Jonathan Lee - High Dive

In the shallow end of the pool John said, ‘Teach me your tricks, Freya Finch.’

Freya found that when she tried to explain to him how to improve his backstroke — when she tried to break down her instinctive actions into sensible-sounding words — certain technical points that had always been confusing to her began very slowly to unravel. Her underwater breakout, for example, had always been too quick and too messy. She always clutched the side of the pool and threw herself back with vigour, but only briefly slipped under the surface. She tended to emerge into her first stroke after just a couple of seconds, the water agitated by her exit. This was fine when she’d first begun competing in swimming meets. The traditional school of thought was that the underwater portion of the race didn’t matter much; every competitor started as badly as the next. But in her last few months of competing at County level Freya had seen a new breed of backstrokers coming through — guys her age like David ‘Blast-off’ Berkoff, whom everyone at Brighton Swordfish tipped for gold in Seoul. Freya’s swim team had been made to watch videotapes of Berkoff competing at the junior championship in Connecticut. A few coos and giggles. A boy you wanted to meet. In the taped race Berkoff had started with unbelievable speed, gliding forever underwater, a tightly streamlined yellow-capped torpedo of a boy, rapid little dolphin kicks propelling him on and on. Freya couldn’t work out how he did it, could not conjure any version of his magic.

Once she came up with a description to give John, though, dividing Coach Dean’s analysis into four or five simpler steps in non-technical language, she started to see how the theory might be put into practice. She started to see herself from different angles. Berkoff’s blast-off lost a little of its mystery.

She held on to the edge at the deep end of the pool. Light from high windows made the water glitter. She coiled herself into a backstroke push-off position. The ceiling was panelled and some of the panels were missing.

As she flew backwards she shaped her body into a needle, one hand covering the other. The movement was familiar, the same as always, but now, as her body found its form under the surface, she made sure that the tiny bumps of her almost-biceps actually squeezed her ears. She whipped fast with her dolphin kicks, focused on her feet, kick-kick-kick-kick-kick-kick-kick, and they lasted longer than was normal. She shifted into a flutter-kick she’d never done before. One, two, three. Seemed to be under for ages. With her right arm still stretched in the needle position she flexed her left wrist a little, just a little, having to force herself out of the habit of keeping it straight, so it wrapped around the water and moved into the stroke, slow motion, piece by piece, yes. With her bodyline still long, her torso feeling steely, she found she could slip up through the skin of the water at a more slender angle than before — begging for air now, desperate for it — the liquid feeling quiet and thin. Out into the clamour. Gasping. She couldn’t believe how few strokes it took to complete the length. The wall came too quickly. Her fingers bent back.

‘Awesome stuff, Freya Finch.’

She steadied her breathing and hauled herself out of the pool, pulled her goggles down around her neck and took her swimming cap off. She sat beside him, legs dangling in the water. Their feet were fluttering ghosts.

‘Here,’ he said, smiling. She inclined her head towards him and he kissed her ear. His ear-kisses were dumb. She loved them. Dumb. She put one arm around his shoulders. Put the flat of her other hand on his chest, the hardness of it, a few hairs at the breastbone that looked both old and new, foreign and familiar, squiggles of Arabic script. It was dumb. Even in here she could feel the heat building up behind his skin. She’d spent some time looking at his front, his back, bedding tangled around their intertwined legs, and had never managed to find a single pore. He didn’t sweat when they kissed or touched each other. No part of him seemed to evaporate, no hints left behind, but in the moment you were with him the heat was yours. Clothes fell away, problems fell away. It couldn’t last. He was Surfer John! Dumb.

Two girls walked past, their pale feet slurping on tiles. One of the girls glanced down at Freya. Her breasts were large. In a bad painting, perhaps even a painting by John, melons would be the suitable fruits. It was Sasha from the hotel.

‘You!’ Sasha said.

Freya responded in kind. She didn’t like Sasha. She was one of those girls who only gave her energy to men. Instead of greeting John with a pronoun and an exclamation mark, Sasha touched his naked back and stooped to kiss his cheek.

‘So you guys …’ Sasha said uncertainly.

‘Swimming,’ said Surfer John.

Sasha smiled at them like come wouldn’t melt in her mouth. ‘Cool. This is Claire.’

‘Sure, I remember.’

Freya said hello, niceties were exchanged. With her carefully shaped eyebrows, Claire had no choice but to look surprised.

‘Yeah. Catherine loved that movie, by the way.’

‘Cool,’ John said.

‘We should all go out together again.’

John considered this. ‘Cool,’ he said.

‘Bye then.’

‘Bye.’

‘Yeah.’

When Sasha and Claire had trotted away, she and John sat in silence. She edged closer to him and touched a jewel of water on his back — one of the ones Sasha hadn’t ruined. It started to break. It ran down his spine. He shifted, annoyed. He stood and squeezed the ends of his shorts. A stream of water hit the floor.

‘Been hanging out with Sasha, then?’

‘There was a group,’ John said.

She shook her head. So many names. What did it mean to live in a world where you lost track of all these names?

‘You’ve got nothing to worry about there,’ John said.

‘I’m not worried.’

John shrugged. ‘There’s no problem, then.’

‘So you haven’t … I’m only asking out of interest.’

‘Listen,’ John said. ‘Nothing like that. But you know I don’t want anything serious, right, Frey? I mean, you don’t either. You’re great. We talked about this.’

He was doing that thing everyone in Brighton seemed to do: confusing a conversation they’d had with themselves with a conversation they’d had with her.

She shook her head again. He was dumb. The argument was dumb. Pears and doughnuts and surfboards. When the light of John’s attention was settled on you, everything was warm. When it strobed elsewhere you felt incredibly cold.

Did he want to have dinner together tonight?

That would be great, but probably not, he was helping his cousin with something. She was mental, it was tricky. Which was a shame, because Freya had bought all the ingredients for shepherd’s pie, his stated favourite, her mum’s old recipe, and was thinking she’d cook it in Chef Harry’s kitchen — ruffled potato peaks, Worcestershire sauce dashed into the meat, simple and warm and homely.

The next day preparations for Mrs Thatcher’s arrival went into overdrive. Hordes of special brandy glasses had arrived from Kent. Seven boxes of napkins from Scotland. Staff were given detailed briefing packs containing bios for key guests, starch for the collars of their shirts, and reminders on how to say Hello. The conference had been going on since Monday but tomorrow and the next day were when the important speeches would happen and the second wave of important people would turn up. One of her father’s new catchphrases — ‘Got to cut down on unforced errors’ — was getting a lot of airtime. Sometimes he elaborated on it with words about McEnroe, straight sets. A slipped shower head had concussed a guest on the second floor, Barbara had inflicted far-reaching injuries on a PR person, and a junior minister had been found asleep behind the bar at breakfast time, his pleated cummerbund draped over his eyes. Other than that, everything was fine. Since the cummerbund incident, the minister had been moving around the hotel gingerly, quietly, like a little girl who’d been told not to spoil her best dress.