Then, on the Saturday of the Gladiators trials, Moira Vanderbeek released her follow-up article on what happened to Amelia Piper. And what happened, according to Moira – and it was in a national newspaper, so it must be true – was that Amelia Piper had reconciled with the man who seduced her as a teenager and persuaded her to throw away both her, her family’s and the nations hopes and dreams.
Ooh, she was good. Only a smattering of lies, mostly carefully phrased facts wrapped up in insinuation and speculation. How I had been living as a recluse for the past hundred years, relying on my old coach to look after me and Joey (those quotes from Cee-Cee had better be made up). Overweight, out of work, depressed and alone, unable to get over my broken heart. And then, like a knight in a shiny black car, Sean had swooped in.
How romantic! Like a true-life fairy tale! Sean had sold his company (sold his company!! For four and a half million dollars!!)and returned to rescue me from my despair and reunite the family. There were photos of him arriving at our house on Christmas Day, arms laden with gifts, the three of us out for Chicken Thursday, snapped at probably the only instant that Sean and I were looking at each other and laughing. Sat at the gala together. What a saint Sean was, for giving up his business and home to risk it all for the love of an unpredictable, mentally unstable oddball with nothing to offer.
And I clearly was, as demonstrated by the photograph of me, in a swimsuit that is the very definition of skimpy, standing in a shop being spoken to by a police officer. Apparently this ‘episode’ had caused such a ruckus that Sporting Warehouse required evacuation in the middle of the sale, with the store closed for several hours while the police persuaded me to get dressed.
But would Sean stand by me now, given that the Brooksby Leisure Centre manager could neither confirm nor deny that I had been caught engaging in an explicit sexual act in the public changing room, WITH MY SON’S COACH?
It was also well known in the Brooksby Bridge Club that I had a fetish for spying on couples through their bedroom windows. The quote from Audrey’s old fart of a boyfriend was brutal.
And then, to top it off, Moira Vanderbeek finished the article by pondering as to whether Sean could prevent my erratic and illegal behaviour from sabotaging Joey’s swimming future, in particular his trials with the Gladiators.
I’d had some low days, but this had to be one of the darkest.
Joey and I spent the morning mostly in stunned silence. He’d read the article and listened to my explanation with a mix of shock, disgust and anger, but had paused on the photograph of me and his dad, and I had caught the glimmer of hope in his eye.
By lunchtime, an hour before he needed to leave, we decided.
‘I don’t think I should go.’
My heart was breaking. This had been the shining gold medal at the end of all the effort and the pain and the sweat, blood and tears.
Joey nodded, his face pale and grim.
‘There’ll probably be journalists there. And even the other swimmers, the Gladiators coaches, we don’t want their attention to be on me. Let alone poor Nathan. You go, hold your head high, do what you do best and make yourself proud.’
‘Don’t cry, Mum. I’ll be fine with Dad and Nathan. Once I’m in the water, it won’t make a difference who’s there. If you came, I’d just worry about you panicking.’
‘I’m so sorry.’ The thought that after everything, Joey still had to worry about me was yet another twist of the knife now lodged in my liver.
‘It’s not your fault.’
‘Maybe not, but that doesn’t stop it being totally horrendous for you to have those things said about your family.’
He shrugged, trying to find a smile. ‘Hey, at least everyone knows my mum’s a world champion swimmer now. It wasn’t easy, keeping that to myself. And my friends know the truth. The squad know Nathan wouldn’t… do that. So they’ll probably know the rest of it is bogus, too.’
‘Are you sure you’ll be okay going today? We can ask them to postpone, they’d understand, given the circumstances.’ All my instinct as a mother was to keep Joey here, with me, safe and protected. To shield him from the media circus that once almost destroyed me. It was only swimming. Surely it wasn’t worth all this.
I was about to insist that Joey stayed at home, and then he spoke again:
‘If I don’t go, that bitch’ll’ve won. And they’ll be able to say that youhavesabotaged my career, after all. It’ll be fine. I’m not losing to anyone today. Least of all her.’
And I realised, this wasn’t only swimming. It was also months of determination and effort, and saying no to parties and lie-ins and junk food. It was choosing a goal, following a dream, and sticking to it, no matter what. It was the chance to shine at the thing he excelled at, pushing himself to be more than he should be, giving his all. It was one of the best feelings in the whole damn world. And after all the crap he’d dealt with, who was I to deny him that?
So, I did not insist. I ignored my better judgement for the sake of an improbable dream, and I let him go.
And it was not fine. Not even close.
* * *
The trials started at two. Sean called me at three-thirty.
When someone starts a phone call with a breathless, ‘Now there’s no need to panic but,’ there is only one reasonable response to that. Panic. So, I could barely hear his garbled explanation through the thunder roaring in my head. This I had understood by the time he rang off: Joey had hit his head in the pool, the paramedics were with him, they were leaving for the hospital now.
I was in my car and halfway down the street before I noticed that I was still in my chequered pyjama bottoms and Joey’s old rugby hoodie.
I was halfway to Nottingham before I realised that I didn’t know how to get to the hospital. Frantic, sobbing, muttering like a mad woman, I found myself stuck in the clog of city-centre traffic, lost in the one-way system and nearly out of my mind by the time Sean called me to say they’d arrived. Only holding hysteria at bay with the sheer determination to get to my son, I clicked onto speakerphone and allowed Sean to guide me to the Queen’s Medical Centre, his calm voice a lighthouse in my frenzied storm.
