“Jo! Jesus, get inside.”
“Emma, I’ve just been across the bridge. The banks are breaking. You need to go home.”
“Fuck. I have to get Aiden from school.”
“They’ll keep him safe,” she said. “But if the river bursts and you’re close to the bridge you could drown.” She waved me towards her but I stayed where I was.
“I have to get Aiden,” I said, shaking my head. The school was too close to the river for me to feel comfortable leaving my six-year-old son with them. If the rain was already coming in through the roof, what state was the school in?
“Be careful. I heard they’re sending help but there’s hardly anyone by the river right now, no police or anything, and it looks bad, Em. Don’t come back across the bridge, okay? Go to the White Horse or something. At least you can get a Chardonnay there, right?” She grinned at the joke but I could tell it was a nervous smile. She was genuinely shaken up, which wasn’t like Josie at all.
“All right. Get home safe. I’ll see you at work when this bloody weather has calmed down a bit.” I returned the nervous smile, trying to ignore the nest of snakes in my abdomen. My dad had volunteered in the Royal National Lifeboat Institute when he was younger and he had always told me that if there was one thing in life you did not mess with, it was the sea.
Our tiny bit of the sea gushed through Bishoptown today. When I reached the bridge, the sight took my breath away. Josie was right: The Ouse was dangerously close to bursting its banks. Usually tranquil and slow, that day the river surged beneath the bridge, hitting the stone arches in waves. The water seeped up onto the sodden grass banks, and some of it dribbled down the hill towards my parents’ cottage. I took a step back and pulled out my mobile phone. There was no answer at the school, which did not assuage my worry. I phoned Dad next.
“Emma, are you all right?” he asked. “I’m at the office and the rain is so bad I think I’ll be stuck here.”
“Don’t try to get home, Dad, the river might burst.” Dad worked just outside Bishoptown as a civil engineer for a construction firm. “I’m going to the school to stay with Aiden until help arrives.”
“Emma—”
“I’m fine. Just… don’t try to come home, okay?”
“Emma, the bridge—”
I eyed the short, stone bridge with trepidation. “I’m already past it. I’m on my way up Acker Lane to the school.”
He let out a sigh of relief. “I’ll call your mother and tell her to stay at the surgery.”
“Okay, Dad. I love you.”
“Love you too, kiddo.”
It was silly, I know, but my eyes filled with tears as I cancelled the call. The time on my phone said 2:10pm. It had taken me ten minutes to walk just half the way. I needed to hurry up and get to my son. I strode up to the bridge and tried to ignore the water level, hoping that my hurried strides would somehow make it less dangerous.
Water poured across the bridge, almost ankle deep. I didn’t know if it was rainwater or water that had come from the river, or a combination of both. The only thing I knew was that I had to hurry up. But as I took the last step down off the bridge, a wave of river water hit the bridge hard and chunks of stone dislodged, crumbling beneath my feet. It sent me off balance and I stumbled forward, dropping my phone into the river. My breath left my body as the freezing cold water hit me side-on, almost knocking me straight into the churning waters. I took a long sidestep like a crab, feeling the current trying to drag me along with it.
But the riverbank was soft and muddy, which allowed me to ram the heel of my wellie deep into the earth. The suction gave enough of a foothold to propel myself forward, clawing my way up the river bed towards the road. My left boot came clean off.
With my sock dangling from my foot I climbed my way up to the road, gasping for air as the rain pounded from above. When I was away from the bridge, I turned around and watched my boot slip under the water. I tried to find my breath, soaked down to my bra. That could have been me, and then who would be there to take Aiden home? No, I wouldn’t be bringing Aiden home, not with the river like this. I’d have to stay with him at the school. What an idiot I’d been. I’d ignored my dad’s warnings about water. A hard lump formed in my throat as I turned my back on the river. One misstep and I would have fallen into the same water as the stones, my phone, and my Wellington boot. One mistake and I would have been floating beneath the current where the water is calm, with my hair gliding out around me, an ethereal water-nymph who would never breathe again.