Boy Underwater. Adam Baron

      Google search: how to crawl.

      Result: baby may spend time rocking forwards and backwards initially but by between eight and twelve months she should be crawling confidently and pulling herself upright.

      What? A baby can do it and I can’t? No, wait, that’s not swimming crawling, is it?

      Google search: how to swim crawl.

      Right, here we go. That looks doable. Swimwell.org says you have to lie in the water face down and move your arms like two windmills. You tilt your head from side to side to breathe. Fine. How hard can it be?

      Shut computer.

      ‘Mum!’ I called from the living room.

      ‘Yes, Cym?’

      ‘I need to have a bath!’

      I heard a teacup smash on the kitchen floor before she came rushing through.

      ‘Cym, are you okay? Are you feeling all right?’

      ‘Yes, why?’

      ‘It’s just that, well, you asked to have a bath.’

      ‘I know, I, er … I just feel that being clean is very important.’

      ‘Of course. Well, I’m glad you’ve finally woken up to that. But won’t a shower do?’

      ‘Not on this occasion, no.’

      Upstairs, I ran a bath and began. Head down, bottom up. I probably shouldn’t have added the bubble bath, though. Pretty soon I was rubbing my eyes and spitting out mouthfuls of foam. The problem was that it just wasn’t deep or long enough. Or wide enough. My arms hit the sides when I tried to windmill them and I kept banging my head on the end. Swimwell.org had mentioned something called tumble-turns, for swapping round and going the other way. But when I tried one of those I pulled the plug out with my big toe and kicked the bubble bath out of the window.

      ‘Have you gone mad?!’ Mum screamed, running in. There was more water out of the bath than in it.

      ‘At least I’m clean,’ I said. Whereupon Mum just shook her head and picked up the shampoo bottle.

      ‘Eyes,’ she said.

      I turned round and let her wash my hair without complaining (much) and when she finished I asked what we were doing that weekend.

      ‘What would you like to do?’

      ‘Can we …?’

      ‘Yes, Cym?’

      ‘Go swimming?’

      Mum went quiet. Then she said, ‘Well, we’ll see. Perhaps. Though I was thinking of taking you to Charlton tomorrow afternoon. Early birthday present.’

      ‘Seriously?’

      Charlton is our local team and the side I will be playing for one day. I’ll be the captain, like Johnnie Jackson is now, though I’ll have to share it with Lance of course as we’re equal. Danny Jones (second best) and Billy Lee (best, grrrr) will be playing for Chelsea in the Premier League so I don’t have to worry about them. The thought of going was brilliant, especially as, being an EARLY birthday present, I would surely get my other special treat AS WELL (more on that later). I thought about my birthday. The fact it was still a whole massive week away was almost like torture. Funny, isn’t it, that the nearer your birthday gets the more it seems like it’s never actually going to come?

      ‘Thanks, Mum! Did you get tickets?’

      ‘Not yet. I only just thought of it. I’ll go online in a bit. They don’t sell out.’

      ‘Fab. What about Sunday afternoon?’

      ‘For what?’

      ‘Swimming.’

      ‘Are they open on Sunday? No, I don’t think they are.’

      ‘Oh. Well, maybe not Charlton then this weekend. Perhaps we could go next week instead …’

      But Mum wasn’t listening. She got me out, plonked a towel over my head, and hurried downstairs. By the time I got there she was smiling up from the computer.

      ‘Got them,’ she said. ‘West Upper Stand, your favourite.’

      ‘Thanks, Mum,’ I said.

      That night, after tea, Mum let me stay up with her and we curled up on the sofa watching the first Harry Potter. I like Harry Potter as much as anyone but there’s something no one else seems to think about when they’re banging on about wanting a Firebolt or how they wish they could apparate. He’s got no mum or dad. They’re dead. I don’t think about my dad much, but sometimes it’s like he sort of thinks about me, makes me remember that he’s not there. That he’s dead. It happens when I read stories like Harry Potter. I don’t wish I had a super-fast broomstick or that I could move around in a magic way. I just wish I had photos like Harry has. That move. Then the man on the mantelpiece might mean a bit more to me. He might feel like my dad, not just some bloke in a checked shirt with his arm round someone who looks like she must be my mum’s younger sister.

      Also, Harry Potter knows what happened to his dad but whenever I ask about mine everyone says it’s not something I need to think about until I’m older (like offside). Lance asked me once and I was a bit embarrassed to admit I didn’t know so I just told him he got ill.

      ‘And I don’t suppose they had Calpol then, did they?’ Lance said.

      When the film finished I expected Mum to tell me it was bedtime. I even started to get up from the sofa but she just smiled and asked if I wanted to see the second one. I didn’t ask why we were getting to watch two films in a row. I just nodded and we watched it all, though I could hardly stay awake.

      When it was over she carried me up and I saw that the clock in the hall said half past eleven. I’d only stayed up that late once before, last year at Uncle Bill and Auntie Mill’s joint ‘significant’ birthday. It was half ten when I woke up in the morning and nearly midday by the time Mum had got the pancakes made and we’d eaten them.

      ‘What about the pool, Mum?’ I said, when I couldn’t stuff any more in.

      She looked up at the clock and sighed. ‘Sorry, love, don’t think we’d get there and back before kick-off, do you?’

      I didn’t answer. There wasn’t any point. She just wasn’t going to take me. I started to get mad but, when I looked up, Mum had tears in her eyes and she was staring at me. I saw her swallow and then move towards me, her soft arms going round my neck.

      ‘I love you,’ she said, and I believed it so much I didn’t mind about the swimming. Not then, at least, though on Monday it was different, believe me. In the meantime, though, I had Charlton to look forward to: come on, you Addicks! It was great, which meant my real birthday trip was going to be epic. We got chips and Mum let me have a battered sausage. I heard three swear words, one of which was completely new to me but, somehow, I still knew it was a swear word. We were drawing with Rotherham 1–1 when Johnnie Jackson scored a header in the last minute. Yes! That would have been me, not Lance. He’s good at doing crosses but he runs away from headers and pretends not to at the last moment, when the ball’s already on the ground. I might be a bit better than him, actually.

      ‘How’s this