She opened her throat and let out a roar of extraordinary rage and volume as the water rushed into her mouth and her head dipped below the surface again. For a moment it looked as though she was giving up the fight, sinking down into the darkness of the River Neva, but then she beat her legs frantically once more and thrashed her arms and fists and pulled herself towards the surface. Her head emerged again into the fading afternoon light, the icy wind snatching at her skin, and she gasped, a spluttering, coughing, spraying exhalation. And then a strong hand took hold of her wrist with a certainty that sent death slinking back beneath the waves, back into its hole among the dark, inert and rusting things that littered the riverbed. The fisherman hauled the girl out of the water and deposited her on the quayside. The wet bundle sat and stared back at him in shock. ‘What the hell are you doing falling into the water on a day like this? Or any day, for that matter? And you shouldn’t be out and about on your own anyway, a little thing like you.
