Summerwater

by Sarah Moss

wouldn’t you think campers would want either the shower-blocks and kitchen sinks at the waterside campsite or to be off-grid altogether high in the hills?

– and even when she doesn’t feel like it, it seems to be good for them, like oiling your bike chain, doesn’t have to be fun but it stops things falling apart.

are we not measured and recorded and found wanting often enough already these days? Why not just run?

They’re at the age where you lose what you don’t use, even more quickly than what you do.

There’s something about fatal drops that makes you want to launch a bit of yourself, just a mouthful, over the edge.

They won’t always love her this much, she thinks, holding her son, no one else, not even her children’s future selves, will ever be so pleased to see her coming as they are today.