The Timeless Fall

It was a day I’ll always recall.

Running, skipping, twirling with open, propeller-like arms and feeling completely free, lost in a bubble of moments in that present time. On and on, my legs carried me aimlessly in no particular direction as I darted on and off the well-trodden path that encompassed the dark, still waters of that lake.

It was a rare, hot summer’s day.

I’ll always remember because I was fascinated with those little, minute, vivid red insects that seemed to be scurrying everywhere and nowhere, wherever I looked. On walls, on the sticky hot seat in the back of the airless car, and on my bare, sun-tanned arms. You don’t see them anymore, but they were always a mark of a heatwave back then. I’d be absorbed in squashing them one by one and smearing them to create an original piece of artwork on whatever canvas they had once breathed life upon — my masterpiece on a car seat or my leg. A quiet obsession only children have the patience for.

I had no idea where that lake was. It never mattered where I was. It was “a day out” distance from home — far enough to ask the predictable question: “Are we nearly there yet?” It was somewhere with ducks and reeds and the faint sweet smell of warm water and algae — that particular smell of British summer — quietly buzzing with the activity of dog walkers and other families enjoying picnics of homemade ham sandwiches out of worn Tupperware boxes, washed down with orange squash served in plastic beakers. The sort of day when the sun presses down and the world slows its breathing.

I was fully charged on childhood energy as I ran and ran, completely focused on taking in my immediate now, as young children do — in my own little world. The gravel crunched beneath my sandals, the air shimmered, and somewhere behind me my mother’s voice carried through the warmth: “Don’t go too far!” But of course, I did. I always did.

Running and playing ahead with — but not with — my brother and younger sister, and the stranger who’d come along with us.

He was the same age as my older brother but much taller. He looked older, more serious. He was staying with us for a week on a French exchange but spent most of his time hidden away in my brother’s room between his organised school trips. Mum had loaned him my much-loved portable radio cassette recorder, covered in stickers and graffiti, and found a French radio station for him so he’d feel more comfortable. He didn’t like our food. I think he missed his family. I recall his sad silence around us — an awkward guest, too young to be an adult, too old to be a child.

I caught up with the stranger.

What had started as shyness in the day soon disappeared, as it does in child’s play. We were ahead of the grown-ups and my siblings when he took both my hands and started to spin me around and around and around until I was dizzy. The world blurred into streaks of green and gold, our feet pounding the grass. I remember the dizzy joy of it, the bubbling laugh that escaped my mouth before I even knew I was laughing. Oblivious. No language or words necessary.

Without realising, we were too close to the water’s edge now, and in an instant I was falling — falling into the deep water — and time suddenly switched to slow motion as the surface and the face of that stranger became a blur, and my new immediate became a vacuum of a million bubbles engulfing me. The depth of that lake sucked me down, down, down amongst the kelp, and the world above became far, far away.

One world becoming another.

There were no thoughts, no panic, just nothingness as I was weightlessly absorbed into this underwater world I never knew existed. For a heartbeat, or perhaps forever, there was no lake, no boy, no family, no summer heat — only the slow drift of my small body suspended in the green. Even the need to breathe had not yet arrived. Everything was muted, as if someone had placed their hand gently over the sound of the world.

It was a moment that belonged to me, a memory etched not in words but in silence.

It had a strange, magical peacefulness. I remember the sunlight bending above me, turning to liquid gold. I remember the water pressing against my skin like an invisible hand. My hair floated around my face like a dark halo. My eyes were open but unfocused, and I felt — strangely — safe. It’s strange how the mind can make a moment of danger feel like a cradle.

I don’t remember being pulled out, the cold, the tears or the fuss — just falling timelessly.

The boy stood back, pale and silent, his arms hanging uselessly by his sides. He hadn’t meant to let go — I knew that, even then — but something between us shifted in that unspoken moment. Children don’t always have words for guilt or fear, but they recognise them instantly, just as I recognised it in him.

Later, as the car engine hummed and the windows fogged with heat, I sat wrapped in Mum’s cardigan, damp and quiet. My hair was still wet against the nape of my neck, and the cardigan smelled faintly of her perfume and washing powder. I wasn’t crying. I just stared out at the endless green blurring past, trying to piece together what I didn’t remember. I didn’t ask questions. No one really talked about it. It was a near miss folded into the fabric of a family day out.

All I knew was the feeling of weightlessness. The quiet. That underwater world of green.

Even now, decades later, that moment remains suspended somewhere between memory and dream. Sometimes I wonder if it happened exactly as I recall, or if my mind filled in the spaces where memory fades. It doesn’t matter. The feeling is real. The sensation of falling is real.

I think, in some strange way, that day planted a seed in me. A soft, quiet fascination with water. With edges. With the way time can suddenly fold in on itself and make everything slow. There are moments that change nothing and yet become everything. A single breath you never quite let go of.

It isn’t the fear I recall, or even the danger, but the strange, fragile beauty of it — the still, silent world beneath the surface.

Where time briefly forgot me.