Catherine watches his receding back as he crosses the bridge, a tall young man with untidy fair hair, shy blue eyes, and the hint of an iron determination growing in the line of his mouth. She can still feel him on her lips, taste him. Something wondrous has happened to time. All the seconds, all the minutes, all the hours, are overlapping, so that she is no longer sure any accurate measure of them is possible. Surely she has known Owen all her life. And yet if the calendar is to be believed, they have only met a few times. She glances across at Big Ben, at the implacable face, to see if he has any explanation. But he is giving nothing away. If the kiss was a colour, then that colour has bled into the seconds before and after it, dyeing them. The outline of her, so sharp and distinct all her life, has suddenly blurred. And the outline of him, please tell her that she has not made a mistake, that has fogged too. She no longer knows where she ends, but she thinks it is in Owen.
It is while she is grappling with this that she notices a variation in the river. There is a strange silvery light playing on the face of the water. Can it be true that the reflected bleached hue of this everlasting summer is fading? Slowly she raises her eyes to the sky and the breath flutters into her at what she sees there. A bank of oyster grey, of gorgeous oyster grey massing on the horizon. A mirage or real? Other people are stopping on the bridge and pointing now. She overhears someone say it, their voice hushed with veneration. ‘Rain clouds. I think it is.’ Distantly there comes a rumble of thunder. This nimbostratus cloud has become such a rare phenomenon that she has the urge to rub her eyes to be certain of what she sees. Can it be, can it really be that rain is coming? That at last rain is coming? That the long hot summer of 1976 is over?
She turns towards the train station but every step that brings her closer to it, takes her further away from Owen. The silver light skimming on the water beckons irresistibly. As she stares at it over the bridge railings she glimpses a man sitting by the river. He is facing away from her, wearing a black hood. And now he is turning, slowly turning and raising his head. She tears her gaze away, her growing recognition too appalling to contemplate. When she glances back he is nowhere to be seen. Then comes the still small voice in her head. ‘If you catch your train you will never see Owen again.’ For an instant she is hypnotized by the flickering light. And now she can smell rain, honeyed rain, percolating through the air. Distantly a jag of brilliance flashes in the sky. ‘If you catch your train you will never see Owen again.’ She hears the solid thud of his heart through the cotton of his shirt as she weeps into his chest, feels his broad shoulders carrying her. She sees him standing on her doorstep, backlit with blinding sunshine, Bria alive and safe in his arms. She feels his hands cupping her face, his lips on hers, him in her and her in him. Their separateness unravels, and the river glides on by beneath them. By the third time she hears the voice she is belting across the bridge, dodging bemused spectators, her panting breaths knifing into her lungs. At her back the approaching storm snarls.