And there was something else. I was aware of something. Too aware—snatches of voices, a short burst of laughter that made me spin around and search the resort, abandon my pancakes and run down to the shoreline, looking for something, scanning every face, but all of them were strangers. My mind was racing.

‘Just a hangover,’ I said to myself, as I changed into my swimmers back in my villa. ‘You’re fine.’

And I was. My head hurt and that feeling in my stomach wouldn’t go away, but I was fine. I was just awake, in a way I didn’t remember being for a long time, and I couldn’t figure out why. Maybe it was just that I wasn’t used to being alone, or maybe the conversation I’d had with Lina had shifted something.

Or maybe it was just a hangover, and I’d forgotten what they felt like.

The pool was empty when I got there, and I dived in without testing the water first. It was bracing, colder than I’d expected, and when I came up I gasped for air before diving back down again, deeper this time, opening my eyes and feeling the sting of salt and letting myself float back to the surface. I swam a lap, two. A third. Got bored with laps and dived down again, this time all the way to the bottom, skimming the pool floor with my fingertips and letting my breath out in small bubbles as slowly as I could, until my lungs felt empty. My body felt soft, barely real. I couldn’t feel where I ended and the water began.

I kept my eyes open as I floated up, letting the salt and the sunlight blind me for a second. I saw a shape off to one side, strangely familiar. My face broke the surface and my eyes blinked involuntarily against the air and the light and I took a breath, huge and deep, and the shape was still there and from somewhere, I heard my name, what sounded like my name, couldn’t be my name.

I dived down to the bottom again, touching it, solid. Fingertips on concrete. Real. Definitely real. My body drifted upwards but I fought it. This wasn’t real. This was a dream. Or it wasn’t, and I was finally going crazy. All the way insane. I exhaled as slowly as I could, so slowly my chest hurt, wondered if I could just stay under water. If maybe this was it—that I wasn’t supposed to be killed in a car accident or be raped and murdered by a stranger or die in a plane crash; I was supposed to go insane in a swimming pool in Bali and drown myself through sheer will.