Chapter 41

“Lise! Five more laps!” called Nao. She looked over at me from the corner of the pool where she was sitting and smiled. I smiled back at her. Suddenly she frowned and reached for her stomach. Even though she was wearing an oversized hoodie, somewhat threadbare now, there was no covering up a figure in the third trimester of pregnancy. After a moment she opened her eyes and nodded, giving me an ‘okay’ sign. Braxton Hicks contractions. We knew all about those from last time. She was still over a month from due, so we weren’t too concerned. Our first child had waited almost to full term.

Nao and I were still working together. It had been two years since Tim had been poached to manage aquatic programs for the state sports development body. He had given me such a glowing recommendation, the university simply offered me his position, saving them a recruitment search and locking in a world-record setting Olympian as a head coach. The fact that their preferred candidate’s wife had an even more successful Olympic career didn’t hurt matters either.

I walked up to Nao and put my hand on her shoulder. She reached up and laced her fingers through mine. That was about as public a display of affection as we allowed ourselves at work. She squeezed my hand briefly, then dropped her hand back to rest on her very pronounced belly.

“Think this one’s going to be a little fish-child as well?” I asked.

She looked up at me.

“Well, if the location of conception has anything to do with it, more like a snowboarder,” she winked. Eight months earlier we had been in Japan on a family ski trip with Nao’s parents, her cousins, and their kids, and we had been afforded a night alone while all the second cousins crashed together.

“You have a name that works for that too?”

“Mm-hm,” she said. “‘Yukito’. The sound of snow.”

“Nice symmetry. Of course, you might have to tell Minato where his name comes from then.”

Our son’s name was made of two Japanese kanji characters - mizu which meant ‘water’ and oto which meant ‘sound’. I didn’t understand it fully, but apparently the original Chinese readings were used when they were combined, and the result could be read as ‘Minato’. Fitting, given he was conceived in the female change room of the pool we were currently standing next to. We had told our parents that we chose it because swimming was such a big part of our lives, but to us it was a long-running inside joke.

“I’ll wait until he brings someone home first and they ask about. Perfect revenge for all those hours of labour.”

“Ouch,” I winced, imagining if my parents had pulled something like that. “You are evil.”

“Yep. I’m an evil, scheming, human blimp. I need you to rub my back this evening too,” she said, shifting awkwardly in her seat.

“Uh,” I said, lowering my voice even though nobody was within earshot. “Just your back?”

“Look,” she said, in mock consternation. “Didn’t you learn your lesson? That’s how I got this way in the first place.”

“As I recall, it wasn’t your back I was rubbing,” I said, suggestively. “You were pretty involved too, and without much protest.”

“If you do a good job on my back tonight, maybe I will let you be the big spoon. If you can keep up,” she finished suggestively. My wife got horny when she was pregnant. Thankfully that hadn’t changed this, the second time around. I winked at her and stood up.

I looked at my watch, noting the time, and blew five sharp bursts on my whistle, gathering all the swimmers to the deep end of the pool. The tallest barely came up past my elbow - this was our youngest group, starting from seven years old and leading into juniors. Nao had started this part of our program, encouraging younger enthusiastic swimmers, and it had ended up identifying and training a good number of prospects who were steadily working their way through to the international level as they finished high school. A few already had scholarship offers with the university.

“Okay,” I called out. “We’re going to finish up with a few fifty-metre sprint races. Line yourselves up by age!”

There was pandemonium as swimmers shuffled around. After a few minutes the noise died down. I blew my whistle again.