Jay had rearranged his work schedule so that he could take care of Rosie and it was he who had gently pushed her out the door as she hesitated on the threshold, swim bag under her arm but guilt sitting in her stomach at the thought of leaving them, however desperate she might feel to get back to the water.
‘Go! We’ll be fine.’
It felt strange to step out without a pram or Rosie in the sling. It struck her that no one walking by would know that she was a new parent, even though the change felt so drasticto her that she feels as though she has ‘new mum’ tattooed on her forehead.
She hears the river before she sees it. A quiet yet inviting ‘shh’ as if the water is telling the world to be quiet and listen. But unlike on her secret dawn visits when the only other noises were the birds and the breeze rustling through the reeds, this morning there are voices, too, and the happy sound of splashing. As she pushes through the gate that leads down to the riverbank, she makes out the lilting sound of jazz music coming from the Kingfisher Café and Book Barge. The curtains that were drawn whenever she snuck down here in the semi-dark are now flung open, revealing walls of bookshelves and a tiny stove with a hissing kettle on top, home-made cakes piled in the hatch, where a man in mustard tweed serves a small queue of customers.
It feels strange to see what had felt like Kate’s secret place come totally alive. A lifeguard sits on a striped deckchair, and although it’s still relatively early, there are a few people already swimming, plus a couple dragging a kayak down from the beach hut boat store. A silver-haired man dives neatly into the river from the diving board and Kate searches around to try to find someone who might belong to the swimming club. She’s expecting someone with a clipboard, maybe a megaphone. But the only people she can see who are not already in the water are a group of four women of different ages gathered on a checked picnic blanket. They look friendly, so she heads over.
‘Hi, my name’s Kate. I wonder if you can help? I’m looking for the Farleigh-on-Avon River Swimming, Bathing and …’ She searches her mind for the rest but can’t remember it. Why would anyone give their group a name that long?
‘Recreational Water-Based Activities Club?’ finishes the oldest of the women, who looks a little older than Kate’s mum and is dressed in an enormous red changing robe, her hair hidden beneath a multicoloured flowery swimming hat. ‘You’ve found us! Welcome, I’m Sandra!’
Warmth radiates from her as though she were a walking sunbeam.
‘I’m Jazz,’ says the woman beside her, who Kate guesses is in her twenties, wild blonde curls bouncing on her shoulders and a broad smile on her face. She’s wrapped up in a stripy towel, a pile of clothes at her feet. ‘And this is Hester.’
The red-headed teenager nods in Kate’s direction before looking back down at her feet, bare in the long grass. She’s dressed in a swimsuit but with a hoody over the top, the sleeves of which she pulls down over her hands.
‘And you’re not our only newbie! This is Phoebe, she swam with us yesterday and thankfully we didn’t scare her off,’ says Sandra, gesturing towards the fourth woman, who looks around Kate’s age and has the most amazing colour hair she has ever seen, somewhere between red and purple. She’s wearing a red-and-white striped swimsuit and dotted about here and there on her bare skin are the most beautiful tattoos, delicate plants and flowers that make her fit in perfectly with the wildflower meadow that surrounds them.
Kate suddenly feels very conscious of her own appearance – the messy mum bun on the top of her head, the jeans that feel uncomfortably tight but that she was determined to squeeze into, sick of spending every day in tracksuit bottoms. There may possibly be baby sick somewhere on her person …
‘Wow, I love your hair,’ says Kate. ‘And your tattoos … they’re beautiful.’ She tries her best to hide the awe from her voice, but as she spots the leather jacket and motorcycle helmet on the grass by Phoebe’s feet, she feels as if she’s back at school again, the nerdy, mousy girl who spent most of her time in the library and has no chance of befriending someone this cool. But Phoebe smiles warmly back at her.
‘Thanks! It’s nice to have someone else here who’s new too. Makes those “new kid at big school”’ vibes less daunting.’
The fact that Phoebe’s thoughts so mirror Kate’s own makes her nod her head vigorously. ‘Yes! Me too!’
The others are busy getting ready, Sandra unzipping her changing robe, Hester pulling off her hoody and Jazz wriggling about beneath her towel, so Kate quickly starts pulling off her own clothing, her swimsuit already on beneath. As she wobbles on one foot while tugging off her jeans, Phoebe reaches out an arm to steady her.
‘Thanks.’
‘I can’t remember the last time I took up a hobby,’ says Phoebe once Kate has managed to extract herself from her denim – skinny jeans were a bad idea – and is ready in her swimsuit. ‘Maybe never?’
Kate thinks back to her very first swim at the lido and how nervous she’d felt. Before that, she hadn’t swum since she was a teenager. Her swims didn’t start as a hobby, though, they began as work, although very quickly became so much more than that. Her skin tingles with anticipation at the thought of finally getting back into the water.
‘I used to swim regularly at my local lido, but this is my firsttime wild swimming. I think I’d be too nervous to go in by myself. Not knowing what’s beneath me freaks me out a little bit. That’s why I thought I’d give this group a go.’
The other women are ready now and all lined up in an array of swimwear. Kate tries to get a sense of their personalities from their choices. Phoebe’s is a modern twist on a retro style, while Jazz’s frilly pink bikini looks like the kind of thing you might buy for a hen do but then never wear again. Kate kind of loves it. Hester wears a black and purple sporty Speedo with a racer back and Sandra is in a sturdy navy swimsuit almost certainly from M&S that looks like it has a stomach control panel.
Kate wraps her arms self-consciously around her own stomach. She’d been determined to fit into her favourite old yellow swimsuit that she bought as a treat when the lido was saved, but it clings tightly to her stomach. Becoming a regular swimmer changed her relationship with her body, encouraging her to focus on the way she feels in the water rather than the way she looks. And stripping off in front of women of absolutely every shape and size in the changing room quickly dispelled her idea of there being one ideal blueprint for a human body, making her far more comfortable in her own.
But going through pregnancy and birth has been a disorientating experience. Her body feels like a stranger now and it’s proving hard to adjust. Beneath her swimming costume, her breasts give a little throb, another reminder that her body doesn’t feel like her own anymore. She fed Rosie before she left, but she can already feel that telling ache in her chest. God, she hopes she doesn’t leak.
‘I must admit, you’re all not what I had been expecting,’ she says, readjusting her arms to cross in front of her chest.
‘Is it because of the name?’ asks Jazz. ‘Sandra, I told you we should change the name! Or at least make a nicer poster.’
‘What’s wrong with the one we’ve got? It’s laminated! I bought that laminator specially!’
Hester rolls her eyes.
‘The poster was, um, concise,’ Kate says practically. ‘Apart from maybe the name.’
‘Are you saying that the Farleigh-on-Avon River Swimming, Bathing and Recreational Water-Based Activities Club doesn’t just roll off your tongue?’ says Jazz wryly.
‘Bloody hell!’ laughs Phoebe. ‘That’s a bit of a mouthful, isn’t it?’
