by Libby Page
In the pool it is Rosemary who has to slow down to wait for Kate, which she does after every few lengths, the two of them pausing for a moment. They swim together but apart, only occasionally breaking the silence to talk at the shallow end. The sun peers through the trees.
Rosemary watches Kate as she swims, struggling to keep her head above the water like a dog chasing a ball in a river.
“You should really get some goggles,” says Rosemary during one of their breaks in the shallow end. “It’s exhausting me just watching you keep your head up like that.”
“I don’t know how else to do it,” says Kate. “And I hate getting the chlorine in my eyes.”
“The goggles will help with that. I’ve got a spare pair you can have. Kick your legs and your arms separately—you’ll find it less tiring. And let your head get pushed under with your stroke.”
As Kate swims she feels safe, and free. She imagines her Panic sitting at one of the picnic tables on the lido decking. You can’t get me here, she thinks as she ducks under water, the cold embracing her like an old friend.
CHAPTER 27
After a half-hour’s swim they climb out and wrap their towels around themselves. The changing room is busy with people getting ready for work. Women pull on tights and button-up shirts, their wet swimsuits hanging on the locker doors or piled on the floor.
Rosemary watches the line of women at the mirrors, some queuing for the hair dryer and others applying their makeup. They peer into the glass, pulling strange faces as they put on mascara. One woman is leaning into the mirror and drawing over her eyebrows with a pencil, her face creased with concentration. Next to her a young woman puts on another layer of foundation, each layer making her freckles fainter until eventually they disappear.
When she is dressed Rosemary rubs moisturizer onto her face and brushes her hair.
“See you outside?” she says to Kate, who is joining the line of women at the mirror. Kate nods and reaches into her makeup bag. Rosemary watches her for a moment as she searches for the right thing to cover or highlight the right bits of her face. She wonders how much of a woman’s lifetime is given to these rituals. And what for? She has seen all these women barefaced in the pool and naked in the changing rooms and they are perfect. Of course, she did it herself, too, when she was young. She didn’t wear as much makeup as some of her friends, or some of the women who came into the library with a different haircut every week, but she did still make an effort. It used to take her at least five minutes.
Outside, Rosemary sits on a bench opposite the lido and waits for Kate. After a few minutes Kate appears and sits down next to Rosemary.
“Tell me about where you used to work, Rosemary,” she says, as they wait for the sun to dry their hair.
“I worked at the library. I worked there for thirty-five years, until it closed.”
“Oh,” says Kate, “the Old Library.”
The library is now a bar and café—Kate has been there before.
“It’s stupid but I always thought that was just the name. How silly of me.”
“I used to scan the books where the coffee bar is now,” says Rosemary. “I don’t know what happened to all the books. I rescued a lot of them—it’s why my flat is so cramped—but I don’t know about the others. I desperately hope they were given to local schools. The thought of them getting thrown away . . .”
Rosemary winces, her bright blue eyes retreating into the deep creases of her skin.
“The problem was, we never really saw it coming,” she continues. “One day there was a poster up announcing that there would be some cost-cutting schemes coming from the local council, and the next minute Hope and I were on the street looking up at the closed doors. It was just so sad.
“I took my job there very seriously. I was happy to work—I always thought women who didn’t must have been dreadfully bored. I know I was just a librarian but I preferred to think of myself as the Keeper of the Books. It was my job to keep the shelves organized so that ‘Romance’ was tucked discreetly away from fiction, and so the twelve-year-old could find The Body Book without asking. We were also somewhere to go when it was raining outside. I remember a young lad called Robbie who used to come in with his rucksack and sleeping bag and leave them on a chair while he headed to the Languages aisle. He always said ‘Bonjour’ to me and told me he was going to walk and swim to Paris. I wonder where he is now . . .”
Rosemary sighs and looks up the hill at the park she has known all her life. She thinks about the library—about the children laughing in the children’s corner, about people studying and using the computers to apply for jobs. On the library’s last day several people spoke to Rosemary. Mrs. Lane talked about her delight at watching her young daughter Megan choose piles of books. “This is the only place where I let her get exactly what she wants,” she had said. “How can letting her read all the books she likes be a bad thing?”
Mr. Gudowicz had actually hugged Rosemary. His eyes were shiny and wet and he told her that because of the library he had been able to study for the qualification that helped him get a job.
“I can be a husband and a father again now,” he had said.
She turns to look at Kate. “The lido has to stay open. It just has to.”
“I know,” Kate replies.
Rosemary looks closely at the young woman next to her. Kate’s brown eyes look serious but for once they aren’t afraid. They’ve nudged open like windows and Rosemary sees a peek of a very different woman inside. A woman who is strong, and who, Rosemary suddenly realizes, can help her. Will help her.
“That reminds me,” says Kate, “the council phoned me with more details about the meeting. Apparently we need one nominated speaker who can best sum up the views of the other residents—what the lido means to them. I can’t think of anyone better than you. You will do it, won’t you, Rosemary? We’ll all be right there with you.”
