‘Yeah, but it’s only cold water,’ Helga says, arriving and grinning at Claire. ‘Just walk in slowly and remember to breathe.’

The girl walks in nervously next to them, glad to have company.

‘Do you really think there are eels?’ Maddy asks Helga, nodding to the dark water under the pier.

‘No,’ she says. ‘Not today. It doesn’t really matter what’s underneath. It’s not going to drag you down. You’ve learnt that by now, right?’

‘I know, but I should have trained more. I’m nervous.’

‘Don’t be,’ Claire says. ‘We’ve all got each other’s backs. You’ll be fine.’

Maddy looks at the glittering water ahead, hearing the cries of the swimmers as they start the swim. She hates it when people crow on about feeling blessed when they’re humblebragging on social media. Since she’s stopped doing it herself, she’s noticed how false it sounds, but nevertheless she feels gratitude, like it’s a physical force, as she watches the powerful, amazing women stride into the waves. She feels part of a tribe. Part of a revolution.

‘Here we go,’ Tor says. ‘Let’s do this thing.’

She follows Helga, who slips into the water, and Dominica skips in beside her, splashing her arms. Tor’s next to her, laughing with Claire, and Maddy thinks that nothing needs to be any different to how it is right now in this moment with her friends and the horizon, as she plunges into the cool embrace of the sea.

Acknowledgements

After writing The Cancer Ladies’ Running Club, I was halfway through another novel when Covid struck. As the weeks unfolded, I realised that the whole emotional landscape of our world had changed and the novel I was writing no longer chimed with the times.

I am very grateful to my clever agent, Felicity Blunt at Curtis Brown, who supported me changing tack, and her assistant, Rosie Pierce. I’d like to say a huge thank you to my brilliant editor Emily Kitchin and everyone at HQ, especially Lisa Milton who kept all her authors updated during some tricky times. I’d like to thank Katie Seaman who also helped edit, Sarah Lundy in PR, Melissa Kelly in marketing and everyone in production. I’m super proud to be an HQ author and I’d like to thank all the other authors who support me on the socials and all the booksellers and libraries and book clubs who champion authors like me.

They say that the first rule of writing is to write what you know and so I turned to my own doorstep for inspiration. I wanted to write about what we gained during lockdown, rather than what we lost – and for me, that was a renewed appreciation of nature and a deeper sense of community.

I’d been living in Brighton for twelve years and had plunged in the sea at the end of the road in the summer, lazily bobbed around in our blow-up kayake and fallen off a few paddleboards in that time, but I’d never considered swimming out of season. But when Covid struck, the sea took on a whole new significance.