When I get to the pool, it’s entirely empty. I sit on the edge with my lower legs in the water, adjusting the new goggles. The water is cool, but not unpleasantly so, though it still makes me gasp when I finally slip in. I used to be on the school team, but it’s been a long time since I’ve swum; it’s almost a surprise to me that I remember how. It’s more of a surprise how much I enjoy it: the cool caress of the water along my body, the stretch of my muscles as I reach forward to catch the water. It feels clean and fresh and pure, and it makes me feel like I could be that way too. I’m aware of someone else, a man, entering the water, and swimming laps rather quicker than I am, but we keep to ourselves; there’s no need to interact. And then we happen to have both stopped for a breather at the same end at the same time, and our polite nods turn to surprise. “Detective!” I say at exactly the same time as he says, “Ailsa!”

“I think under the circumstances you could probably call me Bryn,” he says with a mild hint of drollery. He’s standing in the waist-deep water, his goggles pushed up on his forehead. I can’t avoid noticing his lean muscle, how his collarbones extend like a broad beam placed atop his torso. His pale shoulders are copiously dusted with freckles. I realize he’s the same man that I watched swim before, when I was looking for Glen.

“Are you a member here?” I sink myself to my chin in the water, absurdly self-conscious.

He nods. “I swim here two or three times a week. You?”

“I’ve just joined. First swim.”

“Then welcome,” he says. There’s more of a smile in his eyes than I have ever seen before, as if the water has refreshed him, woken him up.

“Thanks. Actually I’m nearly done.”

“I won’t be too far behind you.” He seems far more at ease than I. “Do you have time for a coffee afterward?”

I pause with my hands on the goggles on my own forehead. “Should I? Is this official?”

He shrugs equivocally. “Look, if it’s a bad time—”

“No, it’s fine. I’ll see you in the café.”

“Perfect. Whoever gets there first can order. Mine’s a flat white.”

“Black Americano.”

By the time I’ve settled my goggles, he’s already off, eating up the yards with his long limbs. I swim two hundred meters more, then climb awkwardly from the pool and scuttle for the changing room, feeling as if his eyes are on me, even though I can still hear the steady turnover of his stroke.