Rosemary thinks about how Geoff first described her to Kate as their “most loyal swimmer.” She hopes that she will be able to find the words to even begin to tell them what the lido means to her.
“I’d be honored,” she says. Kate smiles, letting out a little sigh.
Together they watch the people with wet hair and bags over their shoulders leaving the pool and heading into the park.
Kate suddenly looks at her watch, “Oh no, I’m running late. I need to get to Brixton Village; there’s a new shop opening and I’m interviewing the owner before it opens. I’ll see you soon though?”
Rosemary nods and watches as Kate leaves, her slender figure moving quickly through the park. Rosemary reflects on the upcoming council meeting, trying to imagine what she might say when she is called to speak. She thinks about how much Brixton has already lost and how badly she wants to get it right this time.
CHAPTER 28
On the last Saturday of the month Brix Mix Market comes to Station Road and the street fills with local traders selling vintage clothes, printed African fabrics, homemade ceramics, and vividly painted wooden animals. The smell of jerk chicken fills the air as it sizzles on the grill outside a small van parked on the road.
A typical Saturday finds Kate inside her flat watching boxed sets. Sometimes she ventures to the coffee shop at the end of her road to sit and read a book, watching the street outside behind the safety of the window.
Today she steps out her front door into a bright spring day. She smiles as she walks down the road, letting the hopefulness of the blue sky buoy her. It has been days since her last panic attack. She has started swimming regularly, sometimes with Rosemary if she makes it to the pool in time, and sometimes after work. When she swims she is reminded of the articles she read about how exercise can help with anxiety. But there is more to it, too—the lido campaign has given her something to believe in, and to focus on. She feels more in control than she has in months.
As soon as she steps onto the main street she is shaken by the sound of the buses and the crowds that she can see spilling
out of the station farther down the road. But instead of turning back as she normally might, she keeps going, trying her best to keep her head level rather than looking down at her feet. She weaves in and out of the other people on the pavement, careful not to bump into anyone.
She feels her phone buzz in her pocket. Pulling it out, she sees it’s a message from Erin. Kate clicks on it to see a photo of Erin beaming, a medal around her neck. “I did my first 10k!” reads the text. Kate stops in the alcove outside a shop to look at the photo properly and reply. Erin looks so happy, her face pink and her red hair pulled back in a scruffy ponytail—one of the only times Kate has seen her with messy hair. It makes Kate smile, and the noise of the buses and the heaviness of the crowd seems to disappear.
“So proud of you sis,” she replies, then slips her phone back in her pocket.
At the cinema she turns right onto Coldharbour Lane and follows it until she reaches the shop front with books and a golden retriever in the window. She pushes open the door and steps into Frank and Jermaine’s shop.
Jermaine looks up from the counter where he is leaning and reading a book.
“Kate!” he says. She feels a rush—he seems happy to see her.
“I told you I’d be back again soon,” says Kate.
“Frank is just on a break. He’ll be so pleased to know you came by.”
“Say hello to him for me. I’m just going to have a look around.”
“Make yourself at home.”
Jermaine goes back to reading his book and Kate explores the shop. There is a whole section dedicated to female writers and she starts there, browsing the spines until something speaks to her and she pulls it out to read the back cover and the first page. Then she moves on to foreign literature, then a stand given to cheerful holiday reads, then to the children’s section at the back just for the nostalgia of picking up books she read as a child. She kneels and flicks through them, remembering the happiness of discovering reading and how it could take her to a different time and place, a different world. She could be whoever she wanted when she read a book. As she wanders she picks books up here and there, her pile growing until she has a stack of five. She feels content, the smell of the shop soothing her.
“I need to stop now before I have more than I can carry,” she says as she places her pile on the counter. “It really is a lovely shop.”
“Thank you,” replies Jermaine, his tall body towering over the counter as he checks the prices penciled on the inside covers. He rubs his beard absentmindedly as he continues talking.
“It’s a great thing you’re doing by helping with the lido. Rosemary might have mentioned it, but we’ve been in a bit of trouble here in the shop. Not that you need me to tell you that—you could easily guess it. It’s so hard to run a bookshop these days.”
Kate looks around. The shop is messy but cozy, books piled everywhere and stools placed in nooks between the shelves where people can sit and read.
“We’ll do whatever we can to help,” Jermaine says, looking at Kate again. “Some things are worth fighting for.”
“Thank you,” she says, resisting an urge to hug him. She heads to the door, giving Sprout a quick stroke before opening it. “So I’ll see you at the meeting then?”
“We’ll be there.”
As she leaves a smile spreads over her face. She and Rosemary may have a hard fight ahead of them, but at least they have people joining them. Hope, Ellis and Jake, Ahmed and Geoff, Betty, and now Frank and Jermaine too. And Kate is sure there will be more—there are so many other people who swim at the lido, surely they must care. Maybe, she thinks to herself, maybe it will be okay.
