Thereâs nothing different about this morning, itâs your same weekday routine. Alarm at half-five, swimsuit on, clothes on, moka on, coffee drunk, pick up your bag from where you left it beside the front door last night. Short drive to the pool, into one of the cubicles to take off what youâre wearing over your suit, and then locker, water, breathe.
Strokes, breathe. Strokes, breathe. You feel the water and the physical motion wash away thought, and you reach that point where you stop being the swimmer, just become the swim.
The big clock moves round and you get out, your legs a little jelly, but thatâs good. You feel good. Shower, and you lift your face to it, enjoying the moment. Then you go back to a cubicle to get changed, so you have time for another coffee and a croissant before you get to work. The poolâs getting busy now, lots of chatter and voices, the early morning but not as early as you regular crowd.
Then, when youâre just about finished getting ready, you realise you canât hear anyone any more. You canât hear the splash of the water or the rumble of the aircon or the smack of flip-flops on tile. You shake your head, to dislodge water from your ears, remember youâd worn your plugs, lift a hand but they were out, youâd taken them out and put them back in their case.
You start to worry that youâve missed something, an evacuation of some kind and so you hurriedly push your towel into your bag, and open the door to look out.
Thereâs nothing to see. You blink once, blink twice, feel a little sick. There is nothing to see. No off-white floor tiles, no row of cubicles with orange doors, no metal pipes running up the wall, no wall, no nothing. Although you donât know how you can tell, you know that you are not even looking at a space where the pool used to be. There is nothing there, not even a space. Just nothing, in all directions.
You feel dizzy, and terrified about what might happen if you fell forward into the nothing, so you step back, shut your cubicle door.
A moment later there are voices, calls of greeting echoing off the walls, an announcement that two of the lanes are about to be closed off for non-club members, the hiss of a shower. You open the cubicle door, and see everything is there again, just as it was.
Now, in the mornings, you get up early, moka on, dress, coffee, trainers on, and out in the open to run and run until you canât think.