Phaedra Patrick - The Secrets of Sunshine

A section of her dress had snagged on a branch and the rest of it billowed around her.

He fought against the branches to reach her and took her into his arms. While treading water, he gently lifted her chin with his fingers. ‘Are you okay?’ he spluttered. ‘Can you talk?’

Her lips moved, but she didn’t reply. Her face was ashen and strands of her wet hair hung down over her eyes.

‘Try to hold on to me, if you can. I’m going to swim and get us both to safety.’

Mitchell unhooked her dress from the tree and managed to recall snippets of the few lifesaving sessions he’d watched Poppy have at the pool. He helped the woman to lie on her back and, after cupping his hand under her chin, he swam backwards, pulling her along with him.

Fortunately, he found a calmer current that assisted their movements.

The riverbank was lower on one side than the other, with a long grass verge in front of a series of waterfront bars. Mitchell headed towards them, his eyes intermittently flicking between the woman’s face and his destination.

‘We’re nearly there,’ he said. ‘Only a bit further. You’re doing so well.’

A few people stood, clutching pints of beer and staring at him as if he was competing in a swimming race. The edge of the river shallowed and Mitchell pushed himself forwards onto the grass and pulled the woman out of the water. She lay in his arms with the back of her head pressed against his chest. ‘You’re okay. You’re safe,’ he blurted with relief.

They stayed there together, his arms wrapped around her as the blazing sun warmed their cold bodies.

The woman’s eyes were shut, but her eyelashes danced against her cheeks and she smiled serenely.

This moment, being here with her, reminded Mitchell of the contradictory mixture of stillness and exhilaration he felt when Poppy was born, when he first held her in his arms. Anita had smiled at him weakly and he had wanted to burst into tears and laugh at the same time, as exhaustion, joy and responsibility sent his feelings into a tailspin. When he looked down at the woman, he pictured Anita with her damp curls pressed against her forehead. The closeness to this stranger, her body in his arms, was both tender and unnerving and his hand shook when he brushed her hair away from her eyes.

She squinted against the daylight. ‘What happened?’ she rasped. ‘Where am I?’

‘My name is Mitchell Fisher. You were standing on a bridge in Upchester, attaching a padlock. I think you dropped something and were looking for it. You leaned right over the railing and fell.’ He held his breath for a while. ‘You could have got yourself killed.’

She smiled weakly and reached up to take his hand. Their wet fingers entwined tightly. ‘I’m so clumsy recently. I don’t make a habit of this, honestly. I usually just knock glasses of wine over or forget my door keys.’

Mitchell liked how she managed to find humour in her situation. ‘So long as you’re safe. Do you think you’re ready to try to stand up?’

She crooked one knee, then frowned in pain. Her head slumped back against his chest. ‘Not yet.’ She looked up at him, and again he felt a tug of something for her. It caused more memories of Anita to trickle back and he didn’t want to think of her, not here and now. The shame he often felt could bury him like an avalanche.

‘I do know you, don’t I?’ she said.

Mitchell looked away. ‘I don’t think we’ve met before.’ He wondered if her fall was causing her confusion, but as he opened his mouth to reply, a hand clamped down on his shoulder. A man with a thin moustache and horn-rimmed glasses stood above him.

‘I’m a doctor. Can I help?’ the man said.

Mitchell nodded gratefully, and he slipped his fingers away from the woman’s hand. He cradled her head and helped her to lie down flat on the grass, then he shuffled backwards out of the way.

The doctor crouched down. ‘What happened?’

The woman swallowed but didn’t reply.

‘She fell into the river, and I jumped in to help her,’ Mitchell said.

‘How long was she in for?’

‘Ten or fifteen minutes, I think. I don’t really know.’ His sense of time had flown and his stomach plunged when his watch showed 5.40 p.m.

His attention snapped back to Poppy. She was at school and he was very late. He’d also left his toolbox on the bridge. ‘Sorry, I have to go,’ he said to the doctor and the woman.

Mitchell stood up and took a few unsteady steps along the grass verge in his soggy socked feet. He hunched away from the well-meaning pats that rained down on his back. When a couple of mobile phones appeared, he resisted the impulse to bat them away.

He told himself the woman would be fine. She was with a doctor.

Heart thumping, Mitchell thrust a hand into his trouser pocket and tugged out his own phone to call the school. But the screen was blank and tiny bubbles emerged from the camera hole.

He limped to where the grass verge ended, made his way back up onto the street and headed towards Redford to quickly look for his toolbox. When he reached midway along the bridge, he stood in the rough spot the woman in the yellow dress had fallen.

He searched frantically around for his tools and his shoulders sagged when he realized they’d gone, perhaps stolen.

When he looked back over the railing, he saw the woman and doctor were heading in his direction. The sun made her wet dress shine like gold, and a thought struck Mitchell like a lightning bolt.

I don’t even know her name.

He looked at her again and his pull towards her was magnetic. But she was over thirty metres away from him, and he had to get to the school.

He would rush past and ask what her name was.

He had to know.

He turned and saw a cyclist whizzing along the pavement towards him at great speed. Pizza boxes were piled high on the handlebars. Mitchell tried to jump out of the way, but the bicycle smashed into him, knocking him to the ground.

As boxes went flying in the air, Mitchell heard the thwack of his own head on the pavement. Pain bloomed and his vision blurred. Someone shouted for an ambulance, and legs surrounded him like trees in a forest.

When he strained to raise his head, a hand pressed his shoulders back down.

Mitchell wasn’t sure how long he lay there for, but through a set of fleshy knees in long khaki shorts, he thought he saw the swish of a yellow dress.

Then he closed his eyes and everything went blank.

While he was out cold, Mitchell dreamed.

It was another kiln-hot summer day where the air shimmered and people gathered in the pub for shelter from the sun. A woman with copper curls pushed in next to him at the bar.

‘A pint of cider, please,’ she said, even though it was Mitchell’s turn to be served. She glanced at him and pressed a hand to her mouth. ‘Oh, sorry, you were next?’

He shrugged, a little irritated. ‘It’s fine.’

‘No, it’s not. Really. The barman was cutting into a lime and the smell always reminds me of this holiday I went on to Ibiza in my early twenties. It was supposedly cool to drink beer from a bottle with a slice of lime sticking out of the neck. Even though I didn’t like the taste, I drank it for a whole week and…’

Mitchell laughed despite himself. ‘I once forced myself to drink the same thing at a barbecue because my friends liked it.’

She returned his smile. ‘Anyway, what I’m trying to say is sorry, and can I get you a drink?’ When he started to protest against her offer, she jokingly placed her elbow in front of him. ‘I’ll get this,’ she said to the barman.