Lifesaving for Beginners

such a category, although it might be called something different.
    It was just one of those things, I suppose. What happened to us. After the accident. The bloody miracle. Things were fine before that. But Thomas wanted to change everything. All the talk of marriage. And children. Although he didn’t say ‘children’. He referred to ‘a child’, as if this child already existed and it was just a question of us going somewhere to pick it up.
    It’s true what I said. It was Thomas who ended the relationship. But he said he had no choice. That I left him with no choice. After the lies I told. How I avoided him. And the Nicolas incident. Thomas, standing in the doorway, looking at me. Never even glancing at Nicolas. Throwing his keys on the table. ‘This is what you want, Kat? Fine! I’m done here.’
    The silence after he left. The hollow depth of it.
    I’d say sorry now. If I could go back. I’d make Nicolas from number thirteen leave. No, I’d never invite him in, in the first place.
    I’d say sorry.
    If it hadn’t been for the accident – the stupid, bloody miracle – we’d be fine, me and Thomas. Thomas and me. I believe that. There’s no reason not to. Everything just got out of hand in the end.
    And I never said sorry. I should have. But it’s like Mum calling Dad Kenneth. It’s too late now.
    The heat from the pool rises and collects between us. I pull at the neck of my jumper.
    I say, ‘I didn’t realise you’d be here.’ It sounds like an accusation, the way I say it. I try to smile, to show that it is not.
    He says, ‘I promised Ed, remember?’
    I nod. Thomas happens to be one of those people who mean the things they say.
    ‘Would you like to . . .’ He points towards his empty seat in the middle of the row.
    ‘Oh. No. Thank you, I’ll just . . .’ I nod and smile and point towards the pool.
    He nods and then contorts himself into a sort of squat and shuffles back along the row to his seat, with the ‘sorryexcusemesorryexcuseme’ and the sound of tutting and shifting all around as he goes.
    I think Ed comes second. I’m nearly sure he does. I cheer as if he does. I hurry from the balcony when it’s over. I don’t catch Thomas’s eye. Don’t want him to think that I expect him to stay and congratulate Ed, like he would have done, before.
    In the car park, Ed spots him immediately. Inconspicuousness is not something that Thomas is good at.
    It takes a while for him and Thomas to dispense with their formalities, which include a long and complicated system of hand slaps and shakes.
    I am freezing. Thomas does not take my fingers and put the tips of them into his mouth, like he used to when they went a bloodless yellow in the cold. I told him not to do that. ‘That’s disgusting,’ I said. ‘Do you have any idea how many germs are in that cake-hole of yours?’ I never told him that I liked it. The warm wet of his mouth on my skin. The pleasure of the pain, as he coaxed the blood back into my fingers.
    I make fists out of my hands and shove them inside the pockets of my coat.
    ‘Did Kat tell you?’ Ed smiles at Thomas.
    Thomas looks at Ed and smiles because Ed’s smile is contagious and that’s just a fact. Even John Banville’s face would crack if Ed smiled at him.
    Just as it dawns on me what Ed is about to say – the cold has given me brain-freeze, in much the same way a bowl of Chunky Monkey would – Ed comes right out and says it.
    He says, ‘I’m going to be an uncle. Uncle Ed. I’m going to be Uncle Ed. Did Kat tell you? Is that what Kat was telling you? When I was doing my swimming race?’
    And, just like that, it’s out there, and for the first time since I opened the envelopes, it seems real.
    Ed will be an uncle. He is an uncle. Uncle Ed.
    And I am a mother.
    The baby was a girl. Her name is Faith and she’s twenty-four years old and she wants to meet me because I’m her mother.
    Realisation grabs me from behind like a mugger. I feel like I might fall with the force of it, but I don’t. Of course I don’t. I stand there and concentrate on Ed. He is smiling at Thomas, waiting for Thomas to say something. The world seems strangely quiet, as if we are not standing in the middle of a car park with engines revving all around us.
    Ed nudges Thomas. ‘Did you hear me? I’m going to be an uncle, I said. Uncle Ed. Her name is Faith and when she comes to Dublin I’m going to meet her. She’s going to sleep in the bottom bunk and I’m going to bring her