A BITTER HEART

She was instantly aware of the water's overpowering, icy energy. The river was the colour of unsettled ale; it was flowing fast, swollen by the recent heavy late October rain. The shock of colliding with this unfamiliar,hostile medium rapidly gave way to the panic of absolute terror. She could not swim. The current swept her along. It was not just that she was sinking. It was as though some malignantly destructive force of immense power was violently pulling her under. She screamed, horribly aware of her impending doom, but the sound seemed to tinkle hopelessly in space, her head bobbing above the immense, empty surface of the river, as it drove relentlessly and dispassionately onwards. He ran along the tow-path to keep up with her, struggling to divest his garments as he went. Stripped to his t-shirt and boxers, he leapt into the water. But the river seemed to acknowledge him with equal disregard. He did not reach her. He was aware of a shout from the bank towards which he was carried by a subordinate current. A pair of strong arms pulled him upwards through mud and reeds. A young woman's body was washed up further downstream. The police were able to establish identification from the little purse zipped inside he heavy, water-logged fleece. ************ Woody was wearing a pair of beige shorts and a V-necked woollen jumper with light blue and grey horizontal stripes. His odd socks, one grey and one navy, had been pulled on carelessly. He was wearing no shoes. he had nothing on under his jumper, the sleeves of which were pulled up to his elbows. Kate noticed the silky brown hair on his chest, matched by a covering on his slender legs and arms and by the soft fleece fringing his handsome face. His hazel-brown eyes looked warm with gentle concern. She was about to tell him to go to Hell but, disorientated in her state of high emotion, wounded by her sharp sense of rejection and hungry for sympathy and affection, she suddenly noticed how very attractive Woody was, with his neat masculine figure so unselfconsciously presented. An unexpectedly powerful instinct prompted her not to send him away. In her confusion, she said nothing. He moved forward and sat next to her on the bed. ************ She hit the 'SEND' box. Then she froze. Oh my God! Rob was a regular user of Facebook and it was quite possible that Woody was on it too. Rob will almost certainly go to her page next time he signs on. It'll appear on his wall anyway. And what about Woody? Oh- why is everything going wrong? There was no deleting these cringe-making messages unless you did it immediately and, given Rob's current mood, the consequences could be quite awful. And she had probably screwed up with Woody now too, and that, she realised, mattered to her quite a lot. ************ All over the conurbation, people had read about the heroic young student who had 'battled with nature in all its fury in a doomed attempt to rescue the girl he loved.' The headline could be seen on buses, trains and trams, in stations, on news-stands, on the top of high piles in shops, held between the hands of residents in homes from Ashton-under-Lyne to Altrincham, from raw housing estates on the edge of Bolton to plush mansions in Bowden, from red-brick terraced houses in Salford to flats in Stockport:- 'BRAVE ROB'S MERCY DIVE FOR DROWNING GIRL'. ************ If we cannot forgive some-one, we cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven because, in failing to forgive, we are failing to acknowledge our debt to God in His willingness to forgive us. We are all in this. Each one of us has failed in forgiveness at some point. ************ 'I was angry with my foe, I told it not, my wrath did grow.' ************* The monochromatic winter dampness extended northwards, shrouding the soaring Gothic splendour of Beauvais, the flat plains of Picardy, the cliffs of Dover, the parks of London. It confirmed the Midlands as sodden and unkind and intensified its special grip over Manchester, as of a being glad to be home again. ************