It would be wise, Lou told me now, to accept the school’s invitation to participate in the diving squad. So I agreed. I wasn’t expecting to show aptitude, but my advantages soon made themselves felt. I mastered each of the simple dives we learned to take, first from the three-metre then the five-metre springboard. I could somersault, and then double-somersault; my twists were tighter than those of my teammates, my entries into the water more precise.

We competed against other schools. Soon there was a clattering array of base-metal medals hanging from the knob of my bedroom door.

I enjoyed this newly discovered talent, not so much for its own sake as for the responses it elicited from others. ‘I wish I could do that,’ a girl would say to me after I hauled my weight from the pool. And I’d think, I bet you do. Or, Good luck with that. Or, Too bad.

In certain moods, I’d encourage the younger girls on the team to emulate me. ‘You can do it,’ I’d say, knowing I’d be able to watch their failure from the sidelines as I squeezed the water out of my hair.

‘Don’t you dare,’ Miss Tyrrell would say to them, arms folded.

One day, one of the youngest girls, brave and grinning, went against Miss Tyrell’s directives and copied my dive. To my surprise, and hers, she succeeded. She emerged from the water ecstatic.

‘Did you see? Did you?’ she said, running to me when she got out of the pool.

Miss Tyrell’s kohl eyes narrowed to glinting specks in her face. ‘I hope I don’t have to remind you who’s in charge of this team,’ she said.

‘Whatever.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘Whatever,’ I repeated slowly, sounding out the syllables.

There was a moment of stillness before Miss Tyrell lost her temper. While she yelled I tried to recall The Incident, and all Lou’s efforts to keep me at the school; I tried to weather the torrent of rage without responding. For several excruciating seconds I examined my stumpy fingernails, chewed into raggedness. But then she said, ‘Who do you think you are, anyway?’ with such a curdled, sour note in her voice that I looked up. Everything receded except her lined face, the wet slivers of her eyes.

I called her names, a whole long various parade of them: whore, bitch, cunt, even words I’d never usually think to say – cow, slag, witch. When I ran out of insults I started in about the scrunchies. I remember that she just let me talk until I had exhausted my repertoire. And then, her own rage seemingly spent, she said calmly, ‘Joan, it’s such a shame that a talent like yours has been wasted on a person like you.’

I went home and told Lou.

‘She said that? That fucking moll. Don’t worry, I’ll go down there. Raise some hell,’ Lou said.