Swimming Lessons(3)

“He didn’t though,” Nan said. “He just thought he did. It’s probably his age or the concussion.”

“Yes,” Flora whispered. The wind splattered rain at her, and she ducked back inside the bathroom, leaning towards the window to keep the phone signal strong.

“Flora, are you still there?” Nan said into her ear.

“Still here,” Flora said. “I’m coming to the hospital. I’ll pack a bag and get the next train.”

“No, don’t do that. Dad’s sleeping. I was hoping they might discharge him tonight, but it’s too late for that now. It’ll be tomorrow morning after someone from the mental health team has seen him.”

“The mental health team? What’s wrong with him?”

“Flora, calm down,” Nan said. “They’re just ruling things out. It’s probably a urinary tract infection. Come over tomorrow. I’ll meet you at home and we can talk.” The Swimming Pavilion: home. They both still called it that, although neither lived there now.

“I want to see him.”

“You will, in the morning. Make sure you check the bus timetable for the ferry. Don’t get stuck like last time.”

Flora had forgotten her sister’s irritating habit of thinking of everything that anyone might require.

When they had said good-bye, Flora put her phone on the side of the sink and brushed her teeth. As she turned to go, she knocked her mobile and it fell into the toilet with a plop.


The light was on in the main room—kitchen, bedroom, and sitting room—but Richard, who must have got up, was now back under the covers with his eyes closed. The dirty plates had gone from the floor and were stacked on the table, the remains of the food scraped into the bin. In her food cupboard Flora found a box of Rice Krispies and dropped her phone inside. She sat on the sofa, trying to imagine her father broken and bruised in a hospital bed, but she could only see him wiry and brown, striding beside her over the heath, or showing her another book he’d found. She thought about her mother walking around Hadleigh right now, or sitting in a shop or a pub or a café. It made her hands shake and the creature in her stomach flip over. And then she realised that her mother wouldn’t be in any of those places; she would be waiting for them at home.

Flora watched Richard sleeping. There was no noise of wind or rain in the main room. The ceiling bulb shone full on his face and he looked different without his glasses, not just younger, but blanker, more unformed. She kneeled beside the bed and scrabbled underneath it for her suitcase.

“Who was that?” Richard said, opening one eye.

“No one,” Flora said, tugging at what she hoped was a handle.

“Why are you wearing that? Isn’t it a tablecloth? You must be bloody freezing. Come back to bed.” He lifted up the duvet to reveal his torso.

“Oh,” she said, “I’d forgotten about that.”

“What?” Richard craned his neck forwards to stare at his body. He clawed with his free hand on the shelf below the bedside table and brought up his glasses. When he put them on, he gasped in mock surprise. Between the brown hairs that covered his chest and flowed from his belly button was an anatomical drawing of his insides—ribs, sternum, clavicle, the start of his pelvis, and the wrapped snake of his intestines—all in indelible black felt-tip. “You have to come back to bed.” He leaned over to pull her towards him. “I don’t have any arms or legs yet. You need to finish your drawing or I can’t go back to work.” He smiled.

“Did you know it’s nine thirty?” Flora said, giving another yank on the suitcase handle and toppling backwards onto the carpet.

“Nine thirty? In the morning?” Richard dropped the duvet.

“No, in the bloody evening,” Flora said.

Richard reached out again for the shelf below the bedside table. This time he brought up his phone plugged into his charger, and Flora felt a flash of irritation not only that he had remembered to charge it but also that he had been sensible enough to put it somewhere safe.

He gave a long whistle. “Nine thirty. Maybe it’s nine thirty tomorrow and we missed the whole of Saturday. Work is going to be really pissed off with me.”

Flora gave up on the suitcase, went to the drawer where she kept her underwear and rooted through it.

“Is everything all right?” He sat up in bed to watch her.

“It was Nan,” Flora said. “On the phone.”

“Your grandmother?”

“Nanette. My sister.”

“I didn’t know you had a sister. Older or younger?”

“Five and a half years older,” Flora said. She dumped a handful of knickers and bras in the middle of the floor. She returned to the chest of drawers to go through her jeans and jumpers.

“What did she want?”

“I have to go home.”

“Right now? As in, this instant?”

“Yes, right now,” she said as she dropped another pile of clothes on the first and turned to him. “As in, immediately. Daddy’s been taken to hospital, and I need you to get up so I can get my suitcase from under the bed.”

“Daddy?” Richard said.

“Yes. Gil, my father. Do you have to repeat everything I say?” Flora stood with her fists on her hips. Richard got out of the bed, found his pants and jeans, and pulled them on. He bent to get her suitcase and sat on the side of the bed, watching her pack. The case had belonged to her mother and was made of blue cardboard, with rounded corners. Flora was facing away from him, but she could feel Richard’s mind working.