Christos Tsiolkas - Barracuda

And he did. At the 1997 Australian Swimming Championships, Danny Kelly placed first in the two hundred metre men's butterfly.

It was in the showers that he had time to think. He thought through every moment of the race. It was mind. He understood for the first time exactly what Coach meant, what the great athletes and swimmers meant when they said it was all in the mind. It couldn't have been done without the strength and power of his body, but that strength and power was also inside of him. He was as strong and as powerful inside : the body and the mind were one, and so they could not break, they could not fail.

A stocky unshaven man came up to him after his shower, congratulated him and explained that he was a journalist for one of the Brisbane papers. He wanted to ask Danny a few questions. The man reeked, a sour odour, of too many cigarettes and curdled milk, but Danny eagerly answered the man's questions.

'And your name is Danny Kelly, that right?'

'Daniel Kelly,' he corrected him.

As the man scribbled in his notebook, Danny looked around for the photographers. There were none. But next time, next time he knew there would be photographers.

He was prepared this time on the plane for when the craft had to prove its strength, when the machine had to convince gravity that it was the more powerful. Again, as the plane rose he experienced the sensation of being dislodged, thrown away from his own body. Then he was one again, and again it was like swimming and there was a tingle in his belly and a tingle in his crotch.

This time, when the plane had climbed above the clouds and was floating in the canopy of sun and sky, Danny didn't look out the window. He was thinking of Wilco up in business class, thinking of when he, Danny, would be flying first class. But it would be his own money, he wouldn't be dependent on anyone. He would fly his parents first class to exotic places for their anniversaries, he would shout Regan trips to Europe and Theo trips to South America and the Poles.

It was then, with the snow of cloud beneath him, the sharpest, purest light in the universe on his face, that he let himself travel to the corners of thought and allowed himself to give shape to the heresy he had been holding back for days. He knew that he was strong, that he was fast, that he was the best. Body and mind. Inside and out. It was that he was convinced that one hundred metres was too short for him. He was strength, he was power; he laid a palm across his chest, where the muscles could unfurl at will, where they twitched, hungry and alive. The Coach had not let him swim that extra one hundred metres, because he thought that it would sap his energy, deplete him for his other race. Concentrate on the butterfly, that is your stroke. But he knew now that with that extra one hundred metres, he would have found the pace, he would have found the power. He could fly as high as he wanted to, he could touch the sun. He knew it. He looked out at the infinite cloud. Frank Torma had never coached an Olympian. That was why he couldn't give it back, that was why he had let Ben Whitter get away with it. Coach did not know what Danny was capable of.

Danny Kelly could be the best in the world. He knew he could conquer both strokes, it was inside him, it was a revelation written inside him, inked over his muscles, imprinted in his brain, etched into his soul. The butterfly was a given; the freestyle had always been his stroke. The thought brought a shot of guilt, a shock of illicit danger: the best coach would have known this, a better coach would have made it happen.

He shut his eyes. He was flying and he was swimming and it felt as one. He was swimming and he was flying into his future.

‘I AM SO SORRY. I JUST CAN’T forgive myself for not coming to see you.’

She has no idea how relieved I am to hear her say those words. We are in the courtyard of a bar off Lygon Street, it is a dark winter evening and she is shivering, but she wants to sit outside to smoke. It is the kind of place where there isn’t a house wine and the beer is all imported. I am warming my hands between my thighs. The wind bites, the cold is close to painful, but I don’t mind. It is the smoking that reminds me of the old Demet; it is the tight scissor grip that she has on her cigarette, the fierceness with which she drags on it, the way her fingers play with the packet between each smoke that brings her back to me.

‘I don’t care,’ I reply, smiling. ‘It doesn’t matter. In that place visitors make you feel your isolation more keenly. I always felt worse when Mum came, I always felt like shit afterwards.’

My words tumble into each other in my rush to convince her that there is no hurt, that I bear no grudge. That’s what I learned in there, that was the most important lesson: that I did something wrong and that I had to pay for what I did. You construct a ladder and you climb that ladder, out of the hell you have created for yourself and back into the real world. That is atonement, a word I discovered in there; it is in such places that the word resides and makes sense. And I am not there yet, Dem, I want to tell her, I haven’t got there yet. I have enough of my own guilt, I still have nights when sleep won’t come because I am reliving the piercing shame. I have enough guilt. I don’t need hers. I don’t want hers.

She takes out another cigarette, lights it, looking at me out of the corner of one eye. I want her to be sarcastic, to be sneering and opinionated and strong. I want the old Dem, I don’t want this polite stranger.

‘Luke visited, didn’t he?’

That’s more like it. There’s the old rivalry. He’s your best friend , she’d always say, but we’re soul mates .

‘Yeah, Luke visited.’

The first change I noticed is that she’s lost weight. She’s something I never thought she’d be: she’s fit. I’d place a bet that she’s working out, going to the gym. And that makes me want to laugh, that’s something I could never have imagined, after all the shit she used to give me about my training.

‘You’re working out, aren’t you?’

A resonant laugh comes from deep in her gut. It is so good to hear.

‘Yeah, I’m working out.’ She ruefully eyes the cigarette in her fingers. ‘But I’m still fucking fagging.’

I have to restrain myself from saying, Don’t stop, it is part of you — that fervent passion she has for the cigarette. It is a mark of her character and of her personality. I can’t imagine Demet without the fags. Something would be missing. The smoking centres her.

She’s cut her hair. It is a buzz cut, so short you can see her scalp. The explosion of raven curls, the mad mop, have all gone. The new cut suits her. Demet will never be pretty; now that’s an inadequate word for how she looks. The new hairstyle accentuates the blockish severity of her face, the strong ridge of her brow, the heavy hooded eyes, the sharp line of her nose, the prominent mouth, that mouth that dominates when you look at her. I haven’t seen her for years and I am struck by how none of the components of her face should fit together: everything — eyes, brow, cheeks, nose, mouth — seems oversized, too much. But that’s Dem, she is too much. And that’s what I love about her.

It feels good, I let that thought sink in, and I take hold of her free hand. ‘It’s really good to see you. I’ve missed you.’

I’m the one who should be apologising. For not once getting up the courage to call her to find out where she had moved to, for not once writing a letter to tell her that I hadn’t disappeared, that she hadn’t vanished from my thoughts. But I didn’t know if she ever wanted to see me again. No, that’s not true. I believed that there was no way she would ever want to see me again.