It was cool by the river. A low breeze blew across the water and stung my cheeks. I walked quickly, shoulders hunched, arms folded, down the path through the park, towards the embankment, scanning always for him, for you, sick with dread.

The concrete path running alongside the bank was quiet. I stood at the rail, looking down at the river far below. The tide was in and the brown, swirling water was fast-flowing, carrying sticks and duck feathers and scraps of water-logged plastic.

Off to the left, beyond the park, buses and cars roared across the curved stone bridge which straddled the river. It was edged by ornate Victorian streetlights, shaped like lanterns, which gleamed in the sunlight. I thought of Venice and the wrought-iron lights there, which made pools across the darkening campo and glistened on the canal. Another time, another world.

On the far side of the river, a battered Land Rover was parked just above the slipway. A crewing car. Teams of rowers, hearty public-school boys with floppy hair and branded gear, carried two boats, upturned on their shoulders, from a boathouse to the water’s edge. Their calls to each other, jovial and mocking, flew on the breeze. Jeremy and Roland and Sebastian.

Mallards and Canadian geese scrabbled away from the bank as the boys lowered their boats into the water, making sudden waves. They waded out into the shallows and clambered inside and their oars slapped the water.

A middle-aged woman in a headscarf and sensible shoes strode past me, her eyes too scanning the river, the boys and their boats. Her dog, a wiry terrier, ran back and forth, nosing in the bushes. The air between us was thick with the scent of blossom and rising sap.

You used to scoot here, up and down this path. We played hide and seek in those bushes. It was just there, at the far end of the path, close to the rampart of the bridge, that you crouched and looked down into the water and said you saw Catherine in the depths of the river, waving to you. Saying, when I found you: I wasn’t lost, Mummy, I was right here. I swallowed hard, wiped my hands across my eyes.

I paced back and forth, restless and afraid, then stood with my back to the railings, leaning back against the flaking metal, waiting.

I recognised him from a distance, as soon as he came down from the bridge and turned into the park. He had you by the hand and you ran at his side, uneven and stumbling as you struggled to keep pace with him.

His strides were loose and long and his coat flapped round his knees and I sensed the strength in his body, the lean muscle I once found so attractive and which now only frightened me. His hair stuck out in clumps as if he’d raked through it with his fingers and his chin was dark with stubble.

I lifted my hand. He saw me but didn’t respond. He steered you instead to the far end of the path, some distance from me.

You twisted and strained, held tight by the wrist, and shouted: ‘Mummy!’

When I started to walk towards you, he called: ‘Stay there!’ Then, to you: ‘Be quiet, Gracie.’

He pushed you down, sitting you on the edge of the low wall that ran beneath the railings. I waved at you, trying to make a game of it.

‘Hello, my love. Be a good girl. Do what Uncle Matt tells you.’

I was close enough now to see him properly. His eyes were red-rimmed and bright and he was agitated, shuffling his feet, brimming with anxious energy.

A blast of sound flew out from the river and he started, looked round.

He doesn’t trust me, I thought. He’s afraid of what he’s done, of the police.

The current drew the schoolboys further into the river and they rowed, backs bending, muscles straining, searching for a common rhythm. Their coach, a young man in a speedboat, shoulders hunched in his windcheater, made loops against the tide and shouted instruction through a megaphone.

Matt swung his eyes back to me. You sat at his feet, your head low between your knees. You looked unhappy but resigned, studying your shoes, the path, waiting for this strange adult drama to play itself out and for normal life to resume.

‘Why did you have to spoil it?’ Matt’s voice shook. ‘Why? What’s the matter with you?’

I took a quiet step towards you both. ‘I’m sorry. It was just a shock, that’s all. Maybe you’re right. We need to talk. Maybe we can work it out.’

He shook his head. ‘You don’t mean it. You don’t care about me.’ His fingers made furrows through his hair. ‘After everything I did for you. I looked after you, didn’t I? What more could I do? I did everything on your terms. Don’t you see? For what? You only care about yourself.’

I took another small step. ‘That’s not true. I do care.’

His face was pinched. ‘Don’t you know what it cost, that trip to Venice? I don’t earn a lot. But I didn’t complain. I wanted to make you happy. That was all.’

I nodded. ‘It was wonderful, Matt. We were happy, weren’t we? It was special.’

His face clouded. He seemed lost, vague, a different person from the calm, capable man I thought I knew.

‘I thought you were special. But you’re not, are you? You’re just like her. You’re all the same, in the end. You take and take and when there’s nothing left, you walk away.’

His words came more thickly now, as if he almost forgot where he was, that we were there with him. ‘I can’t go on without you, Jen. Without you, what’ve I got left to live for?’

Blood throbbed in my ears. I took another step towards you, my eyes on your lowered head. You picked up a stub of stick and traced a pattern on the concrete.

‘Maybe I was too hasty. Maybe we could give it another go. If you want to?’

He didn’t seem aware that I was moving, closing the distance one slow step at a time.

I kept talking. ‘Do you want to do that? Give it another try?’

I was only a few metres from you now. If we caught him by surprise, if you realised what I was doing and suddenly ran, I might snatch you up, save you from him. My body ached with longing to hold you. It was so intense, I could almost feel you in my arms, your hard, slim body pressed into my chest, the sweet, fresh smell of your hair, your skin warm and soft against my face.

A sudden blast of static. We all jumped.

Out on the river, the coach screamed: ‘No, Justin! No!’ A pair of mallards, startled by the noise, rose from the water, honking, and soared high through the air.

The megaphone split the quiet: ‘One, two! One, two!’

Matt came back to the present, as if from a dream.

‘I loved you so much, Jen. I adored you. I really thought—’ He saw now, I read it in his eyes, how close I’d edged towards you both, that I was steadying myself, choosing my moment, ready to pounce.

He reached down in a single strong movement, grabbed you round the waist and hoisted you up, pinning you under his arm even as you struggled, kicking, beating feebly on his chest with your fists.

‘Gracie!’ I screamed, transfixed.

He stepped in a single, fluid movement onto the low wall, swung a leg over the railing, then climbed over altogether, balancing on the far edge of the narrow wall, one hand on the rail, holding himself in place, the other locked round your waist.

His eyes were on mine, bright with self-pity.

‘All I ever wanted was a family. A family of my own. Was that so wrong? Was it?’

He leaned away from the railing, suspended over the rushing river below, holding my gaze as if it were the one thread that held him steady, held him to life.

‘Matt. Please.’

The sounds all around us, of the park, of the road, of the river, fell away to silence. The world held its breath, watched with me. He hung there, his eyes on mine, you clinging now in fear to his side, then with a sudden twist, he jumped, falling into nothingness, still clutching you.

Time stopped. You hung there, your eyes wide with shock. Your hair, caught by the rising breeze and shot through with sunshine, flew out from your head in a circle of perfect yellow. You were suspended there, for barely a second and forever. Then you fell, plummeting, and disappeared from sight.

I ran to the railing, clambered over and jumped.