The Swimmers

Carrying my bags, I trailed Aunty Wynn out of the kitchen and into the hallway, following the bottom stroke of the hallway's backwards L shape. When I entered the small room to the left I was struck by the shelves crammed with hundreds of dolphins of varying sizes and colours and made out of wood, ceramic, glass, crystal, plastic, shells, and were those pine cones? The curtains had been drawn so the only decent light was a low-watt ceiling bulb and the faint glow of my mother's iPad, as she sat diminished and propped up in a loaned hospital bed. To her right there was a metal frame, which her feeding bag come mealtime could be suspended from. The dolphins didn't cheer things up.

'Here she is,' Aunty Wynn said commandingly from the end of the bed.

As I emerged from behind Aunty Wynn, my mother let out a shrivelled-up cry. I could tell she was laughing but the sound she made wasn't my mother's laugh. It frightened me.

'Doesn't she look good?' Aunty Wynn said.

I'd expected her to look worse somehow. I think I'd expected Aunty Wynn to have her dressed in some kind of old lady's nightgown, maybe an off-white flannel with tiny pale pink flowers on it. Instead, my mother was wearing a loud seventies-style yellow and green frock with capped sleeves. I'd never seen that frock before. I couldn't remember the last time my mother had worn a frock for any occasion. A string of large yellow beads hung around her neck.

My mother was pointing at her hair and nodding at me. I'd dyed my hair a few days before and, while the box had described the dye as 'darkest intense auburn', the result was more of a pink grapefruit. When I emailed my mother a photo she had responded: OH NO MY DAUGHTER HAS JOINED A CULT WHERE THEY WEAR WATERMELON HATS. Her comment didn't really make sense, but it had deflated me. She could still be blunt-her illness hadn't changed her that much.

Mere minutes before he dumped me, Karl had said-his voice dry

Chloe Lane is a writer and the founding editor of Hue+Cry Press. The Swimmers is her first novel and was longlisted for the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards 2021. She lives in Christchurch, New Zealand with her husband and young son.

Longlisted for the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction at the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards 2021

'Tackles the subject of assisted dying with wit and pathos' The Independent

'A powerful and intense debut' The Sun

'Exquisitely observed, harrowing yet surprisingly funny' SAGA Magazine

'Poignant and subtle with humorous elements as this disjointed family struggles to fulfil the final wishes of their loved one' Candis Magazine

'Darkly funny, desperately sad, brilliantly written. I absolutely loved it' Claire Fuller, author of Unsettled Ground

'A beautiful, heart-rending and totally absorbing narrative, a compulsive page turner from start to end... it's a little masterpiece' Fiona Kidman, author of This Mortal Boy

'By turns touching, resonate, fiercely candid, and beautifully written' Jill Ciment, author of The Body in Question

'The Swimmers has the kind of intelligent and beautiful quiet that explodes a brightness deep within the reader... I can't remember the last time I read a more generous book about care, courage, and figuring it out' Pip Adam, author of The New Animals

'An intense, moving, and darkly comic story about unrepentant, difficult women' New Zealand Herald

'Strangely compelling... intensely moving' Academy of New Zealand Literature

'A powerfully moving story confronting the very timely issue of euthanasia' Together Journal

'Lane confronts issues surrounding euthanasia with enormous sensitivity but with lashes of humour and humanity' NZ Booklovers

'A remarkable book' ANZ Lit Lovers

'A beautiful, thoughtful and darkly humourous novel, that unapologetically addresses the realities of death' TwoFondofBooks