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  For Alex Page, my swimming sister

  CHAPTER 1

  Step out of Brixton underground station and it is a carnival of steel drums, the white noise of traffic, and that man on the corner shouting, “God loves you,” even to the unlovable.

  “Tickets for the Brixton Academy tonight,” yells a ticket tout at the station entrance. “Buying and selling, tickets for the Brixton Academy!” Commuters shake their heads at promoters and preachers who try to thrust leaflets into their clenched hands. You push through the crowds and walk past the Rastafarian selling incense and records outside Starbucks. Across the road is Morleys, the independent department store that has stood on the street for years. “Love Brixton” glows in neon lights in the nearby window of TK Maxx.

  Today spring flowers bloom in buckets at the flower stand: daffodils, tulips, and fat peonies. The florist is an old man in a dark green apron with soil under his nails and a gold chain around his neck. Whatever the weather, he sells “Sorry”s and “I love you”s at a reasonable price. Wrap it in brown paper and tie it up with ribbon.

  Next to the station is Electric Avenue: it heaves with people and market stalls selling everything from vegetables to phone chargers. The air smells of sweet melons and the tang of fish. The fish lie on beds of ice, turning it from white to pink throughout the day and reminding you that you should never eat pink snow either.

  Market traders fling prices across the street at each other, discounts thrown like Frisbees. Catch it quick and throw it back.

  “Three for a tenner, threeforatenner.”

  “Don’t miss out, three for a fiver, THREEFORAFIVER.”

  “Three for a fiver? I’ve got five for a fiver!”

  On the other side of the street Kate walks quickly home from her job as a journalist at the Brixton Chronicle. She doesn’t have time to examine vegetables. Or maybe she just wouldn’t know what to look for. It may be spring, but Kate is living under a cloud. It follows her wherever she goes, and however hard she tries she can’t seem to outrun it. She weaves through the crowds, desperate to make it back to her house and to close the door behind her and climb into bed. When she is not at work, her bed is where she spends most of her time. On the street, she attempts to block out the sounds around her, trying not to let them fill her up and overwhelm her. She keeps her head down and focuses on the pavement.

  “Excuse me,” she says, stepping past a plump elderly woman without looking up.

  “Sorry,” says Rosemary, letting Kate pass. She watches the back of the young woman hurrying away—the woman is petite with a midlength light brown ponytail flicking behind her with the speed of her walk. Rosemary smiles, remembering what it was like to be in a rush. At eighty-six, she rarely goes anywhere fast. Instead she carries her shopping and walks slowly away from the market and toward her flat on the edge of Brockwell Park. She is dressed plainly but neatly in trousers, comfortable shoes, and a spring mackintosh, her thin, wavy gray hair pulled back from her face and secured with a clip. Over time her body has changed to the point that she barely recognizes it anymore, but her eyes are still the same—bright blue and smiling even when her mouth isn’t.

  Today is Rosemary’s shopping day. She has made the rounds at all her favorite shops and stalls, said hello to Ellis the fruit and veg man, and collected her weekly brown bag of food. She has popped into the secondhand bookshop run by Frank and his partner, Jermaine. The three of them chatted for a while, Rosemary sharing the window seat with their golden retriever, Sprout, and looking along the shelves for something new or something she might have missed last week. She likes stopping there and breathing in the musty old smell of hundreds of books.

  After the bookshop, Rosemary steps inside Brixton Village and is hit by the smell of cooking spices and the noise of people talking and eating at tables in the passageways—the same noises and smells she has become accustomed to through her weekly visits. The market is airy and some restaurants provide blankets that people drape over their shoulders or laps as they eat. Strings of lights hang from the high ceiling, making it feel like a Christmas market even in the spring.

  To Rosemary and her friend Hope, whom she meets here for a weekly catch-up and slice of cake, it’s still Granville Arcade, the only place where Hope could find the Caribbean foods she so missed when she first moved to Brixton when she was twelve. It is now filled with independent restaurants, shops, and stallholders. The change still unsettles them but they like the coffee shop where the young barista knows their orders and starts making them as soon as he sees them approaching through the window. And the cake is delicious. Hope speaks proudly about her granddaughter, Aiesha, and her daughter, Jamila—busy as usual with work. When Jamila passed her final medical exams, Rosemary had sent her flowers with a card that read, “Dear Doctor . . .”

  Hope and Rosemary reminisce about when they worked in the library.

  “Do you remember the first time Robert plucked up the courage to ask you out?” says Rosemary with a laugh. Hope’s husband, Robert, had been a bus driver before retiring a few years ago, and when they were both young he would visit the library every few days after his shift, looking around eagerly for Hope’s hourglass figure.

  “It took him long enough,” Hope says, laughing. “I’ll always remember how you used to disappear up a ladder and stack books when he was there so he’d be forced to speak to me.”

  The two women chuckle together, both of them relishing this part of their week. But now Rosemary’s feet hurt and she is ready to be home.

