Jonathan Lee - High Dive

Her father was back home now. He was spending two or three hours in the hotel each day and going to bed by eight o’clock each night. Eight was a child’s bedtime but he was better, less pale. Standing up straight and walking without wincing. Fine. He was fine. He was counting down the days to Mrs Thatcher’s arrival. Less than five days! Less than three days. Staring out of windows seemed to be a new and involved hobby of his.

She yawned and wondered if John was her boyfriend. There seemed to be movement on the matter. She had bought him a new white T-shirt which bore eight words in raised grey lettering: I AM THE WRETCH THE SONG REFERS TO. She was pouring a lot of imagination into the minor nightly lies she told Moose to account for her whereabouts. He had no great problem with staff romances, but she was pretty sure he’d disapprove of one involving her. Exhaustion, though. Complacency. Her string of alibis was losing the taut quality of truth. Maybe she’d just tell him, get it over with. Maybe she’d just say, ‘Get over it, Dad.’ A girl like Sarah made no effort to conceal this stuff: I am a woman; I am a sexual being; I suck cock. The thought of your dad knowing this, though. On balance she’d rather die in a pit of irate snakes. Plus she’d not yet sucked John’s cock, or any other cocks. Putting a penis in her mouth was on her to-do list, definitely, but it was positioned somewhere between Visit Newcastle and Try the Steak Tartare.

She was doing a few double shifts, saving money and getting the Grand ready, searching for a succinct explanation for why she felt a happiness now. This thing with John was not love, it could not be love, but it was something, and that was the beauty of it. She still held a desire to travel, but she held that desire more casually now. Why not stay based in Brighton a while? Going to new cafes and bars, producing notes on the proper set-up of rooms. The work wasn’t interesting but there were small satisfactions in getting it done. Possibly anything could become an art if you took the time to do it right.

At home, in the early evenings, before slipping out to meet John, she cooked risottos or soups for her dad, pouring leftovers into old Hellman’s jars. The jars had half-peeled labels (‘Hell’; ‘man’; ‘llma’) and she didn’t respond to Susie’s notes. Seeing Susie again would remind her how weak she’d been. Why had she agreed to let that blond boy into the hotel? The occasional first-thing-in-the-morning thought: got to find a way out of that problem. Too much to do, though. The last of Susie’s messages had said: ‘Sebastian will be by the cook’s entrance 10 p.m. Friday SHARP.’ She imagined Sebastian looking over Susie’s shoulder as this was written, twanging his green braces with a concentrated calm, insisting on the capital letters without pausing to think that they would make the word look blunt.

Swimming again. She and John went to the pool together in the early mornings. He had a Volkswagen of which he was disproportionately proud. ‘74 Scirocco’ apparently. The roof rack was decked out with a complicated array of belts and ropes. The car was apparently destined to become a modern classic. She asked him if the definition of a modern classic was a vehicle that started three times out of ten. He told her this issue was unrelated. He owned the car and his surfboard and seemingly nothing else. He still lived with his parents. They had money. They resented having paid for his fine-art foundation course. She had seen some of his art now and could understand, in part, their resentment. None of it was fine and a lot of it didn’t seem like art. An apple that resembled a pear was the best of his paintings. The apple-pear (‘papple’ he’d said) appeared at breast height on an Asian body. It half concealed a nipple. The other boob was obscured by a doughnut. But he called it art, and that was probably what mattered, and despite what his parents seemed to think John wasn’t lazy at all. He did more shifts at the hotel than anyone else. He threw himself into cold water. His readiness to exercise and to sit in easy silence afterwards were two of the things she liked about him.

It felt good to be swimming so regularly. She was reclaiming some lost part of herself. It was like finding money in an old pair of jeans. It was like discovering the jeans were actually pretty excellent. It was surprising how much fun swimming could be when there was no one shouting at you to go faster, no one telling you to tighten your technique, just the warm smooth joy of moving from wall to wall.

Long-axis drills, girls!

Streamline, Finch, S-T-R-E-A-M-L–I-N-E.

Focus on the blast-off! Dolphin kicks! Doll, phin, kicks!

A one-metre breakout? I’ve seen ping-pong balls stay under longer.

Which never made any sense, actually, because why would you bring a ping-pong ball into a pool?

John treated Freya like she was a swimming genius. This she also liked. He asked for advice despite his own proficiency in the pool. She could see why people retreated so deep into relationships, forgetting to bother much with friends. There was a kind of creative pressure that came with shutting other people out, even if you weren’t part of a perfect match. You could begin to enjoy a new sense of privacy. Watching TV with John. Being underwater with John. Being on the floor of a room in the Grand.

She’d told him at the end of his shift to walk straight up the stairs, casual. She waited for him on the landing. It was important that she control this small part of the process. Trimmed sunflowers in shapely vases sat on side tables. Little oil paintings looked sticky in their complicated frames.

As soon as she saw him she knew he was excited. Flushed face, sliding eyes. He looked older at work than he did at play. The white shirt and dark jacket never looked neat, exactly, but the attire suited him and he was clean and soft in the eyes, a lack of knives, a hint of stubble on his chin. The skirt she was wearing was faint and light against her legs.

They slipped into the room. John was wearing his sporty wristwatch with a fabric strap. She didn’t like it. His skin carried that lovely fresh cucumber smell. He pressed her against the wall and got onto his knees. Edged her knickers down slowly, a little left and a little right, until they stayed taut around her calves, a thin thread of wetness in the cotton. He began to kiss her there. She didn’t really know what he was doing. He didn’t really know what he was doing. She buckled a little in the moment where he found her clitoris with his tongue, but he lost his place soon enough, like a person reading a book on a beach, all elbows and breeze and no focus. She tried to picture the ocean between the curtains, to make herself come like she could when alone, but in the end she settled for a small fake shiver, a tremor of half-pretended pleasure, and he looked up at her with a smile that was almost shy, an attitude of glad relief. On the apricot rug he moved inside her. It lasted a couple of minutes longer than before. His shoulders felt huge in her hands. His movements were too fast but the room was bright and thrilling. Crisp linen, strange bed. Secrets. Slow down. She felt confident and composed as she stood naked by the window, fastening her hair and watching the sea. She sat back in an elegant chair — pure skin, he wanted her. She understood for a moment that the hotel was gorgeous. They took a bath together, John’s foot between her legs. Tried to make love in the bath but actually that just didn’t work. She would ask Sarah, if Sarah ever got back in touch, if there was a way of doing it right.

On the way out of the room there was a moment of horror. She looked up and saw Marina coming round the corner. Marina’s eyes met hers and flitted to John and with a quick smile she kept on walking. This was bad, seriously bad, a pit of irate snakes.