I would sit in my wheelchair as Miss Handel stuffed a flabby, plastic, flesh-coloured earplug in each ear, smiling cheerfully and chattering. Then I was hoisted out of the chair, a strong hand under each armpit, and an inflated ring was threaded over my feet up to my waist. The same strong arms would lift me like a baby to carry me and my head would fall back, my eyes open staring at the tiled white ceiling. I was a baby, floppy and useless, my legs and arms hanging, useless. I regressed in moments. The arms carried me down a short flight of steps and lowered me into the water, making sure my head stayed above water because my ears were never to get wet. Miss Handel, small and blonde, pert in her swimming-suit, would climb into the water and begin to knead my legs, my arms. My head rested against the barrel chest of the man with the strong arms as Miss Handel talked and smiled, bent my knees, flexed my elbows. And I floated in the dead, lifeless water, staring at the tiled white ceiling.

I couldn’t forgive them this travesty, this thing called swimming. They tried to describe it as a treat and even my mother was fooled into thinking it might be, as she sat on a plastic chair at the pool’s edge. But I lay there, my head resting on a stranger’s heart, my eyes scanning the white tiles, and thought of the thundering surf at Crackington Haven, thought of the jagged, shark’s-tooth rocks at the end of Thurlestone, which created lanes of swirling water. Imagined the rollers at Newquay, the endless sands of Whits and Bay. Imagined climbing the ragged, seaweed-slippery pilings in front of the cottage and leaping from them. Diving from the decks of yachts, falling out of dinghies, oars waving, boat dipping. Remembered the Lido on the Hoe in Plymouth — one summer’s day jumping from the highest point of the fountain in the big pool and being thrown out by the lifeguards, watched by timid, admiring boys.

Remembered swimming naked at Constantine Bay one Boxing Day in response to a dare from my mother. I waded in, hopping from foot to foot, my shell-like penis disappearing, teeth clacking, stomach freezing. I held up my arms, jumped up and chattered with each swell, trying to save my chest, my heart, from this icy water. I remembered turning and seeing my mother, bent over, laughing, my clothes bundled in her arms, her hair shining in the low-slanting sunlight. She waved, the only person on that infinite beach, and shouted something to me, words that were caught and carried over the Atlantic. (I wonder whether a sleepy sunbather lying on the sands of Mexico was wakened hours later by Mother’s voice in their ears, shouting, ‘It doesn’t count unless you go right in!’) I counted to three and ducked under the winter waters, thinking it was a fine way to die.

Worse than all these memories was the thought that only a few months before I had spent weeks falling in and out of a turquoise lake in France.