picture to kids, then takes them off to a different room to do some art based on it. I don’t mind. I like drawing and making things, but what I really like is watching Mum talking. I like watching everyone else listening to her. I saw a man there who’d been before. In fact, he’d been the last five weeks with his two little girls. He spent a long time talking to Mum about the pictures and he really thanked her a lot at the end. One of the little girls grabbed hold of my leg and wouldn’t let go. I pretended to mind but she was cute, actually.
‘This term? ’S all right.’
‘But what are you going to be doing?’ Mum asked. ‘I missed the meeting about it because I was working and they haven’t emailed the list through yet.’
‘Romans,’ I said. ‘And something called reproduction. Miss Phillips said we’re not allowed to be embarrassed when we do that but she went red when she said it so I think I’m going to be.’
‘Oh well. Anything else new?’
Children, you’ll be dismayed to hear that we won’t be doing any more RE on Monday mornings.
‘Nothing worth talking about,’ I said.
‘Cymbeline. William. IGLOO. There is NOTHING wrong with you at ALL. Get out of bed, RIGHT NOW.’
‘But I’m ill!’
‘No. You. Are. Not. You have no temperature and your throat is completely normal.’
‘It’s not. It huuuu-rrrrts. It –’
‘Cymbeline, we’ve talked about this. If you miss a day of school, you have to be properly ill. I’ve got Messy Art today; if I miss it to look after you, I don’t get paid. Simple.’
Messy Art is something Mum does with toddlers in a church hall on Monday mornings. In the holidays I have to go too and the one thing I’d say is that Mum is pants at naming things. Messy Art should be called ‘Messy Miniature Lunatics Go Ape’. But when she mentioned it I sighed. I know how hard Mum works and how we need every penny we have. She does sums on bits of paper at the start of every month. I found them once and looked down the columns. I’m okay at sums and it didn’t take long to work out that, after all the food and dinner money and the gas and electric and the council tax and a bit for school shoes she was saving up for and a fair few other things that didn’t sound like much fun, my mum had exactly nine pounds forty-three pence left over. There wasn’t anything on the list that she might have wanted.
‘Up!’ she shouted, and I just sighed.
The first thing I noticed was the smell. Tangy, in my nose. Then the sound. As soon as Miss Phillips pushed the door of the leisure centre open I could hear it: loud and echoey and not quite real, laughter and voices and a hosepipe going, a phone ringing. It was weird but no one else seemed to notice it. But I gawped at the high ceiling and the bright light; it was like walking into a big dream. Then, as we marched through the foyer, I saw shapes moving around on the other side of these MASSIVE windows. And that’s when I first saw it: the pool.
My stomach lurched. Sweat prickled on my forehead. I stopped dead still and someone bashed into me from behind and knocked me over. I picked myself up and just stared through the glass at the huge blue expanse shimmering in front of me. My eyes went big as Frisbees and I knew: I couldn’t do it. No. Way. I’d just have to tell Miss Phillips. Confess. I shook my head, not even sure that I could take another step forward until I saw who had knocked me over.
‘Sorry, Cymbeline,’ said Veronique, pushing her hair to the side of her face as she leaned in close to me. Veronique was smiling again and I smiled back as I realised something. Her breath smelled of Weetabix. It’s exactly what I have for breakfast! We were made for each other! When she wished me good luck I mumbled thanks, and then followed everyone else through the turnstiles.
‘Boys, left,’ Miss Phillips trilled. ‘Girls, this way please. No messing about now, boys.’
Now I know – as you see me walk into the changing rooms – what you are thinking. Clever as you are (and you must be clever to have chosen this book) you have worked out that my mum, not ever having taken me swimming, is unlikely to have bought me any swimming trunks. Especially as, unlike Billy Lee’s parents, she is not ‘rolling in it’. On Friday, Miss Phillips had told us that if we forgot to bring trunks then we would have to wear the school spares, and the ones she held up brought howls of laughter: an ancient bodysuit, suitable, she said, for girls or boys. There was no way I was wearing that, but what could I do?
I got the idea on Saturday but it wasn’t until Sunday night that I could act. Mum goes to bed really early on Sundays, hardly any later than me. After she kissed me goodnight I lay awake as she watched a bit of telly downstairs and then listened to a few records. Old slow ones that she plays ALL THE TIME. I listened as she then sat in silence for a bit, until her phone rang. She chatted to someone and then I heard her lock the front door and the back door, before she went in the bathroom. When she went into her bedroom I waited a long time, listening. And there’s something about my mum that I would like you to keep to yourself. She snores, and when I heard her doing this I got out of bed, opened my door and tiptoed down the hall to the boxroom.
The boxroom is a small room near the bathroom. I don’t go in there much. It’s not that I’m not allowed; I just don’t. There’s nothing for me, just boring stuff that Mum stores. There’s a tennis racket that she never plays with and some old bottles of wine. She doesn’t drink. There’s a pair of weightlifting weights and bin bags full of clothes. Uncle Bill bought me a Scalextric on eBay and it’s a pain to keep putting up and down. The boxroom would be perfect for it but whenever I ask Mum why she doesn’t chuck that junk away she just smiles and interferes with my hair. She doesn’t answer, but I know why she keeps it all.
It’s my dad’s stuff.
Snore, snore, snore, whistle. Snore, SNORE. I glanced back at Mum’s door and then I turned the handle. It only took five minutes to find the swimming trunks. They were in the second bag I opened (the first had baby clothes in, a little odd as Mum normally sells all my old stuff on eBay). There were even some goggles. I snuck them into my schoolbag with a towel and went to bed.
‘Right, boys,’ Miss Phillips said, putting her head round the changing-room door. ‘Come on now.’
‘Yes, Miss,’ we all said, apart from Marcus Breen of course. Being Marcus Breen, he stuck his willy between his legs and told Miss Phillips he thought he was in the wrong changing room.
Have you got a Marcus Breen in your class?
We all filed out, a rushing noise getting louder as we made our way across these bumpy white tiles. We passed an old man having a shower who was completely covered in black and white hair, like a badger with a person’s head on, and then a group of big ladies approaching the water like some hippos I’d seen on the Discovery Channel. We stopped right by the edge of the pool and Miss Phillips chatted to a young man in shorts and a red polo shirt, with this big chin like a deck of cards. He looked down at us as she spoke to him, nodding all the time. Then he started to speak. He told us about safety things, the importance of swimming, how we had to listen to his whistle and do exactly what he said. He went on and on, while I looked at the pool. The smell was stronger now, biting into my nostrils. Our bit went from the deep end, where we were standing, towards the shallow end. The rest was portioned off by fat plastic rope things and was being used by the big ladies, who were jumping up and down to music. I began to think – yes! – this is going to be it for the first lesson, just talking. Until the man said, ‘Now then, which of you has never had any proper swimming lessons before?’