Ait

There are nearly 200 aits and islands along the river Thames, carved out as water pushed from source to sea over thousands of years. Some are narrow, muddy slips, home only to heron and grebe; some rise like sunken treasure at low tide; some cleave the watercourse like an axe, and overgrowth hides bank from bank.

History has been written on their tiny shores, from the islet where King John signed the Magna Carta, and boatyards which built crafts destined for Dunkirk, to the tidal home of rock and roll on a mudbank named after its inn’s eel pies.

Just 30 are currently inhabited. Oliver’s Island is not one of those – but it was on Oliver’s Island they found the body.

***

The instructor planted his blade in the water and pushed it hard away from the board, swinging himself round 90 degrees and drawing to a slow stop. He didn’t mind one-on-one lessons but this man had proven himself unbearable from the moment he’d arrived at the launch. The yell and loud splash that made him stop was the client falling in for the third time in an hour. Thank God he’d insisted on him attaching the paddleboard leash or it would halfway to Putney by now.

He sunk the blade into the murky water and paddled back to where the man was now valiantly pulling a willow from its roots to steady himself. Groups of friends were laughing on the bank, sat outside one of his favourite pubs, watching the sunset glint off the water and oblivious to the mutterings about rats and disease happening on the little island opposite. Local myth said a secret tunnel led from the pub to the island, which Oliver Cromwell used to seek refuge from his opponents. What he’d give to seek some refuge now.

“Jesus Christ!” The man scrambled on his board with an alacrity his frame seemed unused to, a stream of swear words pouring out with it.

“What’s the problem?” said the instructor, trying very hard to turn his pissed-off voice into a mollifying one as he pulled up alongside.

A thick, half-rotted branch of sycamore poked out the water beside the man. Snagged to the branch, a few inches under the grimy water, was a denim jacket. It took the instructor a second look to see the blonde hair swaying with the current above the collar, and the pale, bloated face half turned to the sky.

Petrichor

Those long evenings when spring turns into summer are my favourite. I like the way dusk steals a few extra minutes every evening from night – the same way you boil a frog by turning the heat up slowly, slowly – until suddenly it’s time for bed but there’s light still creeping in through the cracks of my curtains.

Frogs had been on my mind because it was just after mating season and this garden has a pond thick with spawn. It balances on the glassy surface like bubbles frozen in time, as if at any moment something would rise from the water for another breath. This garden also has gnomes by the pool; a ghoulishly red-faced little man with a fishing rod and a down-trodden gnome wife in an apron carrying his lunch box. It made me wrinkle up my face in a way Elaine told me I’d regret when I got older and the lines never faded.

Fat drops of spring rain had fallen after a few days of heat and filled the garden with that earthy, savoury scent a teacher had once told me was called petrichor. She was a new biology teacher and perhaps assumed the reason I was sat eating lunch in the courtyard alone was because I was sniffing the air so violently. Nostrils right up in it like a bloodhound; vibrissae lurching back and forth as I drank in as much smell as I could.

“I love that scent, don’t you?” she’d chimed into my nasal reverie. “It has a name actually, petrichor. Yeah, chemical compounds in the soil are dissolved by the rain and spread through the air. It’s why you can smell rain before it comes. Probably the closest humans will ever get to a superpower.” She laughed. And I smiled back, because a teacher had finally said something I actually found interesting.

This garden had been a weekly Thursday night haunt of mine until the owners purchased a wind chime. Tonight had been the first breezeless night in weeks and I finally felt safe to return. It had thrived in my absence. Violet Kingfisher Clematis had grown so quickly up the trellis it now belly-flopped over the back wall; full borders of hot pink geraniums and coral floribunda oozed their spicy-sweet scent even this late at night; I smelt lavender too and, like the honey bees, I was intoxicated. If I could find that wind chime, I would break it, and then I’d never have to miss a Thursday here again.

Mass

Rosary beads trickle between fingers. Staccato mutterings swell as one at the tenth Hail Mary. A thumb rubs rhythmically on a battered HOL BIBLE – the gilt Y a tragic victim of religious fervour. The third Joyful Mystery is just beginning as I take my seat.

Twelve nuns line the front two banks of pews. I am sat a few rows back with three other stragglers. One of my neighbours checks her watch; another his phone; the third hovers above a wet patch left by his sodden anorak, rising and falling as he agonises over whether to disrupt the reverence by changing pew.

Four crimson Advent candles flickering by the altar explain this remarkably high attendance at 8am Mass. The flames do little to splinter the gloom pressing in through dust-mottled windows or relieve the draft. Their glow is settled on the priest’s sharp cheekbones, pooling shadow in the deep recesses beneath. I see his bald pate now, and the hair that has claimed squatters rights in his nostrils, eyebrows and ear canals. Any stray rays catch the faded gold thread in his cassock, hinting at a former glory. A clinical pine-cleaner scent mingles with throat-lacquering incense and the priest performs a great clearing of phlegm. It’s unclear if it’s for effect or necessity; nevertheless, it stills the crowd. The nuns crane forward, rapt, and my sodden pew-fellow takes his seat.

But I am not here for the sermon. My eyes move to the nun at the front by the Mother Abbess. Her eyes are closed in what I hope is sincere contemplation; she is 96, and I am not so sure. Her neck cannot hold the weight of the wimple any more and she is allowed a simple cloth covering. I would not say her gnarled hands ‘hold’ the rosary, merely that the frozen claw of her fingers prevents it from slipping out. I cannot see her full face yet, but I know to expect her skin to sit like creased tracing paper, even more translucent than last time. The Mother called yesterday to say this would be my great aunt’s last Mass.