Chapter One

It didn't start with the river boy. It started, as so many things started, with Grandpa, and with swimming. It was only later, when she came to think things over, that she realized that in a strange way the river boy had been part of her all along, like the figment of a dream.

And the dream was her life.

Half-past nine in the morning and the pool was crowded already. That was the downside to summer holidays, especially hot ones like this, but she knew she shouldn't grumble: she'd been here since six-thirty, together with the usual hard-core group of serious swimmers, and she'd managed a leisurely...