“I just watched your interview,” she tells me. “It was lovely. I know how much your dad will appreciate that shoutout. And I appreciated it too. Do you really mean it?”
I think I can hear her chewing her nails, or maybe I just know her too well and instinctively know that’s what she’s doing.
“Mean what?”
“That I’m your best friend?”
“You’ve always been my best friend,” I tell her. “Even when we weren’t speaking, you were my best friend. And I know that everything was my fault, and I can’t believe I said those things, Kath. But—” I pause. I don’t know what I can say to repair things. “I’m so sorry. And I wish I could make it better.”
I chew my lip, feeling like words are letting me down. “I was an idiot, and I don’t deserve your friendship. And I don’t deserve to be able to tell you how much I’ve missed you. But please hear me when I say that I’m sorry. I’ll spend the rest of my life apologising if that’s what it takes.”
I know that my interview doesn’t erase anything, and that I need to put in a lot of work for her to forgive me. Achieving my record was special, it’s something I’ve wanted for my whole life, but it felt hollow without anyone there with me. No record can replace people who matter. There’s more to life than swimming. There’s always been more to life than swimming, and I was too wrapped up in myself to realise it.
She lets out a slightly wet laugh. “Let’s talk about it after the Olympics.”
“Are you sure? I can talk about it now if you want to.”
“I’m sure,” she says.
“But promise we will talk about it?”
“Pinky promise. Let’s talk about earlier instead so we can make a plan to try and stop it happening again. What do you think caused it?”
I scrub a hand over my face. “I’m stilltrying to work it all out.”
She gives me a moment to think, and I study the paint on the hotel room wall, trying to untangle my thoughts.
“I think I’ve just been putting so much pressure on myself over the last few years. Honestly, I’m not even sure I really enjoy swimming anymore. I used to find that moment of diving into the water the most incredible feeling in the world. And I got nervous before big races, but nothing like this. Now, I can’t sleep. Winning has become all I can think about. It’s… tearing me up inside.”
“There’s a huge weight of expectations. Your face is on buses and billboards and the television, Sam. It’s not a normal thing to go through. You’re not a film star. It isn’t something that you signed up for.”
“But I did,” I tell her, frustrated at myself. Annoyed that I shut people out instead of coping with it properly. “I knew that fame was part of being the best. I wanted the sponsorships, needed them, to be honest. I knew that by virtue of racing, people would be watching and analysing me.”
“That’s not the sort of thing you think about when you’re eleven and love swimming. Don’t beat yourself up about not realising how it would impact you. But what happened today, Sam? I know you well enough to know it’s not the first time you’ve been anxious about races. You felt like that before in Rio and Worlds. What was different today?”
I’m still putting the pieces together in my mind.
“Getting the record,” I say finally. “I finished and when I looked around I realised that I’d achieved exactly what I wanted, but I didn’t miraculously feel better. No one was there. Not my dad. Not my mum. Not you. I just had this moment in the showers where I realised that I’d spent my whole life chasing one thing with such focus that I lost everything else. Swimming, no distractions.” I let out a bitter laugh at the phrase that’s defined so much of my life. “But maybe the distractions were just as important, or maybe they weren’t really distractions at all.”
I pause for breath. Saying all this out loud really hurts, but part of me realises that it probably hurts her even more to hear it. Because I realised it too late, and Kath was one of the casualties of my decisions. I hate how much pain I’ve caused her.
“I’ve spent so long pushing people away that I’ll be surprised if they come back. They’ve all realised that they don’t need me now. Which was what I wanted anyway.”
There is a harsh intake of breath from the other end of the line and I curse myself.
“Sorry,” I mumble.
“Let’s save it for another day.”
I’m still surprised she’s even talking to me. But then again Kath’s always been the best person I know.
“How are you?” I ask her.
She pauses. “Let’s keep focussed on you. What are you going to do to get through this week, then? Let’s make a plan. You have six days of races left. Let’s think of a strategy to get through them. Just six more days of swimming, and then you can think about what you want to do next.”
“You’re right.” She is. Six days. That’s nothing. “You should record that. You’re pretty much always right.”
“You need to put that on a mug for me or something.”
