Two Lengths to Go

Original story written for Revision Library.

Freya Adeyemi had come to Kingsmere Lido that Saturday expecting nothing more exciting than a long, hot afternoon on the spectator benches, clapping until her palms stung and eating soggy chips out of a paper cone. She was not even swimming that day; her own events had finished an hour earlier, and she had changed back into shorts and a Kingsmere Dolphins hoodie, resigned to watching everyone else compete. The air smelled of chlorine and sun cream, and somewhere behind her a toddler was wailing about an ice lolly that had already melted down his arm.

Below her, the pool lay flat and blinding under the afternoon sun, its surface occasionally shattered into a thousand fragments of hammered silver whenever a swimmer dived in. Along lane four, the Riverside Sharks stood in a neat row, their blue-and-white striped caps bobbing together like a flock of unusually confident seagulls, while the tannoy crackled through yet another announcement Freya only half heard. Kingsmere's medley relay team, she knew, was up next: backstroke, breaststroke, butterfly, freestyle, one length each, the whole race over in barely two minutes.

It was Connor Whitfield who caught her eye first, jogging along the poolside to loosen up before his butterfly leg, arms windmilling in wide, showy circles that made two younger swimmers on the bench giggle. He was almost at the blocks when his trainer skidded on a wet patch of tile, and his ankle folded beneath him with a sound like a dropped stack of plates. He went down hard, one hand slapping against the concrete, the other clutching at his leg.

For a moment nobody moved. Then Ms Bracken, the Dolphins' coach, was on her knees beside him, her voice low and steady even as her eyes flicked anxiously towards the clock above the timing board. 'Don't try to stand,' she said, pressing two fingers gently around his ankle while Connor's face went the colour of the pool tiles. Within seconds a first-aider called Mr Doyle was crouched on his other side, and Connor was helped away, hopping between them, his race number still pinned crookedly to his trunks. Ms Bracken stood, turned to the three remaining swimmers gathered by the blocks, and said the words Freya least expected to hear. 'We don't have a butterfly leg. The race is in six minutes.'

Aisha Patel, who would be swimming backstroke, glanced up towards the stands and pointed. 'Freya trains butterfly with us on Thursdays. She's actually quite quick.' Ms Bracken's head turned, scanning the benches until she found Freya, who suddenly felt every muscle in her body turn to jelly. 'Freya!' the coach called, beckoning with one sharp wave. 'Down here, now, please!' Freya's stomach dropped the way it did on the big dipper at the seaside, a sudden lurching plunge that left her ears ringing, and for a horrible second she considered pretending she had not heard.

She had, of course, heard perfectly well, and her legs carried her down the steps towards the poolside almost before she had decided to move. Butterfly was the stroke she loved most in training, the one she practised for fun after official sessions had ended, arms flung wide and rhythmic like a bird learning to fly, but she had never once raced it in front of anyone, let alone a stand full of spectators and a lane of Riverside Sharks who looked as though they ate medley relays for breakfast. The crowd noise seemed to swell around her, rising and falling like a wave that refused to break.

'You'll be brilliant,' Ms Bracken said, handing her a spare cap with the Dolphins' logo peeling at one corner. 'Same as training. Head down, count your strokes, don't look at the other lanes.' Marcus Reyes, who would swim breaststroke second, gave her shoulder a quick, firm pat. 'Just get to the other end in one piece,' he said, grinning despite the panic clearly written across his own face. There was no time to be properly frightened, only time to clip the goggles into place and step up onto the third block, toes curling over the warm, gritty edge.

The starter's horn sounded, and Aisha was already gone, cutting backwards through the water in a smooth, economical rhythm that pulled the Dolphins level with Riverside by the turn. She touched the wall exactly on the mark, and Marcus launched himself in a heartbeat later, his breaststroke pull steady and unhurried even as the crowd's cheering climbed another notch. Freya watched from the block, hardly breathing, as he narrowed the gap length by length until, with one final surge, his fingers found the wall a fraction of a second before the swimmer in lane four.

Then it was Freya's turn, and everything else in the world seemed to fall away. The horn blast still ringing in her ears, she launched herself off the block into a shallow, driving dive, the water closing over her in a rush of cool silence before she surfaced and began to swim, arms sweeping wide and pulling hard, her body rippling through the water like a single muscle working in one continuous wave.

By the halfway mark her shoulders were burning and her breath came in short, ragged gasps timed carefully to every second stroke, but she did not slow. She thought of nothing beyond the black line on the pool floor sliding steadily beneath her, and the wall drawing closer with each heaving pull, until at last her fingertips slapped against the tiles and she gulped down a mouthful of chlorinated air, chest heaving, arms shaking.

She barely had time to register her own finish before Ruby Fairweather was gone, launched into the anchor leg with a clean, low dive that hardly disturbed the surface. Freya hauled herself half out of the pool, elbows braced on the tiles, and turned to watch, still gasping, as Ruby's freestyle stroke ate up the length of the pool in long, powerful pulls, the Riverside swimmer in the next lane matching her stroke for stroke, neither one gaining more than a hand's width of advantage.

The two swimmers reached the final wall together, so close that even the timing board seemed to hesitate, its usual instant flash of numbers replaced by an agonising pause. The crowd noise dropped away almost entirely, dwindling to a held breath shared by two hundred spectators at once, before the tannoy crackled back to life.

'In second place, with a new club record,' the announcer said, pausing just long enough to make Freya's heart hammer against her ribs, 'Kingsmere Dolphins, qualifying for the county final.' A roar went up from the Dolphins' section of the stand, and Marcus lifted both fists into the air while Aisha hugged Ruby so hard she nearly knocked her back into the pool. Freya sat on the tiled edge, dripping and shaking, and found she was laughing, though she could not have explained exactly why.

Ms Bracken crouched down beside her, offering a towel and a wide, relieved grin. 'You held your own out there,' she said. 'More than held it. That was a personal best by four seconds, and you swam it on six minutes' notice.' Freya wrapped the towel around her shoulders, watching Connor limp back towards them, his ankle now strapped and iced, a grin on his face despite everything.

'Told you she was quick,' Connor said, easing himself down onto the bench beside her. Freya looked out across the lido, at the water gradually settling back into its flat, silver calm, and realised that the soggy chips could wait; for the first time all afternoon, she did not want to be anywhere else.