After the End(95)

“I’d like this one—if you don’t mind.”

She held my gaze and I guess she understood, because she smiled and didn’t ask why, just took it off the bed and gave it to me.

“Oh, I got you something!” Blair picks up her keys and disappears. She’s back in two minutes, carrying a big bag containing a plant and a handful of other things I can’t make out. “OK, so this is a bit cheesy, but . . .” She flushes, and instead of watching her unpack the bag, I find myself watching the color on her cheeks—the way her eyes are half excited, half apprehensive.

“May your new home be full of life.” She takes out the plant, a fern with light green fronds that dance in the breeze from the open window, and hands it to me.

“Thank you—it’s lovely.”

“There’s more.” Another blush, half-hidden by her hair, this time, as she leans forward to look into the bag. “OK. May you live in light and happiness.” She sits back on her heels and presents me with the next present, a Moroccan-style lantern with crescent-moon cutouts revealing the candle inside.

“This is amazing.” I look at her. “You’re amazing.”

The next gift is a saltshaker. I raise an eyebrow.

“So that life will never be bland.” Blair grins.

“Brilliant.”

A loaf of bread is given with the hope that my new home will never know hunger; a jar of honey to add sweetness to the hours spent here. Blair’s awkwardness fades, the color in her cheeks returning to normal.

“Last, but not least,” she says, producing the final gift. “May you never go thirsty.”

We drink the champagne out of highballs—I add wineglasses to the list of things I still need—and toast to new beginnings.

“To friendship,” Blair adds, raising her glass. We lock eyes for a second and now it’s me who colors, because the feeling that rose up inside me as she said it seemed a lot like disappointment.

“To friendship,” I echo. That’s all I want. I love Pip, and that’s not going to change. “Hey, I got my police checks back,” I add, as though I just remembered.

“Oh, great!”

“So I can help out with swim club this week, if you still want me to.”

“You bet we do.”



* * *





I follow Blair’s directions to the sports club on Sheffield and give my name to the woman on reception, who tells me the Challenge Swim Club runs in the smaller of the two pools. Mixed ability, Blair said. I wonder how much of my own training I’ll remember, and how easy I’ll find it to share that knowledge with others.

In the locker room I keep my T-shirt but change my jeans for swim shorts. I leave my shoes in a locker and head for the pool.

A sound stops me in my tracks, even before I see the water. A high-pitched cry you might take for distress, but which hollows my chest and makes me look to the wall for support. There’s another high-pitched cry, only it isn’t a cry at all, but a laugh. Another, and another.

Dylan.

The thought is there before logic can take over. I take a few steps more and come out poolside, and then my feet won’t move anymore. I expected a line of kids in matching suits, perched on the pool edge, waiting for their turn. I expected tumble turns and freestyle, butterfly and backstroke. Stopwatches and races.

Not this.

There are around a dozen kids in the pool, and at least as many adults. The children sit, or lie, in floating pillows, their heads pushed carefully out of the water. Some are motionless, their only movement the rise and fall of the water; others thrash their limbs wildly, splashing everyone in their orbit. By the side of the pool is a hydraulic hoist, there to help the children in and out.

Blair is in the pool. She sees me, and says something to another volunteer, before swimming to the steps. She’s wearing a blue Challenge Swim Club T-shirt over a one-piece swimsuit.

“You should have said,” I say, as soon as she reaches me. A tremor runs through my body.

“I didn’t think you’d come.”

“I wouldn’t have done.” My heart feels like it might stop, or explode, or . . . Dylan, Dylan, Dylan. “I can’t do this. I’m sorry.” I start walking toward the locker room.

“This was my daughter’s club.”

I stop. Turn back.

“My eldest child, Alexis. She was born with cerebral palsy and a ton of other challenges.” She gives a gentle smile, holding my gaze and stopping me from leaving. “She died the year Brianna was born. She was four years old.”

There’s a scream of delight from the pool. A teenage boy in a float jacket is being spun round and round by two volunteers.

“You never said.”

“I didn’t want it to seem like I was preaching. In grief, I’ve found you have to make your own journey.”

I wonder if Mom knows, and if Blair told her not to say anything.

“Alexis loved the water—it was her happy place. I started helping out when they were short of volunteers, and I never stopped.”

“Don’t you—” I stop.

“Find it hard?” She thinks about it for a moment, then shakes her head. “Not in the way you mean.” She looks at the pool and then at me. “Having kids isn’t a zero-sum game, Max.”