  “Same time next week?” says Rosemary as they part, hugging her friend and realizing that at sixty-eight, Hope, too, is now an old woman. She squeezes her a little tighter—to Rosemary she will always be the cheerful young girl who started at the library when she was eighteen and who Rosemary took under her wing.

  “Same time next week,” says Hope, giving a final wave as she turns off down the street to collect Aiesha from school (the favorite part of her day).

  Now, Rosemary passes the queues for the bus stops and crosses the junction where the old cinema stands on the corner, the names of this week’s films spelled out in white letters on the black board. Opposite is a large square where elderly men sit in chairs and smoke while teenagers skateboard around them.

  As she gets farther away from the station, shops turn into terraced houses and blocks of flats. Eventually she reaches the Hootananny, the rickety old pub famous for its live music. A strong, sweet smell floats from the benches outside where people sit and drink pints and smoke. Here she turns left and follows the road that wraps around the edge of the park toward the mid-rise building where she lives.

  The lift, often broken, is working and she is relieved.

  Rosemary has lived in the flat on the third floor for most of her life. She moved there with her husband, George, in 1950 when the building was newly built and they were newly married. The front door leads straight into the living room, where the most noticeable thing is the bookshelf that runs the full length of the right-hand wall.

  The kitchen next to it fits a table, two chairs, and a television that rests on the washing machine. When Rosemary has unpacked her shopping, she crosses the living room, opens the doors, and steps onto the balcony. Her navy swimsuit hangs from the washing line like a flag. There are plants out he
re: just a few potted lavender, nothing too extravagant—it wouldn’t suit her. Rosemary can see Brockwell Park stretching ahead of her, taking her far from the noise and the crowds at Electric Avenue.

  Spring is in bloom and the park wears a new green coat. There are the tennis courts, a garden, and a small hill with an old house that used to be a manor and is now used for events and a concession selling ice cream and snacks to sticky-fingered children. Two sets of train tracks loop around the park: the real one and a miniature one that is only for the summer and very small children. The sun is just starting to set and Rosemary can see people, enjoying the lengthening days. Runners make their way up the hill and down again. And on the edge of the park closest to her balcony a low redbrick building wraps its arms around a perfect blue rectangle of water. The pool is striped with ropes that split the lanes and she can see bright towels on the decking. Swimmers float in the water like petals. It is a place she knows well. It is the lido, her lido.

  CHAPTER 2

  Every morning on her walk to work Kate Matthews passes strangers as they wait for the buses or dash out of houses and into parked cars. But there are familiar faces too. She sees them every day, their changing outfits and hairstyles like the changing weather marking the passing of time.

  On the main street she passes a very tall blond man with a high forehead who wears a black leather jacket, whatever the weather. If she passes him when she is at one end of the main street, she knows she has time to stop and get a coffee before work; if she passes him at the other, she breaks into a half walk, half run, for she knows she’s running late.

  There is the college girl (or so Kate imagines her) with dark hair and an animated face who nods her head to her music and sometimes sings along. Often she is accompanied by a man in Doc Martens. When he is with her she hangs her headphones around her neck and talks to him, her arm linked through his. Today she is alone.

  As they pass each other Kate nearly nods, but then she remembers she doesn’t know this woman. She doesn’t know her name or where she heads every morning in the opposite direction to Kate. They have never met, but she is just as much a part of Kate’s Brixton as the bricks that build it.

  The sky suddenly clouds and it starts to rain. Kate curses herself—she left her umbrella at home. The shower quickly soaks her and she arrives at the Chronicle office dripping. As she arrives she passes Jay, the photographer, on the stairs. He smiles at her, his mouth traced by a strawberry blond beard, his curly hair a wild halo around his head. He is tall and broad but soft around the edges, taking up most of the space in the stairwell. They haven’t worked together much, but they always say hello in the morning and nod or wave if they pass each other in Brixton. He always seems to be smiling and even on her worst days it makes her smile, too, even if she can’t quite get her mouth to show it.

  “Morning!” he says, as they squeeze past each other on the stairs. His voice is thick with a strong South London accent.

  “Morning. Are you off?”

  “Yes, I’ve got an assignment to do”—he gestures at the camera bag on his shoulder—“for a review. A new restaurant is opening on the site of an old pub. My dad said he remembers drinking there when he was my age.”

  “Okay, well, see you later,” replies Kate, “And don’t forget your . . .”

  Before she can finish he gestures at an umbrella hooked on the back of his rucksack.

  She nods and heads up into the office.

  “Been swimming, have you?” asks her editor as she sheds her wet coat and hangs it on the back of her chair.

  Phil Harris is a man whose body hasn’t been treated with much kindness. His cheeks are a permanent shade of purple, the color of the claret that he glugs every night at the local pub with his wife or, as the rumor goes, sometimes with Not His Wife. You can see steak and chips sitting around his middle like a rubber life ring that will eventually drag him to his death. He is not rich (he never managed to make it up the national newspaper ladder), but his wealth is in the eating and drinking.

  She shakes her head. “No, just got caught in the rain. I can’t really swim.”

