Audiobook

Transcript

Note: Transcripts are generated using speech recognition software and may contain errors.
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 one like this. But she knew she shouldn't grumble. She'd been here since 6:30 together with the usual hardcore group of serious swimmers and should manage a leisurely four miles without interruption. But she did grumble. The mere sight of all these people flopping in like lemmings made her want to shout with frustration. She wasn't ready to stop yet. Not by a long shot. She had energy left and she planned to use it. She stuck to her lane dodges lee flowing length after lane's trying to ignore the splash of other swimmers. Sometimes she'd found that if she just forced herself to keep on swimming up and down her lane without stopping or swerving. The other users of the pool seemed by some collective telepathy to exempt that space is hers and leave it to her. But that wouldn't work today. They seem to be jumping in by the score another quarter of an hour and it would be unbearable. She lucked into her stroke and drove herself on her, breathe, beating, it's practiced rhythm in time with the strokes as even as a time of a clock in for a gulp of oxygen, her mouth twisted up to snap its life from the air and then face down again and the long exhalation to show steady count bubbles teasing her lips like tiny fish.