Without the water, the swimming pool looked too small.
Lena stood at the shallow end with her shopping bag folded beneath one arm. On the far wall, a pale rectangle marked the place where the clock had been. Its hands had always run seven minutes fast. She had allowed for that in the rest of her life.
“Well,” Hugh said.
His voice went away from him and came back thinner.
The caretaker had given them ten minutes. He was in the office, sorting keys into envelopes. Every so often a handful fell against the desk, an ordinary little clatter in a building suddenly full of distance.
Lena had swum here on Tuesday mornings for thirty-one years. Yesterday had been the last session. She had put out her towel before breakfast, then folded it again and gone to buy potatoes.
Hugh had found her swimming cap beside the kettle.
Now the pool lay open in front of them. There were rusty marks around the drains. A blue plastic hair clip rested on the slope, where nobody would ever have seen it with the water in.
“I thought you might want a photograph,” he said.
“Of this?”
He put his phone back in his pocket.
She walked along the edge. He followed, keeping the same careful distance from it that he always had.
On holidays he watched their bags. He held the towels while she came out of the sea, and turned away to give her some privacy from a beach containing four hundred other people. When the children were small, he stayed in the shallows with his trousers rolled up.
Once, in their first summer together, she had offered to teach him. He had said something funny. Everybody had laughed, including Lena, and the subject had stayed closed.
At the far end she stopped.
“You could come down,” she said.
The service steps were at the other side, beyond a little metal gate. He could see them perfectly well.
“I know.”
“There’s nothing in it.”
“I can see that, too.”
She looked at him, then lowered her eyes to the hair clip.
“Sorry.”
He touched the back of her coat. They stood like that until another bunch of keys fell in the office.
Then he said, “Show me the steps.”
The gate made a noise that ought to have been louder. Lena went first. She wore her sensible shoes, and something about seeing those shoes on the pool floor disturbed him more than he expected.
He took the handrail.
The tiles were dry. A few pale flakes, light as paper, had collected along the wall. He put one foot down, and then the other, and found himself standing where the small children usually waited for their lessons.
“All right?”
“Yes.”
She waited.
“Probably.”
Lena took his hand.
They walked down the long slope. Above them, the windows had caught a strip of dull November sky. He had never realised how high they were. He could see the underside of the starting blocks and the dark holes beneath the ladders. Her Tuesday mornings had contained a whole room he had never entered.
Halfway down, she picked up the hair clip.
It was shaped like a butterfly. One wing was missing.
“Shall I leave it?”
“The bins are outside,” he said.
She put it in her pocket.
At the deepest part, Lena raised her free hand above her head.
“Up there.”
The blue band around the pool was higher than he could reach. He looked from it to her face. She had spent all those years crossing this space without touching anything.
He tightened his grip.
Lena lowered her hand.
For a moment he thought she might cry. He had come prepared for that. There was a clean handkerchief in his inside pocket, and he had parked near the door.
Instead she said, “Do you remember the dance at the town hall?”
“Which one?”
“The one where you said you could waltz.”
“I could.”
“You could turn left.”
“It was a small hall.”
She laughed. The sound travelled up to the windows.
He looked down at their joined hands. After a little adjustment, they were holding each other almost properly. Her shopping bag slid from beneath her arm and landed on the tiles.
“What are we dancing to?” he asked.
“You’ll have to count.”
He cleared his throat.
“One, two, three.”
They moved a few inches. Lena’s heel struck his shoe.
“Your other left,” she said.
He started again.
By the third turn, they had found enough room. He could hear the soft scrape of her soles between the numbers. She had begun to hum something, very quietly, and he recognised it without being able to give it a name.
The office door opened.
Above them, the caretaker crossed the poolside carrying a cardboard box. His keys jingled. At the gate he stopped and looked down.
Hugh lost the count.
The caretaker set the box on a bench.
“I’ll do the upstairs lights first,” he said.
He went back through the door.
Lena’s hand settled a little more heavily on Hugh’s shoulder. He moved his foot around the shopping bag, and she followed him across the deep end.
“One,” he said. “Two. Three.”
The end