The debris drops into the river twenty feet below.
Evie glances behind. One of the uniformed men unstraps a rifle and raises it to his shoulder. He tries to capture her in his sights. The barrel wavers as he compensates for the motion of the bridge and a bright plume of light scorches a hole in the wood by her hand. Two inches to the right and it would have skewered her thigh.
She recoils against the rope behind, the impact dragging the rotten retaining post from the ground. The bridge sags and they tumble sideways, a web of rope collecting around her shins.
She and Sola are only a couple of yards apart but the girl is beyond her reach. Sola’s eyes latch onto hers and her shoulders rise in a shrug, as if she had never expected more from her life.
Then the remaining slat Sola is on flips and she is swung under. For a few seconds she dangles upside down, hair hanging in the wet air…
Then plummets, her scream snatched from her by the roar of the water.
37
Evie clings to the tangled rope. The churning water rages between the rock walls. She peers down for Sola and spots her head in the foam.
The men are just four or five yards away. They shout at her to return, saying that they will not harm her, that instead only good things lie in store. But they are lying and have given David a net, which he casts towards her. It is a long throw but delivered with mechanical precision, and catches her around her shoulder, clinging stickily and gluing up her fingers.
She wrenches it free. Tottering on the wet planks, she gives him one last look. But there is nothing for her there.
No longer caring what may happen to her, Evie lets herself drop.
Evie goes straight under. The water is shockingly cold, even to her, knocking out her breath. She gasps, taking in a chestful of water. Her ears yowl. Her nostrils fill.
Channelled between the hills, the river below the rapid surface is deep and the muscular current grips her. The sun is above, glowing through the layer of water like plate glass.
A moment later it is below, gleaming up.
The current tugs at her clothes. Rocks pass close to her shoulder. She reaches for a branch and a handful of leaves come away in her fingers.
A root grabs her ankle, drags her back, snaps…
…and she catapults forward.
Evie breaks the surface, her lungs empty. A wave crashes over her head, stunning her. She goes down. Her shoulder strikes a wall of rock. She is swung about, rebounds like a pebble, and again breaks the surface.
‘Sola,’ she shouts above the roar, water filling her mouth, which she cannot afford to happen.
The current races her along past the bank, the dangling branches out of her reach.
‘SOLA!’
For a moment she sees the girl’s head near hers. She stretches for her arm, but her hand closes around nothing. She stares into the foam where she’d been…
The broken water spins her about.
Evie sees her again. They shoot through a canyon. A drop looms ahead.
She watches Sola slip between the rocks, the length of her body gliding over the edge heels first. Evie follows her, striking the surface hard.
Here the river forms a basin and lumps of granite confuse the flow. She grabs for one and her nails gain a hold but then slide over the pitted surface as the river tugs away her legs. Evie takes another gulp of water, and feels it collect inside, filling tubes and cavities. Is this drowning?
She sees Sola again. The child is twenty yards from her, sailing backwards through water that is now green rather than white, an arm stretched above her head.
‘SOLA!’
Evie throws herself in her direction, swimming instinctively over-arm with all her strength, discovering the ability within her although it makes no sense that they would have programmed it. Her shoulder strikes granite and she is spun about. She grabs hold. Clings on. Treads water.
She clambers onto the slab, her sodden clothes hanging. Sola is fifteen yards away, trapped in the eddy where the river curls sharply back upon itself.
‘Sola!’ Evie shouts, above the racket of the water. She crawls across the rock and, reaching the other edge, leaps to the next.
She is close and can see Sola clearly. The girl’s head bobs like a cork. Her neck is cast back. Her mouth hangs open. Her face is washed over by the swell, disappearing under the surface for a second or two at a time before re-emerging.
Evie plunges and swims.
And becomes ensnared in the same centrifuge.
Grasping the child’s arm, she reels her in and holds her against her, keeping her head above the water. ‘Sola, Sola,’ she wails.
The girl lies limply in her arms and Evie crushes her to herself, her cheek against Sola’s forehead, sobbing into her hair.
She pushes out with her free arm for the closest rock, feeling the steeply shelved riverbed under her feet. Shielded from the flow, she lifts Sola from the water and places her on the granite.
Evie wipes beads of moisture from her temples. The child’s skin gleams in the noon sun. Her cheek is so smooth, so soft, but also as clammy as stone.
She lays her head on the child’s neck, listening for her breath, but absorbing only the green smell of the river. She attempts a clumsy resuscitation, not knowing how to go about it, pumping her chest and blowing into her mouth. She stares down at her still face. She cups her palm over her lips but feels nothing. She puts her ear to her chest again, even now desperate to believe.
‘Sola, Sola, Sola,’ she whispers, cradling her in her arms.
The rocks are just close enough to step from one to another, albeit a daunting stretch in places, and algae, moss and slick weed make each leap hazardous. In addition, the solidity of the stone after the motion of the river leaves her heavy-footed – one moment the ground rising to meet her boot, the next plunging – so that the child’s body swings in her arms.
Evie lays her gently on the bank and kneels above her.
The girl stares up, eyes wide and a vivid cornflower-blue in the yellow sunlight. Evie strokes her hair helplessly, then, collapsing over her, lays her face against the child’s cold skin.
38
Evie moves slowly between the trees, her damp clothes clinging to her legs and arms. Her trousers are stiff with silt from the river, rubbing her thighs. A strand of bright green weed is coiled in Sola’s hair like a ribbon, creating a false braid. She thinks to remove it but lets it hang.
She is drained. Head drooping. Energy almost spent. And the child in her arms grows heavier at each step. But she has survived. Her systems didn’t fizz or shut down on contact with the water. Where had any of that caution come from? She can’t remember – the sense of fear has always been with her, repeated endlessly in her inner ear by Simon until she believed that any excess moisture would cause her to seize up like the Tin Man.
The river has taken its toll, however. Her skin is torn by the rocks and frayed insulation exposes a loom of wiring around her hip.
More painful than the physical damage is the loneliness.
Amidst the numbing rhythm of moving one leg and then the other, she ponders the enigma of David and why he betrayed her. Except that it wasn’t him any more, just his shell. Maybe they’d accessed his memory to find out about her plans to come to Am See. Maybe they hadn’t needed to. As Evelyn had demonstrated, it was near-impossible to travel without being tracked. Perhaps they wiped his cortex, polished away both consciousness and identity like steam from a mirror, and rebooted him as a machine. Or maybe when they’d dragged him out of the Seine, that was all they were able to revive.