Handmade by Anna Ploszajski

Author:Anna Ploszajski [Ploszajski, Anna]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781472971067

Sugar

About 2 miles off the French coast, west of Calais.

‘Anna – tell me why you’re swimming,’ shouts the bearded boat pilot, leaning out from his cabin.

Treading water, I sob and shake my head. Why am I doing this? Even if I knew, my brain is too chaotic to formulate words or sentences. My lungs are on fire, my tongue feels like leather and my left shoulder has been giving me a sharp stabbing pain with every stroke since the sun came up. It’s now high in the sky, and I can see the red, rocky cliffs of the French coastline in high definition.

He hands me a drink, and as it glides down my salt-ravaged throat I feel its energy hit me like a breaking wave. This warming, magic potion tastes of sugary coffee, and with a jolt it kicks me from despair to determination.

Without answering him, I stick my head down and start to sprint towards land.

*

Fourteen hours earlier, I was standing on Shakespeare Beach in Dover under a perfect July sunset, arm raised in readiness, waiting. Some way offshore bobs the boat that will be accompanying me as I attempt to swim the English Channel; twenty-one miles across from England to France. Through my goggles I can just about make out three figures standing along the starboard side; there’s Sally, English Channel swimmer and Matriarch of the Seas, whom I had befriended simply on account of becoming a regular at London’s lidos. Whilst swimming is mostly a solitary sport, we had both clocked each other as the person staying in the pool for the longest and become friendly on account of our shared enjoyment of endurance. Most of why I was standing on that beach was Sally’s fault. In summers gone by we would spend many happy week­ends splashing up and down, and she would often tease me by saying ‘You’re going to swim the Channel one day,’ a wry twinkle in her eye. Back then, I would just laugh and roll my eyes, ‘Yeah right Sal, I could never do that!’

Next to her stands Ash, my swimming soulmate, whom I’d met two years previously on the holiday where the idea of swimming to France had transformed from laughable to possible. Many of the other swimmers on the trip had either already swum the Channel or were training to. I realised that these were all ordinary human beings who just happened to be doing extraordinary things. They were no better or worse at swimming than I was, and if they could do it, then why couldn’t I? This would come to form my secret answer when people asked me agog why I was attempting such an endeavour. Because I probably can, I would think to myself. ‘Why not!’ I would tell them out loud.

Third stands Mike, tall and broad, an ex-policeman and the sort of person who you would instinctively trust with your life in an emergency. I had met Mike on that same trip, and when he told me he could be in the crew driving boat to accompany me across the Channel, my mind was made up.

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