Tell Me How This Ends

by Jo Leevers

His barking reaches a crescendo as they head off down the street, one woman and her dog against the world.

Here it comes again, thinks Henrietta, that old feeling of being on the fringes of a club, discovering that everyone else has been a fully paid-up member for ages while she’s still trying to figure out the rules.

Henrietta is beginning to understand that the gaps in conversation, the moments when people fall silent, are just as important as the words they say.

Then Annie lets herself slip under, beneath the waves. Because this water isn’t like the sort that’s haunted her dreams for years. It’s not dark and foul, like the canal. This time, it’s the sea and the water is warm and blue and it sparkles. So she’s swimming, panting, trying to keep breathing so that she can reach a resting place. But there isn’t one in sight so she just keeps going, keeps breathing in and out, trying to keep her head above water. But then she realises that it doesn’t matter because she can breathe fine underwater – why didn’t she know this before? So she lets herself sink down through the clear water to the sandy bottom and then she realises that down here you don’t need to breathe at all and so she stops.