“Emma!”
The voice was only just audible above the hammering of the rain on the tarmac. I turned around to see my friend Josie waving to me as she hurried up the hill in my direction. She was an accountant at the small firm where I was working part-time as a secretary. It jolted me to see her so dishevelled, her hair plastered to her head and make-up running down her face. She had no coat, no umbrella. Her pencil skirt was soaked through.
“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.