Downstream

made you feel tremendous.
You just shot through the
water at twice your normal
speed.’ The river had a
distinct odour: ‘it wasn’t a
dirty smell but it was a
certain smell when the wind
blew in our direction’ and her
mother was ‘always waiting
with a dose of sennapods’
(the seed of the senna plant
used as a purgative) when she
got home from a swim,
because ‘she said, “you don’t