Night swim

Five of us went down to the lake after the leavers' party. Me, Jess, Tom, Priya and Callum. It was warm and the moon was out and someone dared everyone to swim to the pontoon in the middle and back.

The water was black and much colder than it looked. We swam out in a loose line, laughing, gasping. I got to the pontoon first and hauled myself up and turned round to count heads, because that's what my mum always told me to do.

One, two, three, four, five, coming toward me through the dark.

Then I remembered I was the fifth.

I counted again. Five heads in the water. Jess and Tom close together, Priya behind them, Callum splashing about at the back, and one more, a little apart from the others. Just a dark round shape, low in the water. Not splashing. Not making any sound at all.

I didn't say anything. I don't know why. Maybe I thought it was a buoy, or a log, or a trick of the light.

The four of them climbed up beside me, shrieking about the cold. The fifth shape stopped about ten metres away and just stayed there, on the surface, facing us.

"Who's that?" Priya said. Her voice had gone very small.

Nobody answered. The shape sank slowly, without a ripple, the way a stone sinks.

We waited on that pontoon until it was light, all five of us, nobody willing to get back in. In the morning a fisherman rowed us back to the shore and called us idiots.

There's a little plaque by the boathouse that I'd never read before. It lists the names of people who've drowned in the lake since 1950. There are a lot of them.

At the bottom, in newer metal, there's space left for more.