Chapter 1Lane Three

You've been holding that mug for ten minutes," Nadia said, "and you haven't drunk anything." Ruth set it down. Steam came off the top in a thin curl. Her hair was still dripping onto the collar of her coat, and the café smelled of chlorine and scorched toast. "I was thinking." "You were counting." Nadia peeled the lid off her yoghurt. "You count when you're about to lie to me. Go on, then." "I'm not lying." "Ruth." She looked at the fogged window. Outside, two kids in school uniform were kicking a ball against the brick wall of the pool. "He's been in lane three all week," she said. "Ewan." "Don't say it like that." "Like what? Like it's a normal name belonging to a normal man?" Ruth pulled her bag onto her knee and unzipped the inner pocket. The swimming cap came out folded small, dark blue, its club badge worn to a grey smudge. "He left it on the bench on the fourteenth. I picked it up. I was going to hand it in at the desk." "That was a fortnight ago." "I know." Nadia put her spoon down. "You teach year tens for a living. You can say, 'Here's your cap, you're welcome.' Four words." "It isn't the cap." Ruth turned it over, feeling the soft grain of it. "If I hand it in at the desk, they drop it in a box and that's finished. If I hand it to him, I have to say something. And then he'd know I'd been carrying it about." "Heaven forbid a man should know you noticed him." Nadia leaned back; her chair gave a creak. "He asked after you, actually. Tuesday. He asked Maria who the woman in lane three was — the quick one — and Maria, being Maria, pointed at me. So I said, no, that's Ruth." Ruth's fingers closed round the cap. Beyond the wall the PA system announced a lane closure, the words flattened and echoey. She drank; the chocolate was too hot and she put it down again. "What did he say to that?" "'Right.'" Nadia shrugged. "He said 'right' and got in the water. But he did ask." Ruth stood up. She pushed the cap into her coat pocket, took it out again, and held it. Her towel lay under the bench, damp at the hem, and the changing-room door swung open and shut, letting out a gust of steam and feet. "Where are you going? You've already swum." "I know," Ruth said, and pushed through the turnstile into the pool hall.