When I got home and told Lou about the meeting, she said, ‘He meant humility.’

I thought about how, when he’d finished speaking, he’d risen and come over to my side of the desk. He tapped my head and then my shoulder, pat pat, pat pat, like I was a friend’s dog he felt obligated to pet.

‘No,’ I said, ‘he didn’t.’

Perhaps the humiliation was good for me. Driven by spite, I came to training sessions with a newer, deeper sense of focus. I did additional weights sessions, alone in the gym that was attached to the aquatic centre. I actually followed the plan for recovery and stretching I had been given, instead of ignoring it. As the weeks passed, I improved. And when we watched the videos of our dives, I was so critical of my own performance – ‘My pelvis is rotated’; ‘I need to relax my shoulders’; ‘My toes are curling back’ – that often Aleks was left with nothing to say.

In our next competition I won a silver medal.

‘Congratulations,’ said Grace.

‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘Better luck next time.’

She shook her head and smiled grimly.

‘Fuck you, Joan,’ she said.

Before doing what I had made my mind up to do, I waited until Lou was in the middle of another trial. And this one promised to be particularly complex. A man – only barely a man, he was my age – had sent text messages containing pornographic photos to his girlfriend, who was three years younger. The parents had gotten the police involved.

‘How bad was the porn?’ I’d asked. This was always a crucial question.

‘Bad. Tentacles.’

She’d slipped her fingers beneath her glasses and rubbed the skin around her eyes.

I told Lou I could take the bus home until the trial was over.

I also waited for a day when Julie wasn’t there. Such days were becoming more frequent. Grace suspected that her surgery was in fact a facelift, which hadn’t gone well, and that her absences were related to attempts to have the damage reversed. She kept saying, ‘Look at her ears, Joan! It’s so fucking obvious!’ I looked for the signs Grace saw – scars, bald patches – but couldn’t see anything.

On the day I chose, I waited in the carpark, having smeared cherry balm on my lips and dried my hair beneath the hand dryer in the change-rooms. Finally, Aleks appeared.

‘Joan?’ he said. His keys were jingling in his hand. ‘You okay?’

The breeze made my skin turn to gooseflesh. I’d sprayed some of Lou’s perfume on my neck and down my underpants, and the bottle was wrapped in a wet towel at the top of my bag.

I walked over to where he stood, near his car, and he smiled.

‘You need a ride somewhere?’

I hadn’t planned on this development, but it suited me.

‘Yeah. Lou’s at work.’

This mention of my sister hung in the air between us for a moment.