Swimming Upstream by Ruth Mancini Page B

never meant…” said Martin. “I hope we can...”
    “Catherine’s waiting,” I said.
    Martin gave me a look that I couldn’t decipher and
slammed down the door to the boot.
    After they had gone I picked up the phone and
dialled the number for the pools complex.
    “When are you going to be open again?” I asked.
    “When are you looking to come?” asked the
receptionist.
    “Well, as soon as I can. As soon as the pool
reopens.”
    “Re-opens? What do you mean? We’re open now,” she
said.
    “Oh, great. I heard the pool had been closed
today. Power failure. Heaters or something?”
    “No, love,” said the receptionist. “You heard
wrong. We’re open all day. Till ten tonight. Lane Swim only from seven though.”
    “Thank you.”
    I put down the phone and wandered round the house,
collecting up items of clothing and bed linen from the upstairs rooms and
throwing them into a big black bin liner. What was his game? I wondered. Was he
making excuses to see me? Was that it? Or was he jealous of my friendship with
Catherine? Afraid I’d pack her up in one of my boxes and whisk her off to
London? In the living room I picked up a woollen purple throw with black and
white crocheted flowers that my mother had given me from the back of a chair
and put it in the washing basket which was sitting on the floor near the door. I
paced the room, briefly switching on the telly and switching it off again. Whatever
he was up to, Catherine was completely taken in. There was no point in trying
to tell her something she didn’t want to hear. And maybe he was right; maybe it
was none of my business. Maybe I was just jealous, after all. Maybe he had just
wanted to spend the day with Catherine, whatever she was doing, whoever she was
seeing. Maybe he really loved her. Maybe I was wrong.
    I paused and looked up. In a corner of a book
shelf above the telly was an old photograph of Larsen which I had taken soon
after I met him. I wasn’t sure if that made it his or mine. I picked it up. He
was stood on stage, smiling, his head bent over his guitar, wisps of his
shoulder-length blond hair falling into his face. His beautiful face. My heart
leaped; he still took my breath away. But he was gone. And now our home
together was gone - packed up and laid bare, all ready for his new life with
Jude. All bar the cot that would soon be in the spare bedroom, the Moses basket
that would soon be sitting beside the bed. Our bed. The bed that we had rolled
around in naked together. The bed that we had curled up in together, laughing
and talking dreamily until sleep overcame us. The bed that would soon have Larsen
back in it again - Larsen and his new family, lying tangled up sleepily
together.
    I put the photo back on the shelf where I had
found it, laid down on the sofa and turned out the light.

8
    There are good days and there are bad days and then there
are those days from hell that leap up out of nowhere and smack you right
between the eyes. These are the days when you wish you’d stayed in bed, or in
the womb. “Nobody told me there'd be days like these,” sang John Lennon once. Nobody
told me either.
    Not that any of it had been particularly easy of
late. Even moving was scary at first. Apart from my first term at college and
the few months since Larsen had left, I'd never really lived on my own and now,
aside from the practical details like worrying alone (which is different from
worrying with someone else) about the rent and the bills and the poll tax and
TV licence, there were more fundamental and complicated problems to be faced -
like what to do with moths, beetles and spiders in the bath, what to do when
the water pipes froze and burst and flooded the kitchen, what to do when things
went bump in the night, and, with no-one to direct me or to be my excuse for
inactivity, how to decide what to do with the rest of my life.
    I'd been lucky with the flat, I knew that. My
mother’s friend Lynne was more than happy to let it to me. It was a