Get active
Annie stood over her chest of drawers, holding the swimsuit she’d unearthed. Tastefully substantial, in black-and-white stripes, she’d bought it for a holiday in Greece with Mike. It was supposed to be their last just the two of them, and in a way it had been—they’d never gone on holiday together again, and now never would. She held it to her briefly. The smell of salt and sun cream lingered in the fabric, reminding her of when she’d been happy. Turquoise seas and the whisper of the ceiling fan and waking to squares of sunlight on the wooden floor.
It would have been so easy to put it back, give up on the cold public pool with its grubby changing rooms, but she wanted to have something to tell Polly the next day. And so she packed the suit into a bag, along with a towel and an old-lady swim cap covered in plastic flowers. And when she blundered into the pool at lunchtime, she found herself smiling at an over-sixties water aerobics club attired in similar headgear, and they waved at her, and she waved back shyly, wondering if she might be able to take her mother to something like that one day, if the trial worked. Realizing that without her even knowing it, hope had somehow lodged itself in her heart again after years of being AWOL.