The next day, her dad was at home. In the old days, they would all gravitate towards each other … but things had changed now. It was as though they had forgotten how to be together. Greg and Frankie occupied themselves with things they’d just unpacked, and Ita’s mum was busy sorting out the little room that would be her office when she worked from home. Ita stayed in her bedroom, and her dad watched television by himself.
Ita was sure her mum must’ve spoken 71to Greg and Frankie about what had happened at the pool, because they hadn’t so much as mentioned it to her. Her mum found her in the changing rooms and tried to talk to her about it, but Ita didn’t want to talk. A part of her felt hard and cold as she didn’t answer any of her mum’s questions, not meeting her eye. But just like at the poolside, she didn’t feel like she could explain it. It was too big, too knotted, too large a feeling.
She was worried about seeing Olive and Faisal at school, and about whether they would ask her what was going on at the pool. The worry sat in her stomach and weighed her down.
The other thing that was never far from her mind, although she wished that it would go away, was the river. She 72couldn’t stop thinking about returning to it, the way it felt to be next to it and, if she was being honest, the sensation of her skin changing to scales.
She had been so shocked when it happened that she didn’t let herself linger on the feeling it gave her; at first, a tingle and then as each of the scales locked into place, a kind of strength, like when your legs are sprinting and you want to keep on running.
Ita crept past Greg and Frankie’s room, then her mum’s study where she could hear rummaging and her mum moving about. Finally, she tiptoed past her dad’s back in the sitting room. She took in how he was slightly slumped and, when she looked over at him, she saw that he had fallen asleep.73
She let herself out of the house and ran down the streets to the alleyway, the shortcut to the river that she’d discovered on that first day when she was lost.
There was no one swimming in this part of the river. As soon as she was in the green pathway, she felt peace surround her. For the first time since running away at the swimming pool, she felt something fall away from her: the worry and embarrassment she’d been carrying began to leak away, as though it was being absorbed by the mud-track path. She knew the one final thing that would make it disappear for good.
She unlaced her trainers, pulled off her socks, and, by the river, she does what her swimming teacher Emile had asked her to do: sit on the side of the river 74and let her feet dangle in the water.
It felt astonishingly cold at first, making Ita feel zapped from the temperature, but she quickly got used to it and felt soothed by the chill of the water.
Ita didn’t need to look to know that silvery-orange scales had formed over every centimetre of her feet. She could sense the change as soon as it happened – it was like heat building inside her – and now her feet felt light and free in the water, as though they were eager to move 75more within it. When she looked down, she saw larger fins on her ankles. They reminded her a little of butterfly wings in the way that they pulsated and moved.
For a second, Ita considered standing and walking a little further into the river – a part of her would love to see what other changes would happen to her legs as more water reached them – but then she overheard someone coming along the path and she quickly retreated from the water. She dried her legs with her hands, but the scales began to fade as soon as she was out of the water anyway.
A dog bounded past, a blur of brownish red, followed by another much smaller dog. It trotted over to Ita, sniffed her and then was called away by its owner, a man who walked slowly with 76a walking stick. He didn’t speak to Ita as he passed her.
Ita watched him until he disappeared down the winding path.
She thought at first that she would dangle her feet back in the water when she was alone again, but instead she stood and looked in the direction of the dog walker. She hadn’t had the chance before to explore what the river was like further along, apart from when she was with Greg and Frankie and they’d found the other spot where the family was swimming. So, she pulled on her trainers again and wandered down the path.
There were parts of the path when the grasses grew tall and thick and so she lost sight of the river, but it always showed up again; just at the point when 77she started to feel an odd kind of tug of wanting to see it again.
Ita turned a corner of the path and saw that she was back at the place where she was with Greg and Frankie again, where the family swam, but there was no one there today. She walked on and, a little further, she glimpsed houses through the trees on the other side of the river. The gardens of the houses reach all the way down to the river. Some of them have put up fences and so you can’t see in, but others have opened up the space and Ita sees flowerbeds and glass conservatories. Sometimes she would spot a swing or a trampoline, and so she imagined that a kid must live there.
It took her a moment to realise that she recognised the house, at first. She’d 78never seen it from this angle before, but in the garden she spotted the large, weathered birdbath that sat in the middle of the garden and she immediately thought of her grandmother’s house.
She’d never known that the river was at the end of her Grandma’s garden though, and she sifts through her memories to see if she could remember. She recalled the big trees that were at the bottom of her garden, and then how her dad had mentioned something to do with trees after the big storm they’d just had. Perhaps the trees had just blocked the view to the river, but it had been there all that time, without them ever realising.
Ita stopped there, staring at her 79Grandma’s house and then through the window, a light came on and a familiar figure filled the frame.
Her dad. He was there, at Grandma’s.
She recognised the way he stooped a little to the side and how he moved quite quickly. She watched him in the kitchen unpacking a bag of something and then going to up another lamp to switch it on.
It illuminated a shape by the window, and only with the lamp on does Ita realise that it was not just a shape, it was her Grandma sitting there at the window. She’d been so still, in the half-light, Ita had not realised she was there at all.
Her dad crouched next to her, to speak to her and then went back to the bag he was unpacking. As she watched him, Ita realised that he was preparing 80food for her Grandma.
81Ita cannot stop watching them, her father and her grandmother. She tried to imagine their conversation and what food might be on her grandmother’s plate. It made her realise that she hadn’t spent much time with her Grandma recently, hadn’t spoken to her alone or eaten with her. It’s difficult to think of what it would be like to be there, because she can’t remember the last time she went.
After some time, after her Grandma had eaten, her dad cleared up and then, very slowly, with a great tenderness, helped her out of her chair and led her away from the window.
Ita watched them go, until she couldn’t see either one of them any longer.