Swimming Lessons

by Claire Fuller

“Secret truths,” you said, “are the lifeblood of a writer. Your memories and your secrets. Forget plot, character, structure; if you’re going to call yourself a writer, you need to stick your hand in the mire up to the wrist, the elbow, the shoulder,

and drag out your darkest, most private truth.”

Writing does not exist unless there is someone to read it, and each reader will take something different from a novel, from a chapter, from a line.

“A book becomes a living thing only when it interacts with a reader.

This book”—you snatched Elizabeth’s copy from her lap and flapped it in the air—“and all books are created by the reader.

If I could, I would turn our love on its head: we would get the anger, the guilt, the blame,

the disappointment, the irritation, the workaday, and the humdrum over and done with first. We would have everything to look forward to.

Fiction is about

readers. Without readers there is no point in books, and therefore they are as important as the author, perhaps more important.

“It’s about believing two opposing ideas in your head at the same time: hope and grief. Human beings do it all the time with religion—the flesh and the spirit—you know that. Imagination and reality.”

In the morning, I telephoned Louise and she arranged everything for me. Two days later I went to a clinic and aborted our fifth child.

Flora would have liked to ask her parents why the words “to father” have such a different meaning from the words “to mother.”

“May your bones be washed by the salt water, your spirit return to the sand, and the love we have for

you be forever around us.”