Lou snatched the bag. She closed the door in Julie’s face, then turned and walked straight down to the kitchen. I followed.

‘What was that about?’ I said. ‘What happened? Lou? Lou?’

She rounded on me, furious. She threw the bag at me.

It contained her perfume.

‘Idiot,’ she snarled, and I had a glimpse of what she must be like in court, eviscerating accusers as they sat quivering in the dock. ‘Don’t you see what you’ve done? You absolute little idiot.’

She picked up a glass and threw it into the shallow, dirty water in the sink. She threw it so hard it smashed.

For a while after that Lou and I weren’t speaking. And Aleks, at training, only spoke to me to issue a command or a correction.

‘What’s up his ass?’ Grace said, with her usual radar for drama.

I shrugged.

I was working on a new dive. A 5253B. A back two-and-a-half somersault with one-and-a-half twists, in the pike position. A difficult dive, but one I’d have to know if I ever wanted to join an elite squad. I’d been preparing it for a while, but hadn’t yet taken it up to the platform. In fact, I was beginning to suspect Aleks was holding me back on purpose; some kind of revenge for the trouble I’d caused.

One day, I told him I was ready. ‘I’ve been ready for weeks,’ I said.

‘I’ll tell you when you’re ready,’ he said.

I continued the training session, drilling my competition dives over and over. But as I jumped and flipped and twisted, I could feel my anger seething. Aleks gave corrections, but otherwise didn’t acknowledge me. I thought of his hand on my breast, of my gnawing, unanswered question: what had made him refuse me?

As for what happened next, I’ve seen Julie’s footage. There I am, back to the water, ready to attempt the 5253B. My body is tense – I can see how taut my abdomen is, how deeply I’m breathing into that concave space, which inflates and deflates in time with my breath. And then my arms swing out and I push off from the platform. The takeoff is all wrong. Not high enough. Not far enough away from the platform.

I didn’t come out in time. I was never going to. I didn’t know where the pool was. I’ve freeze-framed the whole dive, trying to isolate the moment that my nose smashes against the surface of the water. Water is so pliable, they warn us, until you hit it at full speed. Then it might as well be concrete.

I’m under a few seconds before someone dives in after me. I’ve seen it a hundred times: I am a dark ball of shadow, and then there’s a shocking bright cloud as blood starts rushing from my nose.