Thank you for the kind reviews - sorry the chapters are getting smaller!


The river flowed past.

Always.

It was always there. It never changed. It was the one constant in his life.

Friends, colleagues, lovers, they came and went but the river was always there.

It calmed him.

When he was drowning, which was often, it saved him.

When he was suffocating with no air in his lungs, when the grid felt like it would crush him and kill him he sought out the river and felt the air rush into his chest.

It had been like this ever since she had died.

And today was no different.

The grid had become both his gaol and his refuge. It hid him. It sheltered him from the loneliness of an empty home but yet it suffocated him, suffocated him with memories, taunted him with the image of her and hammered home the pain with relentless disregard.

He didn't blame it. He didn't hate it. It was just at times like this he needed to escape it.

Until it pulled him back.

Which it would.

It couldn't be her. It was impossible. It couldn't. She was dead. She is dead.

He told himself it more than once and yet still he felt the stirring of hope: futile hope, ridiculous hope … hopeless hope.

And yet it fed him.

As the river helped to fill his lungs, the hope massaged his heart.

If only … if only it could be true.