  This is a lie. She can swim. If she fell into a pool by accident, she could make her way to the side. She understands the basic principles of where your arms and legs should go to keep you afloat. She just hasn’t been swimming since she was a teenager. They had lessons at school but as soon as she could make the decision to stop, she did. It happened around puberty when the girls’ bodies felt to them like uncomfortable clothes they’d love to wriggle out of. She remembers the transformation: the giggling rabble became a subdued group by the water’s edge, arms wrapped around themselves to cover the shame of their perfect, hideous bodies.

  “That might be a problem,” says Phil. “We’ve got a job for you at the lido. Of course, it’s not essential that you swim—but it might help you get into the story more, you know, understand what all the fuss is about . . .”

  Kate tastes chlorine and the fear of getting seminaked in front of her school classmates. Without explaining, Phil throws a folded leaflet across the pile of books separating their desks. It lands on her keyboard. On the front is a black-and-white photograph of an open-air swimming pool. There is a high diving board and a man is captured midflight, his arms outstretched like the wings of a swallow. Inside is a color photo of what Kate assumes is the lido today: bright blue water and children with their arms on the side, legs kicking vigorously.

  “Save our lido” is handwritten in large letters on the leaflet. She reads the text inside: “Our lido, open since 1937, is under threat. The council have announced troubled finances and a private bid to buy the building from a property company, ‘Paradise Living.’ They want to turn our beloved lido into a private members’ gym. Will we stand for it? If you think you can help the campaign, speak to staff at Brockwell Lido.”

  “The Swimmers of Brockwell Lido” is signed in neat writing at the bottom. Kate thinks the whole thing looks as though it has been made with a pair of scissors and a photocopier. It is an accurate assumption.

  “You want me to write about this?” asks Kate.

  Kate currently reports for the Brixton Chronicle about missing pets, scheduled road construction, or planning notices. The bits that go near the back, but not right at the back where the sport is. The bits that people don’t read. They are not stories she would show the tutors who taught her journalism master’s classes. Her mum still collects them in a scrapbook, though, which makes it even worse.

  “When you’re famous you’ll be glad I kept these,” she would say, and Kate would sink further into the embarrassment that she wears like a coat.

  “Yes,” says Phil, “I think there’s something good in this. You know Paradise Living have already built four buildings in Brixton? They’re selling the flats for millions. They think having a private members’ gym at Brockwell Lido will help them sell the flats for even more money.”

  He turns to Kate.

  “So, you said you wanted a story,” he says. “This is your story.”

  When Kate was younger, stories were her friends when she found people challenging. She searched them out, hiding among them in the library and tucking herself into their pages. She folded herself into the shape of Hermione Granger or George from The Famous Five or Catherine Moreland from Northanger Abbey and tried to be them for a day. When she started secondary school her friends were the characters she met in the pages of her books. They sat with her in the library as she snuck mouthfuls of sandwich behind books so the librarian wouldn’t see. (The librarian always saw, but pretended not to.)

  Now she tells other people’s stories. Even if it’s just interviewing someone about their lost cat, once she gets past her own nerves Kate finds listening to others’ stories fascinating. Often, people are surprised by the questions she asks them. “What is your earliest memory of Smudge?” “How do you think your life would have been different if you hadn’t bought Milo?” “If Bailey could talk, but could only say one senten
ce, what do you think he would say?”

  Usually her interviews get edited to just the most basic information (“Smudge, a 3-year-old tabby, has been missing from the Oliver household since the 3rd September. Reward offered”), but she keeps the stories in her head, turning them over like the pages of a beloved old book.

  The story of the lido is her opportunity to prove herself. She is going to try hard not to mess it up.

  CHAPTER 3

  A swimming pool looks lost without its swimmers. It is early and the lifeguard is rolling back the cover, sleepy and silent as he tugs at the plastic. From her spot on her balcony Rosemary can see the mist rising from the surface as though the water is a living, breathing thing. The sky might be blue but the air is still as cold as a shrug. She wraps her hands around her bowl of porridge and watches the lifeguard tucking down into his fleece. He returns inside as soon as the job is done and the water is uncovered.

  The pool is silent until the pair of mallards arrives, skittering along the surface as they land. Rosemary likes to watch the pair enjoying the emptiness of the pool each morning as sunshine dapples the water like confetti. Eventually more swimmers arrive. They are quiet, partly from sleep and partly in respect to the stillness and the mallards. They know the ducks well and swim around them until the pair decides it is time to leave and runs away along the water and flies over the lido walls.

  The lifeguard surveys the pool from his chair like a tennis umpire on his throne. Watching the swimmers go up and down is his morning meditation, and Rosemary’s too. She finishes her porridge, heads inside, and takes her swimming bag from its spot by the door.

  Rosemary arrives at the lido at seven o’clock every morning. Once she is ready, she pushes open the changing room door and steps into the cold. She would dash if she could. Instead she walks to the edge, her feet arriving about three minutes after her mind. Her body is not as strong as her will: growing old has forced her into patience.