It was earlier in the day than last time, and not busy. The sun was hot when the clouds weren’t over it. An old man with a droopy Wild West moustache was doing breaststroke very slowly and a couple of younger men were diving, their stomachs sucked in as their arms stretched up. Two swimmers hugged close to the rope markers, doing front crawl, their mouths opening and closing like goldfish.

Matty swam slowly to the middle of the Pond, heading for the floating platform. Tried to imagine Dad in here, tired after work, having had a pint or two in the pub first and maybe ‘gone a bit thin lizzy’, like he sometimes said.

No one was on the platform today. You’d be easily missed, here in the water on the far side of it. The lifeguards hardly seemed to watch half the time, chatting to each other, caps pulled down low. Matty turned over and floated face up, arms out flat and eyes closed, the sun beating down.

Lungs like inflatables. Breathe in, and you rose. Out, and you sank, just a little. Like Dad might have done.

Time to stop breathing.

Arms sagged. Legs. A line of cool liquid rose slowly into each ear. The water rocked, a queasy sway, and Matty’s body was lolled, 180 degrees round. Face in the pond. Drowning. It would be like dreaming.

Suddenly, a hand was dragging Matty back round and yanking a fist’s worth of T-shirt.

Cough. Snot. Cough. Matty fumbled, holding onto someone’s bare shoulders, kicking. Blinking madly.

Two dark eyes, right there. ‘What in the bleeding hell do you think you’re doing? Dickhead.’ There was a loud whistle blown from the lifeguard’s area.

Matty stopped kicking, partly held by the boy, and gazed back. Heart full of water, lungs full of air.

‘Are you dead?’

‘No.’

The boy prodded Matty in the chest. ‘Out. Up.’

His face was very close.

Still coughing, Matty had clambered up onto the central platform and now sat, exhausted, as if having just run the London Marathon. The boy from the water was peering, fiercely, about two inches away.

Slick, dark hair. His eyes, so bog-brown they were almost black. He sat back on his haunches, running a palm over his hair and waggling the water off, droplets that caught the light. His shape seemed liquid, his skin lined in sun. Balancing on his heels, the boy clasped his hands in front of him and let out a breath. A really annoyed breath. ‘Seriously. You’re a dickhead.’

There seemed to be nothing to say. You couldn’t thank someone who had rescued you from drowning when you had been half-trying to drown. Shivers started coming. A head rush. Matty jumped back in and swam very fast toward the walkway. Short, shallow breaths.

‘Where’re you going?’ The boy’s voice was flung into the air. But he didn’t follow.