Gabriella

“The little girl set off for home,” nanny Anna went on. “She walked beside the river, heading for the old stone bridge. She could hear plops and splashes as little creatures went about their business in the rushes by the banks, fur and feathers whispering against the reeds and the sun-dried grasses. The sounds of the little animals and birds comforted her, and made her feel less alone in the twilight.

“She paused by the bridge, staring into the black shadows where the river ran underneath, not looking for anything in particular, but just looking at the darkness as if she half-expected something to emerge from it and break the spell. During the daytime, with the sun shining and with light at the other end of the tunnel, the space under the bridge was cool and nice, a good place to rest and listen to the water tinkling by. The boys and girls would paddle there, stepping in and out of the shadows, and picking their paths across the river by the broad stones planted in the shallow water. The stones and the gravel were all different colours – white, orange, brown, grey, bluey-black – and, in the daytime, the moving water made the light ripple and pulse over them.”

Nanny’s voice sounded as if it had changed, somehow. The flow of words was just as smooth as always, but it sounded as if she had abandoned a written text and was making up her own story as she went along. I sort of liked that, because it made me think that the story could be different this time, with a different ending, but at the same time I felt slightly worried that the familiar features of the story would be left out [and I would…???].

As nanny read on, I sometimes leaned against her, and my eyelids drooped and closed, but the words kept coming out of nanny’s mouth, and I heard them with my ears and felt the vibrations of nanny’s voice through her ribs and chest, and through my skull resting against her body. The warm smell of nanny and the oily perfume from downstairs lulled me towards sleep.