Love in Every Season by Charlie Cochrane

Author:Charlie Cochrane [Cochrane, Charlie]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Publisher: The Right Chair Press
Published: 2019-07-21T16:00:00+00:00

Representation

“Ladies and gentlemen, the competitors for the S9 one hundred metres final.”

I can remember the announcer’s voice as clear as day, and the face of the woman who ushered us poolside at the Aquatics Centre. If I shut my eyes right now I can summon up the colours of the flags, the roar of the spectators and some strangely elusive smell—someone’s cologne?—but I can’t remember a thing about the race itself.

People think I’m lying when I say that, but it’s God’s own truth. I can recall going out and getting my kit off by my lane block: I was in four, because of my spanking heat time. The number four on the basket where I left my kit when I stripped down seemed so large and almost surreal. That number’s about the last thing I remember clear as day, because the next few minutes began to blur. There was the bit where we were introduced one by one and got to wave at the crowd and smile at the camera. I think I behaved myself by not pulling a funny face—I hope I did, anyway—and next thing we were called to mount our blocks.

I must have got on them and resisted all temptation to just throw myself in straight away. Cardinal sin, the false start. I guess I did the right thing and dived in when the gun went—I was in the water, and not back in the changing room in disgrace. I suppose I must have got to the other end, made a decent turn and done another thirty five metres, but don’t ask me how. I came to about fifteen metres from the line with nobody in front of me, at least not in lanes three and five. The shock nearly lost me the race. In what must have been a micro-second I went through the whole What am I doing here? Why can’t I feel my legs? I don’t think I can swim another metre... crap.

It had happened before, when I was a lot younger and had the chance of winning a race that was technically out of my league. I was ahead with ten metres to go and got a severe case of the willies. I didn’t think I should win and I didn’t. That mistake wasn’t going to happen again. This time, I concentrated really hard, willing my legs and arms through the water, through the longest fifteen metres I’d ever swum. My left arm wanted to give up the ghost but I forced it through, doing the last two strokes by willpower alone.

Even then I wasn’t sure I’d won, because I bobbed up in the water at about the same time as my greatest rival, Byron Jones from the USA, who’d been in lane five. I’d beaten him at the World Cup and I knew he was out for revenge. We just looked at each other with a sort of you or me? expression. The tannoy put us out of our misery.

“First, and Paralympic

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