Life was good, he thought as he sat down on the bank to change his fly for another, and when he and Kitty were married it would be even better. He thought of Rupert and wondered where he was now. He had answered Justin’s letter with a brief note saying that for the present he was putting up at Le Coq d’Argent in St Etienne, but promised to come home in plenty of time to take up his best man duties. His parents and Fran had each had a letter from him, but none of those told them anything further.

‘Why does he stay in this St Etienne place, do you think?’ asked his mother. ‘Why doesn’t he come home? Mary Dawson is married now, there would be no scandal.’

‘I doubt if it is Mary Dawson keeping him away, Mama,’ Fran had laughed. ‘But it’s probably some other lady, don’t you think?’

‘No, Frances, I do not,’ her mother had replied firmly and the matter received no further discussion, but Justin agreed with Fran that there must be a woman involved somehow – there always was with Rupert.

Just then he saw something that made him leap to his feet: a splash as a fish jumped before falling back into the river in the midst of ever-widening ripples. It was big. Though he hadn’t actually seen the fish, the disturbance in the water told him that. Justin was at the water’s lip at once, edging out into the river again. He cast his fly, but nothing moved. Reeling in, he cast again, the line flying out from his rod, the fly settling gently on the water close to where the ripples had been. If the fish had been there it would have darted away again by now. Slowly Justin waded through the water, pausing from time to time to cast again. He reached a pool a little further downstream, no more than a bend in the river where the water slowed on one side but flooded past on the other, running fast and strong towards the weir. A flash of silver caught his eye and he stepped forward to cast again, and as he did so there was suddenly nothing beneath his feet. He had stepped off a ledge and was pitched forward into the water. For a moment he floundered, letting go of his rod in his efforts to right himself, but his feet gained no purchase, and water poured inside his waders, weighing him down. He could feel himself being dragged through the water, and the river in spate from a day of heavy rain carried him inexorably in its flood. As it narrowed between rocky banks, Justin made a grab for the trailing branches of an overhanging willow tree, but they came away in his hand and the river pulled him under, the water closing over his head. He struggled to keep afloat, forcing his head upwards to gulp air. Justin could swim, but his clothes and waterlogged waders tugged him down and then, suddenly, he was at the weir. Here the water tumbled across shelves of rock, breaking into spray flung high in the air before pouring over the next ledge. Justin felt himself tumbling too, unable to pull himself clear, and then, as his head was pounded against a jutting rock, he knew no more.