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  ‘To the changing room, hold that smile to the changing room …’ Madame would call, and Moira would smile and smile her blank glassy beautiful smile until she got to the changing room and turned into an ordinary, slightly flat-footed sixth former again. She was a bit plump when she wasn’t in the water, in her outdoor clothes she looked like any other lacklustre schoolgirl. But with her makeup covering her slightly speckled skin, and her hair gelled into a waterproof helmet, and her nose pinched tight by her nose clip, she was a beautiful girl. ‘An artiste,’ Madame said. ‘I will make you an artiste.’

  Her solo was to ‘Endless Love’; it was just beautiful. It was very slow – and that’s one of the hardest things to do. She had to hold her positions for ages. But the music was so thick and loud it was like soup, like creamy soup. When you listened and you saw Moira go into her first arabesque it was as if the music went in through your ears, and the point of her extended toe went in through your eyes, and they joined together in your brain, and you could see and hear and think of nothing else.

  Moira always did her solo last of all, after warm-up and stamina work, and the team dances. All us Ducklings would ask our mums if we could stay until Moira had finished. I liked to stay until she came out of the water (smiling, smiling all the way to the changing room) so I could hand her towel to her, and see her face, still pinched sharp by her nose clip, turn towards me for one brief dismissive moment. ‘Thank you,’ she would say, and then I would go home with my mum, and my dad would say, ‘Good swim?’ and I would say, ‘Wonderful.’ But I knew he would never understand, and I would never explain.

  We were working towards the Nationals in July, and Madame was more and more demanding at every swimming session from May onwards. She got really cross with the Cygnets for mucking about in the changing rooms. She shouted at them and even said things in French. One of the mums was upset, but the others knew it was just Madame’s way before a big event. She had all the worry of it. And with Moira going for the National Solo title this year, well, everyone knew how serious it was. The Swans team were really nasty to the Cygnets when they came in to change and found water all over the floor. They called them stupid kids and complete pains. Us Ducklings just kept out of the way.

  Then in June, at the first training session of the month, there was a dreadful notice pinned on the pool door, and the door was shut. Madame was ill, and there was no training, even though it was Monday, and the competition only a month away. She had fallen and broken her hip and gone to hospital. All the mums stood around outside the door, and the Swans and the Cygnets and us Ducklings peered through the double glass doors trying to see the pool. It was awful being shut out, it was awful having to go home without having swum, and awful to see Moira only in her boring white aertex shirt and navy blue skirt looking plain and dull, turning around and biking home, just like anybody.

  But during the week the club found a new trainer. A man trainer. ‘That’ll shake ’em up,’ Dad said. I didn’t know that men knew anything about synchronised swimming. I thought it was all women, except for the judges. There weren’t any boy swimmers, and the dads only came to competition nights. I didn’t know that men knew how to do it.

  He was nice. He said, ‘Call me Steve,’ which seemed very odd. He knew different warm-up exercises and they were good fun, and he didn’t do stamina exercises at all, he threw weights down to the bottom of the pool and made us fetch them, and threw floating hoops in and we had to swim through them. It was really good fun, like playing. I wondered what Madame would say about people splashing and laughing in training. Some of the youngest Ducklings got really silly and over-excited, and had to be ducked to make them shut up.

  He watched the routines and he liked the Ducklings, he even laughed at the little duck dance, which I didn’t like because synchronised swimming ought to be serious. But when he came to the Swans he shook his head.

  ‘This is something like ten years out of date,’ he said.

  Then he saw Moira’s solo and I could tell that he didn’t like it either. That was when I knew that I didn’t like him. He didn’t say anything but he called us altogether at the poolside. Us Ducklings were dressed and ready to go home. The Cygnets and the Swans had their towels around them. I gave Moira her towel and for once she didn’t say thank you. She just took it. She was looking at him, at Steve.

  ‘You’re a great team,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t have come to train you if I hadn’t known that. You’re a great team. Stamina good, lines excellent, formation excellent. What I want us to work on between now and the competition is making you a bit more up to date.’

  He said that synchronised swimming was making a bid, a big bid, to be taken seriously as a sport. That it was an Olympic sporting event and it must stay in the Olympics. That people thought it was a load of silly girls with sequins and that it was our job to show them that it was a major strand of athletics and swimming. When he said that, about sequins, I looked at Moira. She had three beautiful costumes and she was making a new one for the Nationals in July. I knew that it would be covered with sequins, and Madame had shown her how to put them on her hairband too, so she had sequins in her hair.

  One of the girls had some waterproof glue so that you could stick sequins on your eyebrows. I couldn’t imagine that Moira could win without her sequins, I even thought she might sink without them.

  ‘So I’ve got some new music, and a new design,’ Steve said. ‘Moira and the Swans, stay behind and I’ll play it to you. Cygnets and Ducklings, see you next week. You’ve done very well. I’m very pleased with you.’

  That night, Dad said, ‘Good swim?’ and I said, ‘All right.’ But I did not feel all right. I felt that things were going wrong.

  Next Monday we all stayed behind to watch Moira’s new solo. The music was ‘Pumping Iron’ and she started it in the water, so you didn’t really get to see the costume, or her dive in. It just looked like the stamina exercises to me, over and over again. Lots of underwater work, and lots of high jumps. It was really hard, we could tell that. When she came out she was panting, I’d never seen her like that before. She couldn’t catch her breath to smile at all, never mind smile smile smile all the way to the changing rooms.

  ‘That’s great,’ Steve said. ‘You’ve worked really hard. No-one expects you to look as if you’ve just been for a stroll. Keep those feet moving, keep breathing, excellent.’

  I held out her towel for her, and I saw her face. Her face was scarlet with the effort of the new routine. She did not look serene and beautiful, she looked exhausted. She pulled off the nose clip and her nose was an angry red, her eyes were watery from the chlorine.

  ‘It’s not “Come Dancing” any more,’ he said. ‘It’s not pretty-pretty waving your arms around. It’s not cutaway swimsuits and showing your legs to the judges like underwater Tiller girls. It’s a sport. It’s about discipline, and stamina, and ability. Just like the long jump or the parallel bars, or a freestyle race. You can do it. You can all do it. And we’ll win at the National Championships, I guarantee it.’

  He took the tape out of the machine and passed it to Moira. ‘Train at home to it,’ he said. ‘Get that beat and get moving to it.’

  She wiped her hand on the towel and took it from him, reluctantly, as if she did not really want it. ‘It’s loud and hard and happening,’ he said. ‘The Mantovani sound is yesterday’s swimming, Moira. I promise you.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Thank you.’

  The next three weeks we worked harder than we had ever worked for Madame. He choreographed the Swans dance again, and they were swimming to a rap number now. He wanted us all in regulation black Speedo swimsuits. ‘This is sports,’ he said. ‘Not a fashion parade.’ Some of the Ducklings were quite tearful in the changing room.

  We had been promised a white costume with silver sequins, and little white net wings on the shoulder straps. The Swans were sulky and changed in silence. Some of them liked the new dance but none of them liked the costume. They had been goin