Here she was again, back by the river. Freezing water rushing under her feet. Stones flipping like drop-scones; purple and green and mackerel-coloured. Fragments of smashed terracotta, stirred-up silt, peaks and creases and wrinkles. The bank worn down to pale roots, tangled inside like the workings of a body.
More beautiful than she remembered. Ada watched Pepper crouch down, almost kneel, in the water and aim the camera at the heron. Her mouth twitching with concentration. Keeping herself very still, but not rigid, not fraught; a calmness in the way she held the camera and waited. The water pushed past, restless and glinting. Soaking through the seams of Ada’s boots, making her toes prickle. She had forgotten, or maybe never noticed, the sound the river made when it lapped at the shallow edges, how the drizzly mist clung to the surface like static on fabric. And all the shifting colours. She’d thought of it as dull and monotonous, the same old river from one moment to the next. But it changed second by second: now a clump of feathers tumbling down, now a plank of wood, now the water riled up around a snapped sapling.
Ada watched the heron – solitary, hunched, staring fixedly at Pepper. It was standing very still, just its eyes flicking between Pepper and the water. Pepper’s finger hovered over the button.
‘Take it,’ Ada whispered. The heron was shuffling its feet, an agitated twitch in its feathers. Pepper raised the camera, pointed it, and clicked. At the same moment, the heron took off, clattering up out of the water, soaring away with its legs dangling. Its croaking calls merging with the sounds of the river: with the water glugging around the rocks, the deeper thrumming like boots thumping across a floor, or doors opening and closing. And the rhythmic click of stone against stone, like a clock ticking. And the saffron glints like jewellery scattered across a desk. The low rumbling sounds, as if someone in the distance was coughing and clearing their throat.
Pepper turned and started to wade back over to Ada, her trousers soaking, holding the camera carefully so that it didn’t get wet. She kept talking about getting a TV, so they could watch cartoons, and the news, and those cowboy films where everyone walks off into a sunset. Ada glanced back at the house, just glimpsed the dripping roof, the battered chimney. Thought of Tristan waiting for them in the kitchen. The mouldy floors and warped doors, the grass in front churned with mud. No sunset there, but a February fog, woolly and glorious.
She looked downriver at the old bridge. The water was moving in wide, choppy waves, making its way past all the branches and bits of fence that had banked up. Further down, on the other side of the bridge, there was a deep pool. When the river was calm, the water there slowed down and turned very clear. Tiny fish darted through it and insects skimmed over the surface. It was the place her mother used to go to swim. She would slip out early in the mornings, before Ada woke up, and come back with soaking hair and goosebumps all over her arms. And one morning, Ada had got up and followed her.
It had been early spring, the first hints of pale shoots, a solitary bumble-bee working its way around the trees. The sky grey and still. She could see herself now, hiding behind that tree, leaning against the rough bark and chewing the ends of her hair. There she was: the same age as Pepper, just a bit taller, digging into the bark with her fingers and watching her mother wade into the water – her pale legs and arms, skin soft and slightly slack, turquoise veins, a black swimming costume. Ribbed lines around her ankles from where her socks had dug in. Her mother’s hair was longer back then, a rich auburn tinge to it, and it curled in the damp around the nape of her neck. The wind lifted it softly. She waded into the water step by step, and the water was so clear, Ada could see her feet moulding themselves around the stones. Step by step, her eyes fixed on the water. Freckles flung over her shoulders like salt. The river lapping around her knees, then her thighs, and she crouched down in the water and let out a quiet gasp at the cold.
Ada had stopped picking at the tree. She leaned forward, watching. Her mother spread her arms out and then she pushed herself forward through the water. She hardly made a sound. Leaves and seeds floated slowly. A small ripple circled out, growing wider, the circles doubling then tripling, then washing up against the bank below Ada’s feet. Her mother’s skin looked green and yellow, her arms pale and wavering. Like a strange underwater flower blooming.
And then she’d ducked under. One moment she was there and the next moment there was just a wide circle of ripples moving slowly outwards.
Ada stayed very still and watched the water. What thoughts had passed through her mind, exactly? There she was, behind the tree, chewing her hair instead of her nails, wearing her favourite glittery jelly shoes. Her skin smooth and cold: no scars, no dents, no scalds. But what had she been thinking? She couldn’t remember. All she remembered was the sound of the wind through the trees, how she had turned over a loose stone with her foot, waiting, watching the ripples spreading out and out . . .