I saw my potential teammates line up at the back of the ten-metre platform and down its steps; I watched them drop off its edge. Some were more competent than others, but none were brilliant. Breathe, leap, splash – too slow, too weak, too timid. As rivals, I dismissed them one by one. When I grew bored of looking at them, I stared at Aleks, at his hair, at the place where it became stubble at the back of his neck. At the dip in the base of his spine. At his forearms. He paced, consulting a clipboard. The clean T-shirt was grey that day. He didn’t seem to notice me at all.

He’d been a diver once. He’d told me as much. But he was never going to make it, I could see that; there was too much wrong with his body. He was too tall, for a start. Male divers shouldn’t be taller than five-eight or -nine, and Aleks cleared six feet. It was his legs that were the problem. Anyone else would want those legs: long and trim. He looked good in shorts. But for diving you want a short lower body. You want legs that don’t take too long to extend.

At the end of the session, after they’d changed, the girls assembled in a room near the pool, where a table, chairs, a whiteboard and a TV were set up. Aleks briskly introduced me to the team, who stared at me curiously. I found myself seated between Grace, who was round-faced and freckled, and Camilla, a long-necked, knock-kneed girl whose long dark hair was coiled on top of her head. Camilla’s car keys were sprawled on the table; the photo ID attached to them indicated she was a student at the university Lou had attended – the one she’d wanted me to attend.

Julie Korsak plugged her phone into the TV and stood there dutifully selecting and playing videos of each dive. After a while, Grace, who had been absent-mindedly taking pumps from a jumbo bottle of sorbolene and rubbing them into her biceps and calves, leaned over and said, ‘So you got scouted?’ There was a note of amusement in her voice. ‘You must be pretty good.’

Before I could reply, Aleks spoke. ‘Camilla?’

Camilla had pulled her jacket’s sleeves down over her hands.

‘Yes?’

‘What am I looking at here?’

‘My 204C.’

It was a back group dive: two somersaults in the tuck position.

‘Yes. And?’

Camilla, prettily and glassily green-eyed, looked at him for a moment, saying nothing. She clasped her keys in one hand, as though she was going to pick them up and leave the room. After a moment I saw not her face, but her ears turn a bright, raw pink.

Aleks instructed his wife to replay the dive.

‘Anything?’

Camilla was rigid, but shook her head. ‘Sorry, I just —’

‘No problem,’ said Aleks calmly. ‘We’ll just watch it again.’