungry. I don't need this right now. Seriously.

‘You shouldn't have been swimming today. Mum and I were right.'

‘Yeah, look, this isn't making it any better, you know? I just had a bad day, right? That's all it was. A bad day.' I wish I could stop the car right here and get out. I don't want to be stuck side by side with him, facing the third degree.

I fold the visor down on my side, but the evening sun is low in the sky now and the glare is still so strong that my eyes feel panicky in their sockets. The air outside doesn't seem to have cooled down at all yet. We've got both front windows down all the way, but the breeze wafting in is as hot as the air inside.

‘I wish the air-con worked,' I say.

Dad sighs. ‘We won't have the car at all soon. I'm putting it in the paper tomorrow.'

‘Tomorrow?'

‘No job, no car. Just can't afford it.'

The radio's on, as usual. Twenty-four-hour news.

‘. . . a post-mortem examination carried out on the body of teenager Sammi Shah has confirmed that she drowned. Police today stated that there were no suspicious circumstances and they are treating the death as a
tragic accident . . .'

Dad snorts and shakes his head. We're nearly home, just a couple of streets away. There are some kids playing on the pavement – not teenagers, maybe ten or twelve years old. As we drive towards them I can see they're having a water fight with some super-soakers. They're running in and out of the front gardens, crouching behind walls, bobbing up to blast a stream of water, and ducking down again. We draw level and one of them breaks for cover. He's smaller than the rest and his T-shirt is already drenched. He darts down the pavement, running alongside the car, screaming his head off. Two assailants appear from adjacent gardens and blast him in a twin-pronged attack. Silver plumes of water arc from the barrels of their blasters towards the kid. Towards us.

It's one of those moments when you can see what's coming, but it's still a shock. I scream as water hits the side of my face. It's cold, really cold. It ricochets off my skin, splashing the dashboard, the windscreen, my clothes.

Dad slams his foot on to the brake as the second blast hits him. It only catches the top of his shoulder, but instinctively he ducks down to see who's firing, and another volley hits him right next to his left eye.

Hot rubber squeals on hot tarmac. The front of the car has stopped, but the back's still moving, and for a moment there's that feeling that you get on a waltzer at the fairground, that sickening lurch as you're moving one way and the world's moving the other.

I'm holding on to the dashboard, squealing and
gasping. Dad's roaring like a wounded moose or something. The car comes to a standstill at a crazy angle in the road.

I stop screaming and let go of the dashboard. Dad's quiet, too, and for a moment I think that this is the end of it. We'll take a few deep breaths and then go on our way. But this isn't the end of it at all.

I look at Dad and there's a rage in his eyes that scares the hell out of me, a sort of cold fury that I've never seen before. He reaches for the door handle and yanks it open.

‘No, Dad! No!'

He's out and round the front of the car in a flash. He doesn't go for the either of the guys that shot us – he grabs their victim. He gets hold of his T-shirt at the back of his neck, except it's not just T-shirt. You can tell from the kid's face that he's scrunching up flesh in his big, tight, angry fist, too.

‘Dad, stop it!'

He lifts the boy off his feet with one hand. The other two are watching, open-mouthed. Their water blasters are down by their sides now.

‘What the hell were you doing? This is a road, with cars on it! You shouldn't . . .'

He's shouting into the face of the victim. He turns him round so that the kid can see the road. His face looms above mine as I sit in the car. His features are distorted with pain and fear.

‘Dad, he didn't even do anything!' I shout. ‘Put him down, for God's sake.'

Dad ignores me. I open the car door and clamber out. I
reach up and put my hands under the boy's armpits, trying to take some of his weight.

Dad bellows at me, ‘Get off him. I'm dealing with this!'

‘No, Dad,
you
get off him. He didn't even shoot us. He hasn't done anything.'

Tears are starting to leak out of the corners of the boy's eyes. A new dark patch is growing at the front of his shorts and a trickle runs down his legs. He's wet himself.

‘Dad, please, you're scaring me . . .'

‘Put him down.'

I turn towards the voice.

It's one of the gunmen. He may only be twelve, but his voice is steady and powerful – he means business, and his water blaster isn't hanging limply at his side any more. It's pointing straight at Dad. In the next garden the other boy is raising his blaster too.

‘Dad . . .'

Dad looks round now and sees what I see.

I so want Dad to put the little guy down and get in the car and leave. I realise I'm holding my breath.

He hitches his victim a little higher into the air, out of my grasp. The boy squeaks.

‘You pathetic little tossers. Do you really think you can threaten me . . . with water pistols?'

The world stands still for half a second, and then . . . they let him have it with both barrels. They aim for his face, and as the water cannons into him he swears and lets go of the boy, who plummets to the ground and lands in a crumpled heap. Dad brings his hands up to his face to try and protect himself.