Christos Tsiolkas - Barracuda

'Yeah,' I answer my great-aunt Rosemary, 'I think I miss it.'

She snorts, loudly. 'Course you do. It's your home.'

It is pitch-black when I get home. Clyde is on the phone but he interrupts the conversation, 'Just a moment, Dan's home', and kisses me on the lips and tousles the wet hair plastered flat to my brow. I go through our cluttered living room to the kitchen but he calls out, 'Hang on, Dad wants to talk to you.'

He puts the phone on speaker and Alexander's voice booms, 'Hello, mate, how are you?'

'I'm good, thanks, Alexander.'

'I'm glad, I'm glad.'

The conversation is awkward but not unpleasant: distaste for small talk, along with a general reticence and withdrawal from the world, is something Alexander and I share.

As always when talking to Alexander, I am disconcerted by the careful correctness of his accent. I had mistaken him for English on first meeting him and he had explained diffidently that it was a product of being sent off to an English public school as a young boy. I had expected everyone in the city to sound like my granddad Bill, but in those first few weeks I rarely heard that particular accent. Ruth, Clyde's mother, also has an accent I had never heard before, a soft and musical lilt that she explained came from growing up in the Borders.

Except Great-Aunt Rosemary. I walk into the kitchen; a weariness has returned to my step. The landscape of accents has reminded me, once more, that I am a stranger here.

The laptop is on the table; beside it is an envelope from the Home Office, addressed to me, the Royal coat of arms in its top corner. I open the letter. Its language is brusque, officious and unemotional as it details in a few short sentences that my application for an extension to renew my working visa requires yet another interview. There are still concerns regarding my application for residency. I reread the two short paragraphs. The weariness now rises like a tide, I am flooded by it, the taste of it bile in my throat. I shudder at the thought of having to explain myself once again, to convince some suspicious bureaucrat that I am not dangerous, not a risk. I sit and angrily jab buttons on the laptop keyboard to log on to my hotmail. There is just junk and I am about to click off when I notice that one of the messages is from Theo.

It is very Theo, dry and concise. He informs me that Regan is pregnant, that we are going to be uncles but that he doesn't think much of the bloke and doesn't think he's going to be around for the baby. Hope you are well, Dan, give my best to Clyde . I hear Clyde saying goodbye to his father, and quickly crumple the Home Office letter into a ball; with the other hand I shut down the computer screen.

Clyde comes up behind me and starts massaging my shoulders, his chin rubbing my hair. I force myself not to move, willing myself not to give away that I don't want his hands near me. I use all the skills I learned from that long-ago otherworld of swimming to be still and tame my breathing. I don't give anything away.

Clyde kisses the top of my head and leans against the window sill. 'What did the letter say?' His voice is cool, but I know he is desperately keen to hear me say that my visa is approved, that it won't be long before I am a resident.

I shrug. 'Nah, it was nothing, just some guff warning me to advise them if my details change.'

He says nothing, but the slight drop of his chin reveals his disappointment. I breathe, reach for his hand, squeeze it; then I have to let it go.

'Dad wants us to go with him and Wanda to the Greek Islands this summer. I said to him that you weren't into the water, that maybe we should think of somewhere else instead?'

There it is again, I think spitefully, that damn ease with which the Europeans collect the world. 'Yeah. I don't think it would be right for me to see Greece before Mum does.'

Clyde is surprised. I can see a belligerent set to his mouth. But all he says is, 'OK, we'll go when your mum and dad come over.'

I can't control my breathing, I can't settle it. I'm not sure where the fury and meanness are coming from. To bring me back, to stay the anxiety, I repeat silently, again and again, Clyde's too good for me, the man is too good for me.

'Sorry?'

He's said something and I haven't been listening.

'Wanda said that she might have a job for you. It's just for a few months, working with teenagers with acquired brain injuries; she thinks you'll be great.' Clyde is rushing through the words, and now I am conscious of his nervousness, his unease. 'She knows the people who run it, she says, she's talked to them about you. They're fine that you've only got a temporary working visa.'

All Clyde's friends and family want to make it normal for him and me. They want to find me work, they want me to lead a real life.

'Sounds good.' I nod. 'I'll talk to her.' I know Clyde, I can tell there's something more he needs to say.

'There's just the wee matter of a police check. They'll need to do a check as you'll be working with kids.'

'Then I'm not going for it.'

Clyde tries to hold me. 'You'll be alright. Wanda can talk to them, it won't be a problem.'

'No.' I say it with such force that he steps back. 'I don't want Wanda to fucking know, I told you. I'm not doing it.'

Now it is Clyde who is slowing his breathing, reining in his words. I turn back to the laptop.

'OK, Dan. No bother.' He touches my shoulder again. I let him. 'How was Rosemary?'

I breathe out. 'She's a real nice lady. She wants to meet you.'

Clyde is smiling again. As he saunters out of the kitchen, he says over his shoulder, 'Of course, of course she does, she'll see me so often she'll get tired of me. Linda and Brendan have invited us for dinner, that OK?'

'Sure, that's fine,' I answer weakly.

He has turned on the telly in the living room; I can hear the news. I smooth out the paper bunched in my hand, reread the words and then screw it up even tighter than before. I throw it into the bin, and go into the next room to sit on the sofa next to Clyde.

The wind is howling outside, the rain incessant. I sit next to Clyde, who is happy and at rest in Glasgow, and I disappear into watching the television. And I know, of course I know, that it is time to go home.

The start of the day and the end of the day, they were all that mattered. The last thing Danny did every night was to set his alarm for four-thirty the following morning. He did this without fail, even though his body had no need of the alarm; he always woke up before it went off, but setting it was part of the routine. He always set it on buzz: he didn't want snatches of lyrics or insistent rhythms seeping into his brain and clouding his focus.

His mother was always up, with a small breakfast prepared for him. If his father was away driving, she would take him all the way into the city to the pool. 'I don't mind doing it,' she'd say to him. 'This early in the morning there's no traffic, it's a breeze.' When his father was at home, she would drive Danny to the station.

From six to eight a.m. he was in the water with the squad, Torma marching up and down the side of the pool, bellowing instructions and dishing out insults. And, very occasionally, words of praise. In those two hours, the water and Danny as one, he was flying.

As he would fly again after school, when training resumed. That was what was real, the substance and worth of the day; the rest was the in-between, a thicket of wasted time through which he had to struggle. The in-between was school.