THE RIVER 

By Tessa Harvey


    Blue did not return that night. Elizabth lay fully-clothed on her bed. Her mind felt as though it was disintegrating.
    She pulled a grey travel rug over her shoulders, and memories assailed her - bright days when her brother John and wife Leslie brought Amy and Joey to meet her for a picnic beside one of the lakes in the region.
    The lake water had sparkled, but was far too cold for swimming. The lake floor was shingle, and not far from shore, dipped steeply down into bronze opaque depths. The grey granite lakeside rocks and tufty grass were warm from the sun. A buzzard soared, as it turned to the high slopes of the surrounding hills, shadow-lit by sun and cloud.
    A wide stream burbled towards the lake near a stand of sheltering pines. The kids had met friends and gleefully made a dam to create a pool, sun-dappled, to splash and sail twigboats.
    Then she must have dozed, for Elizabeth woke up, afraid. She had dreamt that the house, no longer protected by strong mesh screens, had been invaded by shadowy assailants. They hovered, just out of sight. The woman frantically reached for her phone. It wasn't there. She had thrown it away. "Jesus," she cried, "help me." Immediately the sense of danger faded. But the sense of loss and failure took root and grew.
    The house phone shrilled. It was Anne Harper. "Amy has been found," she said simply when Elizabeth tentatively picked up the phone.
    "A man answering the description of Flash Harry left her at the same nursing home where he left his brother, Charlie." Anticipating Elizabeth's next question, she added: "She is now asleep, unharmed. She was found on the doorstep, And the man is vanished. All is well."


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