The Lights Under the Lake

But this wasn’t quite what I’d had in mind.

“Hold still!” yelled Ariadne. “Just one more minute!”

I looked at Scarlet in horror. By my estimation, we had less than a minute before Miss Bowler arrived and we were all in hideous trouble, and about ten seconds before I lost my balance and plunged straight into the water.

Scarlet was staring back at me, the expression frozen on her face. “I hate you, Ariadne,” she said, twisting her mouth without moving her eyes.

Ariadne had received a camera from her father as a present during the Easter holidays, and it was her new obsession. It was small, black and silver, with knobs and dials that clicked and whirred. And right at that moment we were being subjected to it.

“It’s going to look magical!” she shouted from the other side of the pool.

I was wobbling. I tried very hard not to think about the chilly water just inches from my toes, and even harder not to think about what I was wearing.

This was Ariadne’s brilliant idea: Scarlet and I were to dress as water nymphs and pose on the diving boards of Rookwood School’s horrible outdoor pool. She had made us costumes out of old swimsuits and ballet tutus, with streamers of blue and green, and chalked streaks of colour on our faces. She’d scattered flowers in the water around us. I was certain that we looked quite ridiculous.

She wanted us both to do an arabesque, the ballet move where you stand on tiptoe with your arms outstretched and one leg up behind you, in a mirror image of each other. And now she was on the far side of the pool, bobbing up and down with the camera as she tried to get the perfect angle.

“Who agreed to this, again?” I whispered to Scarlet.

The diving boards were cold and slippery, even in the morning sun. Lessons were about to start, and Miss Bowler was not going to be happy if her first swimming session of the day was disrupted by two failed water nymphs tumbling into the deep end.