A short story. Made up, like the others.

I count my lengths by the man in lane three.

The lido is heated, which is the only reason anyone our age is in it in January. At half six the water steams and the lights are still on. He gets in first, always, and sets off with a slow crawl that hasn’t changed in the six years I’ve been coming. I wait on the steps until he reaches the far end, then push off, so that he touches the deep end when I touch the shallow end, and the other way round. I swim breaststroke with my head up, so I can see him through the steam the whole way. I count his turns, not mine. He does forty. When he gets out, I do one more, and that one is mine.

I could just stop when he does. But counting is what keeps my mind in the water, and my own I lose at about twelve, thinking about something else. His I don’t lose. There’s a turn to watch for every time.

We’ve spoken perhaps a dozen times, in the queue at the gate, about the cold. I don’t know his name. In my head he’s Lane Three.

After Christmas the council let lanes three to six to a triathlon club on Tuesday and Thursday mornings. That left lane one, which is the fast lane, and lane two, which is mine. The first Tuesday he stood at the edge of lane three, looking at a young man in a wetsuit, then walked along and got into lane two, my lane.

The sign at the end says keep left. With two of us that meant passing in the middle every length, him on one side of the black line and me on the other. He breathes to his right, and coming back I was on his right, a yard away. Every time we passed, he lifted his head to see where I was.

At the shallow end, on his twenty-sixth length, he stopped and held the wall. He looked up at the pace clock, the way people look at a clock for something a clock can’t tell them. His lips were moving.

I know that face. I had it most mornings, before him.

I swam the length and touched the wall beside him. “Twenty-six,” I said, and pushed off before I could see what he made of it.

It’s an odd thing to let a man know, that you’ve been counting every length he swims. I’d been doing it for six years. Halfway down I thought of several better things I could have said, such as nothing.

He didn’t stop again. At forty he got out, and I did my one more and didn’t look to see if he was looking.

On Wednesday there was no club. Lane three was empty and flat. I came out of the changing room at half six, and he was already in, at the shallow end of lane two, holding the wall. He stayed there while I came down the steps. When I was in the water beside him, he pushed off, and I waited until he touched the deep end, and went.

I’ll have to think of something else to call him.