It was the smell of wood smoke that finally brought Eva back to the here and now. She’d been lying on a small rocky ledge in a daze, hypnotised by the sunlight sparkling off the river. Looking at the water was infinitely better than being in it, scrambling desperately for the bank. She didn’t want to think about that. And she especially didn’t want to think about Mandy falling away into nothing. Mandy hadn’t packed her wings after all.
The smell conjured up memories of bonfires on the beach at Nan and Poppa’s bach. She’d spent every summer there until she was twelve. Then Nan had died and Poppa had sold the bach to go live in Aussie. Summers thereafter were spent holed up in her bedroom, avoiding her parents as much as possible.
Wood smoke. People.
She sat up, suddenly conscious of being very wet – and she really needed to pee. Miraculously, apart from a sore hip, she had escaped unharmed. She slid off the ledge and onto the rocky scree below.
The scent of smoke was coming from downriver. Just as well, as the route upriver was blocked by a cliff face jutting into the water, powerful eddies swirling at its base. She stumbled over the rocks on wobbly legs, her wet jeans soon beginning to chafe her inner thighs. She peeled them off and tied them around her waist. It was a relief to come across a scraggly clump of bushes. Even with no one in sight, she would have felt weird peeing in the open.
A movement caught her eye – a grey backpack bobbing in a little rockpool. She edged down to it, arms outstretched for balance as her wet sneakers skidded on river stones worn smooth by the current. It was only after she’d snagged it that she realised it was Mandy’s. Somehow this didn’t surprise her at all.
With the backpack slung over her shoulder, she kept close to the water’s edge in case something else had washed up, but there was nothing.
A wide stream brought her to a halt. On the other side, a little peninsula protruded from the cliff with a mound of driftwood as high as her head.
Eva sank to the ground. She clutched Mandy’s backpack to her chest, her mind blank with indecision.
And then a familiar figure edged around the pile of driftwood. Eva’s pulse hammered hard against her temple as Mandy waved at her. ‘Eva! Eva!’
Except it wasn’t Mandy. It couldn’t be. Mandy was gone.
Eva’s eyelids fluttered and closed as she pitched forward in a dead faint.
