[gmw]

Obviously determined not to give us a happy one.

It's very good, I think. More obvious than the previous, you hold the reader's hand more through this one - but I think that suits this story. The imagery is very good, and the pace feels right. While I thought I knew what was coming there was still a feeling of tension there waiting for it. Given the tone of the piece, the ending was not exactly what I expected.

A couple of things stuck out at me in the first few paragraphs, and I'll note them here. After that I was too busy reading to notice much in the of errors - which is a good thing.

Spoiler:

"the Norwegian fjords" - wondering if "the" is inappropriate here.

"pale grey eyes crinkled - the mix of colour and "crinkle" seems wrong (one speaks on the eye itself, the other of the skin around the eyes).

There's not a lot of critical comment here that might help with improvement ... largely because I think the story is already doing what you set out to achieve. I've said previously that such short works aren't what I most enjoy, but I do think this story is a good vignette.

Spoiler:

After writing the above I looked over Graham's comments (which were about the previous version). I can still see the shadows of some of those issues: I had to do a sort of double-take with Michael in the carseat, I half-expected Ricky to either jump in the water or collapse where she was. But overall it worked pretty well for me in this newer version.