CHAPTER 29
“Are you sorry that we got married?” asked Rosemary.
She looked up at George as she said it, his hands clenched tightly on his knees, his back bent as he sat on the chair next to their bed. He was still wearing his leather apron over his clothes. Normally when he arrived home from work he hung the apron on the back of the front door so it was ready for the next day.
He had called in at the library and told them she wouldn’t be in for a few weeks. She hated to imagine that conversation but she did it anyway: she imagined their pity and that is what she hated most.
“Why would you say that?” he said, reaching for her hand and squeezing it tightly. It ached as she moved to take his hand, but she tried not to let it show on her face. The warmth of his skin filled her whole body.
“If we hadn’t got married, this might not have happened,” she said. “You might be with someone else. You might have a baby.”
The word made her flinch. She thought again of the conversation George must have had at the library. Perhaps laughter had come from the children’s corner as he spoke to Hope and the others and he had flinched too. She wondered what they would have said, what they could have said. She imagined going back to work. She would be able to lift the crates of books again, at least, and fit between the tight rows in the reference section. But it was little consolation.
He looked down at her and his face was sadder than she’d ever seen it before, and frightened like a child’s. Rosemary felt she might break like a dry branch in a storm. She closed her eyes.
“You can’t say that,” he said. “Don’t ever say that. I might be with someone else but it wouldn’t be you. I might have a baby but it wouldn’t be yours.”
She opened her eyes again and there he was, loving her with everything he was. She never doubted that.
“Maybe this one wasn’t ready to be born, but the next one will be,” he said. “And we still have each other. I still have you.”
George attempted a smile but it didn’t quite work—it made his face twist and it made her even sadder, him trying to smile for her. Watching George she remembered a time at the lido when a nest had fallen out of the branches of a tree. They were still teenagers then but George swam out to the nest and was crying before he reached it because he already knew what had happened. He scooped the drowned nest out of the pool and dove to the bottom to collect the tiny bodies that had fallen out. She watched him diving again and again and she started crying too. She pretended to him that it was the birds she was crying for but she cried for him. He kept ducking under the water until he had collected all the birds and lined them up on the side.
George’s eyes were filling up now and he let them spill over. They stained his apron in dark droplets.
“It’s okay,” she said.
And then he sobbed. His tears were never polite or quiet, they poured out of him like a dam had burst. From looking at him with his strong hands and wearing his muddy greengrocer’s apron, you would never expect those kind of tears.
“Come into bed with me,” she said.
He crossed to the other side of the bed and climbed in behind her, wrapping his arms around her body, resting his hands on her stomach. He held her and he cried and she cried too. She wasn’t sure if she was crying for the baby this time or for him. He was still wearing his apron and his shoes when they woke up the next morning.
CHAPTER 30
On the day of the council meeting Kate feels the Panic creeping up on her. She doesn’t want to fail the people she has met. She doesn’t want to fail Rosemary.
At work she is quiet, typing up a story while thinking about what will happen at the meeting and whether enough people will come. And if them coming will even make a difference.
She is tired too. In the night she dreamed she was on her way to the lido, her swimming bag over her shoulder. But when she got to where the lido should have been it wasn’t there. Instead she was in an unknown part of the city, at the bottom of a tower of flats that blocked out the sun. The streets were unfamiliar and the people were walking too quickly to stop them and ask for directions. A sign labeled SWIMMING POOL pointed left, but the map on her phone told her to go right.
She walked around the bottom of the building, leaning back to try and see the top. As she walked she started to panic. How could the lido have mo
ved? How could it be on the map but not here? She walked down streets she didn’t recognize and checked her phone. It told her she was two minutes away from her end destination, but where was it?
Then the panic and fear bubbled over into hot, angry tears. Her breathing came in gulps and gasps and she was frozen to the pavement, tears running down her face as she struggled to breathe.
People walked quickly past her like she was a misbehaving child. She imagined what she must look like to them: a young woman with makeup smeared down her face, crying impolite tears for no apparent reason in the street. Eventually a teenage boy came up and asked if she was okay.
“You don’t need to cry, please stop crying,” he said.
And then she woke up, feeling just as exhausted as she does after every panic attack.
“I thought you might want a coffee,” says a voice as a mug is placed gently on her desk. She looks up and sees a mess of strawberry blond hair, and a smiling face.
“Thank you, Jay. You read my mind.”
“Photographer slash mind reader. It’s a burden I have to carry.”
She sips the coffee, the smell alone reviving her slightly.
“I’ve been asked to come along to your meeting tonight to get some photos for the paper. I hope that’s okay.”
Kate pauses; she doesn’t know Jay well, but his strawberry blond hair and kind face are part of the fabric of her days at the paper and somehow soothing.
“It’s not really my meeting,” she says, “but of course that’s okay. I’m not sure you’ll really get anything that useful, though—it’s just in the council offices.”