Probably John was comparing her goosebumps to the lovely constellation of water crystals on the nut-brown back of the girl in front. Three rungs higher, bum swaying smoothly, the girl’s dark hair hung down the line of her spine and from behind she was so pretty, so perfect, that you wanted to reach up in one seamless motion and wring out her hair like a soaked rope just to touch her, be part of her, to connect with something pristine and confident and sustained so fully by itself. The ladder’s bars were cold and her feet were squeaking on the steps and why was she heading up here anyway?
Diving like Moose taught her to do. But that wasn’t from a ten-metre platform. And would he be OK? And had she ever even liked John, really? Wasn’t she just distracting herself? That hurt all the more, though. The idea she’d only been playing at happiness, a stupid little-girl game.
She’d heard from someone who knew someone who knew someone that Sarah had found out about the thing she’d done ages ago with the trainee teacher on the golf course, which wasn’t even a thing anyway because he couldn’t keep it up, and it was ages ago now, back when she was a different person. Supposedly they were annoyed, Sarah and Co. were annoyed, annoyed at the fact she hadn’t told them direct, or else they thought that she was easy, which was crazy because she’d only properly slept with two people ever and they’d slept with loads, and that’s why they hadn’t phoned, and thinking about all of this made her nauseous. Sarah and Tracy weren’t nice people. The knowledge cut through her: they were not nice. And yet they were her friends, weren’t they, so that was evidence that she wasn’t nice either. What else could you draw from the facts? Why else did John not want her? Why, when it was finally all working well, did they look you in the eye and dismiss you? Why was she letting herself be dismissed? Why did she care?
Sometimes she felt she had no option but to destroy her father. A remark about his widening waistline or the stifling smallness of Brighton. She had no option but to nuke him straight off the map. There was something wrong with her and that was why she was being dumped for Sasha. Who wants to sleep with a stupid mean girl who doesn’t even know how to please a man in bed? She was getting dumped by a guy she should have dumped before he dumped her.
Every muscle was tight. The pads of her hands were wrinkled and soft. Her swimming cap was tight. She would book a flight to Spain tomorrow. She’d heard of an agency who could get you cheap ones at short notice. She had £215 saved up. Screw Margaret Thatcher. Margaret Thatcher had nothing to do with real life. Margaret Thatcher was a person other people had made up. Her cap felt very tight. She owed Moose £9. She could calculate. John couldn’t calculate. 215 minus 9 is 206. £206 was a fortune. Way too tight. She could go anywhere, surely, on £206?
She was at the top level of the diving tower. The high windows with their rounded tops made her think of churches. Through the few transparent roof panels an open sky was breathing.
A hairy man hurled himself off the board in a cannonball that quickly became a cannonsplodge. She heard the fat smack of a fleshy entry. The air was thick with chlorine. The diving board stuck out and out.
She would be splashless. Serene. Toes lined up. Ten little piggies. A thought about the Conservatives who’d been in the hotel this week and of the word that so perfectly described their old-school outrage — Why hasn’t my taxi arrived? Where are your other cognacs? — which was ‘aghast’. When not amused, be aghast.
And what were hers? Her private rules?
Connect with nothing. Be bored or spiky. Mock or ignore. Take aim at easy targets. Keep a distance, keep a space. Be weak and weak. Go to bed with fuckwits. Be mean to customers. Was this her? Was it? She thought it might be. She was, as her mother had once succinctly said, ‘a perfect little shit’.
The pretty tanned girl did an elegant dive. Now it was her turn. She thought of Samantha, a girl at school, and how Samantha had needed leather-and-metal ankle braces for a while, part of an orthopaedic corrective programme, and how around that time Sarah and Tracy were showing an interest in Freya, including her within their group, maybe impressed by her swimming, maybe noting her slightly improved looks, maybe appreciating her willingness to help with their homework — do it for them, basically. And Sarah and Tracy talked about Samantha’s spasticity. They said that if Freya wanted to hang around with them they needed to know if she was really actual friends with Spaz Sam.
A chance to advance and be accepted. Never spoke to Samantha again.
It was the things you chose not to look at, the pieces unexamined, that survived as boiled-down sensations, stomach pains, squirming memories that made you ashamed in the night.
Balance and height. Toes together. Do not baulk.
Moose talked about the Tank. Respecting the Tank and remembering there was nothing scary about the Tank. But the word Tank was not helpful. He might as well call it the Abyss or the Grave or the Nuclear Winter. Trying to impress John with a dive! Trying to avoid what he had to say. She turned away from the edge and walked back along the platform, squeezing past a man with huge hands. The man said ‘You OK?’ and she climbed down the ladder, felt broad ground beneath her feet. John was standing by the lifeguard’s chair, waiting, and although he wasn’t watching the tanned girl climbing out of the pool, she felt sure that was where his eyes wanted to be.
After getting showered and dressed Freya went upstairs. She joined him at a table overlooking the pool. The space didn’t deserve to be called a cafe. Everything about it was inconsistent with that uplifting continental word. The troll behind the counter was supervising half a dozen jaundiced cakes lying in an oblong plastic container, sick babies waiting to be rescued from this especially horrible ward, and thin brown coffee was dripping from the tap of a giant chrome cylinder beside the till.
‘Basically,’ he said, ‘I really like you and everything, but I think we’d be better off as friends.’
They could carry on as they were, he said, but he didn’t want to do that in case he hurt her, because he could tell she was a person who had quite a bit of hurt in her already, like issues about her mum or whatever, emotional stuff, and now her dad being sick, even though he was getting better, and he didn’t want to unbalance her further or anything because that would be shitty, wouldn’t it?
VI
MARTY CLARKE WAS speculating loudly as to what kind of sex life Thatcher might enjoy with Denis. It had started with Clinkie Hanson saying Arthur Scargill had her over a barrel — she was beaten now, she’d have to settle on the NUM’s terms — and that had set off a string of dirty puns from Jim Clarke, Marty’s brother, that climaxed in the inevitable one about Big Willie Whitelaw. Dan was leaning forward, weight on his elbows, eyes on the beer-soaked bar mat, trying to block all this out and hear what the radio had to say.
Mrs Thatcher is expected, within the hour, to greet journalists outside —
In advance of tomorrow’s crucial speech at the Conservative Party Conference, the Prime Minister has indic—