I lace my arms around her frail, wet body. The girl kicks out, and her feet catch me in the head and mouth. I swallow water, I breathe in water, but I still manage to make myself buoyant and push for the surface. The world grows louder again. The May wind feels mild on my wet face; the waves send spray into my eyes. I turn onto my back to form a bobbing, watery cot and haul the girl onto my chest so she can breathe and look up at the blue sky. In this position, we float down the Thames past brick facades and wooden boats moored to the muddy banks.

The kid splutters and gasps for air. She seems to be about four or five. I don’t have a clue about children, not even my own.

Samuel. Sam. He’s thirteen and he’s waiting for me. He’s always been waiting for me. Forever. I was never there.

I start humming Charles Trenet’s La Mer, that majestic hymn to the beauty of the sea. Scraps of the French lyrics bubble up into my mind. I haven’t spoken my native tongue since I was eighteen, but now it comes flooding back.

As I sing, I gradually sense that the girl’s heart is settling into a calmer rhythm. I feel her little lungs pumping and her trust piercing the film of water and fear between us. I hold her tightly and use one arm to propel myself on my back toward the bank, where there is a small jetty. My clothes are soaked. I kick my legs like a frog and my ungainly one-sided crawl makes me look like a one-armed bandit.

“It’s going to be okay,” I whisper. I can hear Eddie’s voice clearly inside my head, as if she were there, whispering in my ear: “You’re not a good liar, Henri. It’s one of your greatest qualities.”

Eddie is the best thing that never happened to me.

My shoulder bumps into one of the floating barrels supporting the jetty. There’s a ladder within reach. I grab the girl by the waist and lift her up, pushing her tiny feet higher and higher until she finds a handhold and wriggles out of my grasp.

I follow her. I climb out of the river; pick up the exhausted child, who is desperately trying not to weep; and carry her past yellow, red, and gray houses back to Hammersmith Bridge. The girl entwines her arms around my neck and buries her face in my shoulder. She’s as light as a feather, but she gets heavier and heavier as I walk along, pursued by the nagging thought that I really need to hurry now to meet Sam. I must go to him. I must. My son’s waiting for me at his school.