And then it was as if the volume knob on the river had been turned up all the way. I saw that I’d come to a waterfall. The water only fell a metre or so, but I was so close it sounded like all the toilets in the world flushing together. The bank took two steep steps down, and this was the worst part of the awful journey.

I mean the worst in terms of physical pain.

The real worst part was yet to come.

I knew the steps were going to hurt. I bent my legs to try to keep the broken bone away from the rock, and I slithered down. The rock pulled up my jacket and jumper and shirt. It cut into my guts, scraping the skin off, and my face crunched into the slimy gravel at the bottom. But on I went.

I don’t know how long it took me to drag myself around the bend in the river. But once I’d made it, filthy and cold and drenched, I wished I hadn’t.

The river was different here.

It didn’t surge and froth and shake its white fists at the sky. The river was gentle and slow. The snowflakes fell on its surface and floated for a while like tears on a face. It was the size of a big room, and the still water stretched out to the next bend in the river. I could hear another waterfall, out of my sight. This was just a calm section in between the rapids.

The cliffs on each side were lower here – not the height of a house, but a bungalow. The water lapped right to the edge on each side. There was no bank for me to crawl along. I was on the last dry bit of bank.

But that wasn’t what made the sick feeling surge up inside me. There was something else floating on the water along with the snowflakes.

It was a hat.

A Leeds United bobble hat.

Seventeen

Seventeen

I shouted out, “Kenny! Kenny!” as loud as I could. Stupidly, I aimed my shouts at the hat, as if he were walking along under the surface, with just the hat sticking up out of the water. Tina whined and barked and whined, and moved in a small circle.

I tried to drag myself out there, but the water was too deep, soon up over my arms. The icy chill of it paralysed me, so I had to get back to my sliver of dry rock.