Page 10

December 29th

A momentary lapse, that’s all it was, fuelled by too much booze. Quickly, I scoop up the papers, put everything back and close the cupboard door. If I don’t act fast, I will only lose more hours, and I can’t keep doing this. But when I turn my head and see the notification letter again, I vomit on the carpet.

At the kitchen sink, staring at my reflection in the window, I can make out newspaper print smudged into my pale skin, the space around my eyes puffy, and my new short hair sticking out sideways, too blonde, too quirky. The hairdresser thinks I’m funkier than I am. You wouldn’t know me. My freckles have faded; no more rosy, baby cheeks; no more long dark hair. I am lean and muscular as a fox.

I will not let you be everything again. I repeat this to myself as I fill a soapy bowl and scan the courtyard. Sal is out there, chewing on bones. I want to sit with her and talk, but I turn from the window and scrub the sick from the carpet so hard my fingers sting. Half an hour later, I put the letter in my handbag and leave the flat.

The tube—so busy, as usual—clunks past where we used to live. Remember that big house? That leafy suburb? My school?You should, you followed me there, too.

The pressure from backpacks and bodies builds steadily as more people get on, and I feel a familiar twist inside. A red-faced man is looking at me—just a perv, probably. I avoid his gaze and look up at the posters above the seats. My face was on posters like these once. Do they tell you things like this in prison? Do you know you made me famous too?

Missing. Gemma.The words accompanied by an out-of-date school photo in which I had green, clear eyes, and a hesitant smile.

The red-faced man is still staring. I want to be someone who shouts at men like him, but even though my heart is racing and my fists are clenching, I stay quiet. I shut my eyes and imagine somewhere else: hot sand, emptiness. My default landscape. Why can’t I imagine mountains, or babbling brooks, or rain in Wales? I text Mum.

I’ll be another hour at least. Hope that’s okay.

She replies instantly.

Of course, Sweet pea. I’m making your favourite! x

I squeeze out at Goldhawk Road and head for the faded glory of the West London Victorian Bathhouse. It’s because of Mum that I started swimming. See, she’s not all bad, despite what you thought of her. Back when she was fed up with my post-you moods, she took me to the local community pool near the flat we rented. That pool wasn’t special like the Bathhouse, but there was something different about it. Transforming.

As it turns out, I’m good at swimming. If you hadn’t come along, perhaps I could’ve gone professional, spent my days blissfully happy in water. Instead, I moved to Barkingside and got a job selling holidays.

‘At least live with other people,’ Mum said. ‘Somewhere nearer the city, with other youngsters.’

She meant: somewhere with other youngnormalpeople, people who like to go out partying Friday nights, or who like theatre and restaurants and jazz.

‘Too expensive,’ I said. It wasn’t a lie.

‘At least live somewhere I can get to quickly. Not all the way out…there.’

She meant: live somewhere I can get to if you’re going to top yourself, somewhere with a good hospital nearby.

I want to ask her whyshecan’t live somewhere I can get to quickly, or why she can’t live with other people. But perhaps it’s a blessing anyway. This way, she finds it harder to invite me out for cocktails or shopping. And if I lived anywhere else, I wouldn’t have Sal. I often wonder if Mum still thinks I’m going to top myself, even now.

In the Bathhouse I take off my layers of winter clothing and get into the swimming costume that’s always in my handbag. My phone beeps before I have the locker closed. Nick again: I tell him I’m fine. How long will it take for him to realise there’s something wrong with me? How long before he realises I’m not who he thinks I am?

Going for dinner at Mum’s. I’ll text you after, promise. x

I add the kiss this time, and he responds immediately with a kiss of his own. Guess it doesn’t take much to fool someone. It even feels good. Could I spend a whole life with Nick like this? I shove the phone into my handbag, under the notification letter. You’ll squash any more beeps, I’m sure. I walk fast to the pool. Swimmers part to let me through, as if they can see I’ll die without this fix.

And then

the lowering in.

The release.

Oh!

No Nick. No you. No Flash Sale. No Mum. Just weightlessness. Just water. My drug. I even take pleasure in the sting of the chlorine.

‘I’m going to swim twenty laps every day,’ Mum said after we returned from Australia.

She raced me on the first lap and won, of course. She always won competitions between us; she engineered it that way. And besides, back then I was like a drowning camel. But she stopped swimming soon after we started. Maybe she only ever wanted me to do it: something other than mope around that flat all day. But now I’d beat her. I’m stronger, paler and more stubborn.

On that first day of swimming, I clutched at the side of the pool, breathless, loving it. Thinking about…nothing.It felt like danger. I stayed on while Mum went to work, I did twenty laps, and kept swimming for over an hour afterwards. It was hard and my arms ached, but that cool, stinging water running over my face and into my ears blocked you out. The water made me forget, made me think only of my legs kicking, my arms circling. It was so different from everything that was you. Nothing mattered in that pool. With you, everything mattered.