Maria rolls onto her elbow and sits upright. ‘Last one in is chicken-hearted,’ she says, as she rips off her dress and wades into the cold, murky water in her bra and pants. I had forgotten about this part. I don’t wear a bra and don’t want Luca to see my naked body, so I run in in my cream cotton dress.

‘What are you doing, you queer duck?’ she says. ‘You’re going to ruin your dress. It’s filthy in here.’ We’ve been warned all summer about the dangers of this polluted river with its tongues of yellow foam lapping against the banks. Plenty of others swim here, and no one I know has been ill, although there have been whisperings about the Tcaci sisters from the next village. Something about them becoming so sick that there was nothing left inside them, that they’d surely be left barren. The water becomes clearer the deeper you go, and anyway, it’s way too hot not to swim.

I stick my head under and push my body down to the silty floor. The silk-like liquid covers my sticky body with cool, the dress billowing around me as I swim low. I kick my legs and open my arms in big circles, holding my breath for sixty-one seconds, hoping they’ll be impressed. When I come back up the other two are splashing each other and Maria is pushing Luca’s head beneath the surface. He’s making a big show of spluttering and waving his arms about, even though he’s one of the strongest swimmers in the school, and Maria knows this. The dog is running up and down along the banks of the river, howling.

‘I was under for sixty-six seconds,’ I shout – hand in the air, clenched fist, victorious – thinking that number sounds more impressive. No one’s listening. I lie on my back and try to float. Although I’m light, the river won’t let me; my legs and feet keep sinking and then the rest of me goes down. Papa says it’s because it has no salt in it, unlike the Black Sea. He says you could lie for hours on your back on the inky, salty water, floating in the night sky. Mama would bite on her cheek as he’d tell me these stories, only letting herself speak later when he was out of earshot. ‘Don’t mind your father, Nico, he has never been to the sea.’