Glitch (The Write Awards 2013 Winner)

Glitch - Chapter 23

He’d often taken her to this part of town. Just the two of them. Usually when her Mum had wanted them out from under her feet. They were perhaps the most treasured memories of her childhood. She would be held aloft on his shoulders as they ambled down the bank to settle themselves by the edge of the river. He would roll out an old mat, pass her a sandwich and then spend an hour or so simply talking. Freya had sat so patiently and listened to the sound of her father’s voice intermingling with the soft rush of the river passing by.

No one else seemed to frequent this area of town; the proximity to the barriers put passers by off. Being labelled as a troublemaker was something to be avoided with meticulous care amongst most. But that wasn’t her father.

Eventually Freya noticed the smirk catch on his lips every time they would sit by the bank; directly under the Patroller’s watch of the barrier. He enjoyed the taunt of disrupting their solemn guard with the inane conversations between a small child and a doting father. Safe in the knowledge that legally they were doing nothing wrong. They couldn’t be moved on or cautioned; only tolerated. And after a ten minute period the Patrollers would resign themselves to it. Freya’s father soon learned that after twenty minutes he could say absolutely anything and no one but his daughter would take the slightest bit of notice.

At the time Freya had never noted just how daring he had been in testing the Patroller’s ignorance to their discussions. But at the end of their trips to the river her father would enact the same routine. The volume of his tone would soften, he would curl her hair behind her ear, he would place his head very close to hers and then whisper the same observation.

“If anyone ever wanted to wriggle passed the notice of the Patrollers I would suggest coming here. It would be very easy to wade into the water, swim out under the barrier and slip out underneath. The Patrollers never expect people to be foolish enough to attempt a life outside the barriers. All it would take is a bit of guts.”

She had never taken any notice of the actual words he spoke. She had only delighted in the secret nature of her father’s words. That she was grown up enough to be entrusted with the surreptitious whisper at the expense of the Patrollers. So she would listen politely with a grin beaming in pride. More interested in the action of the whisper than the content. That she was part of the game too, although at the time she had no understanding of it.

But the words had caught in her mind. They were whispered into her ears so frequently that they had become imprinted into her memory. She could not help but remember them. And suddenly that observation didn’t seem like a trivial joke spliced onto the end of a Dad-and-daughter day out. It seemed like an instruction covertly written down for later use. As if he had always hoped his daughter would become entwined in some rebellious movement. As if he had expected it. So as she stood with the water up to her ankles, just out of sight of the Patroller’s watch, it felt like she was directly following her Dad’s advice. She wondered if there were two of them following posthumous advice as Andie stepped away from her side.

“I’ll see you on the other side then,” Freya whispered as she watched Andie gradually disappear into the river. She waited for a few moments, growing increasingly aware of the vulnerability of solitude, before lowering herself into the water. The weather had warmed substantially lately, however the river still possessed an icy bite. Freya was forced to snatch a few moments in order to struggle against the cold and restore normal breath. The cold was a weight on her lungs restricting full, uninterrupted breathing. Her condensed breath unfurled silver shadows across the surface as shivers shuddered instantly across her skin. The prospect of having to submerge her entire head beneath the surface was met with her stomach curling in dread. After five or six rapid and short breaths she gulped in a lungful of air and ducked beneath the surface.