Fast fiction

At first Jacko went to the pool to keep fit. But now it was because he’d been enchanted

As always, she was at the pool before him. Jacko stood on the edge, plucking up the courage for that first plunge, as she swam gracefully towards him.

All of her movements were so smooth, so beautiful, so perfectly timed. She touched the side of the pool, almost at his feet, then deftly turned and swam away from him.

It wasn’t a morning for courage. He’d had to scrape ice off his windscreen just to get here, and he figured that was enough of a challenge for one morning.

So he sat on the edge of the pool, dangling his legs in the water, getting used to its relative coldness bit by bit.

His friends had ribbed him about his daily early morning swims.

‘Jacko, you’ll be so fit, we won’t be able to keep up with you!’ Dave had said. ‘What are you planning to do anyway, enter the Olympics?’

‘No, no, he’s going to rob a bank and make his getaway on foot!’ Paul had joked.

Jacko had smiled. If teasing him gave them some fun, they could do it. But no way was he ever going to tell them the truth – that he came to the pool each day as he no longer had any choice.

He’d fallen head over heels in love with a mermaid.

He called her a mermaid because he didn’t know her name. Anyway, she was constantly in the water, swimming when he arrived and still swimming as he left.

In fact, when he looked back, he didn’t think he had ever seen her out of the water. She didn’t get out and jump back in for the fun of it like a lot of swimmers.

She just swam up and down the lane, pausing occasionally to float, or just move her legs up and down. Her lovely, long legs.

She was beautiful from head to toe. Her hair was long and strawberry blonde and tied back in a ponytail. Her skin was pale and she owned at least five different swimming costumes. Today it was the cute floral one.

She was coming back towards him again. Almost before he knew what he was doing, he turned and slipped down into the water.

Then he turned to face her.

He took a deep breath. He’d told himself he would do it today, and so he would.

‘Excuse me!’ he called as she drew level with him.

She stopped and caught hold of the side of the pool. ‘Yes?’

Her eyes sparkled and drops of water clung to her face. Suddenly his courage failed him and all the words he’d planned to say went out of his head. He’d rehearsed them over and over, but just one look at her gorgeous pale blue eyes and they’d all gone.

‘Yes?’ she repeated curiously.

‘Um, I was wondering,’ Jacko began, ‘are you in training?’

‘What?’ she said, frowning. ‘Oh, well, I see you here every morning, so I just wondered…’

‘No,’ she said with a smile. ‘I do it just for the sheer fun of it. But I suppose keeping fit helps me when I play basketball.’

‘Really? You play basketball?’ exclaimed Jacko in surprise.

‘Yes,’ she replied, nodding. ‘So do I! What a coincidence!’ He didn’t, of course, but he was prepared to start lessons that very day, so it wasn’t really a lie.

‘Maybe we could have a match someday? Your team could play mine? It’d be fun!’ She smiled.

‘I don’t think so.’

His face fell. ‘Oh, why not?’ ‘Well,’ she said, ‘for one,

I’m in an all-girls team.’

‘You would probably still beat ours, if they’re all as fit as you are.’

She just shrugged and shook her head.

‘Well, okay. What else do you like to do?’ asked Jacko.

‘Oh. I like to go to the theatre,’ the mermaid said. ‘So do I!’ Jacko smiled. He’d swap getting sweaty on a basketball court for sitting in a theatre watching a play, any day.

‘Do you like Shakespeare?’ ‘Yes,’ he said, knowing he’d

Looking in her gorgeous blue eyes, his courage left him

like anything if he was sitting next to her.

‘I prefer more modern stuff myself,’ she said.

‘Oh, I like them, too!’ he replied.

‘Your tastes are pretty wide,’ she responded.

‘Yes,’ he smiled brightly again. ‘But the problem is, none of my friends enjoy the theatre. I hate going on my own. Say, maybe we could go together? Just so that I don’t have to sit there all on my own. What do you say?’

‘Oh, I don’t know…’ she said hesitantly.

He frowned.

‘Look, have you got to rush off to work now?’ she asked.

‘No,’ he told her. ‘Not today.’

‘Well, why don’t we go and have a coffee in the bar? I need to swim a bit more first. How about we meet there at nine?’

‘Brilliant!’ said Jacko. He looked up at the clock. It was 8.15. His assistant Sarah would have arrived at work by now. If he got out now, it would give him enough time to ring and ask her to put back his nine o’clock meeting, and tell everyone he’d be a little late.

The number of evenings he worked well into the night, the firm owed him one late morning.

Jacko made his phone call as he dripped in the changing room. Then he spent even longer than usual showering before getting dressed.

He was in the coffee bar at quarter to nine, planning just what he would say to her.

Could she possibly be interested in him? he wondered. How about if he invited her around for a meal? Or bought some tickets for a play?

But what if she had only agreed to meet him to tell him she already had a boyfriend?

Or to let him down gently that he wasn’t her type?

The minutes went slowly by. It would be so strange to see her out of the pool. Clothes revealed so much about a person.

Would she be a sharpdressed executive, striding in, clutching a briefcase? Or would she walk in casually, almost floating along in a long, willowy skirt, maybe a teacher’s assistant or a librarian?

Perhaps she was a nurse in a starched crisp dress?

And then he saw her coming towards him, and he didn’t even notice her clothes. He just sat there and stared at her.

What if she already had a

boyfriend?

He couldn’t help himself. She smiled shyly at him. ‘I thought you ought to see the real me before we take things any further,’ she said.

‘After all, you might not want to now.’

He stood up.

‘Not at all!’ he cried. ‘I just, I never dreamt…’

He paused, then smiled. ‘Yes, yes, in fact I did…’ he said, reaching out to take her hand. ‘It’s amazing. I always thought of you as like a mermaid.

‘And now I see that you really are – you move so beautifully in the water, and you’re so beautiful out of it as well, with that bewitching, enigmatic smile.’

‘So you’d still like to come to the theatre with me?’ she asked.

Taking her hand and squeezing it tightly, Jacko crouched down beside her in her wheelchair and smiled.

‘Of course,’ he said.