I know that Jenny isn’t mad keen on getting into the water, it’s been this way ever since I slapped her, things have never been right with Jenny and the sea and for this I blame myself. I figure that this might be the right time to make amends, it is not too late. Even though I have told her that all she has to do is come to the beach to sketch, I now feel like it wouldn’t be a bad idea at all to convince her to swim with us. And so I set about it.

Nudity is common on White Rock and it doesn’t bother me as such. Normally the nudists keep away behind the rocks beside the old mining shaft known as Decco’s cave. Today, however, there’s a naked man sitting on a wooden chair that has been left behind in the shelter and he’s drinking champagne and it’s some life when you can just do that, take off your clothes and drink champagne, out in the elements.

I don’t push the swimming with Jenny in front of the kids. I don’t want to push her after all these years have gone by. The little slap I gave her on her face. The coolness of her cheek, how I remember that stark fact. Instead I talk to her calmly from the water. I say the water’s at its best ever and that there’s no sudden sea shelf – like there is on the Killiney side of the bay – and that she can stand, and even though there is some movement in the water, it will not drag her out. All she has are my words. But Jenny is in the other part of the shelter, the one beside the naked man drinking champagne, and she ignores my encouragement from the water and takes out her sketchpad.

I have brought swimming reward goodies for the kids and I use this fact to encourage them into the sea. I shout but it is happy shouting. I tell them I have King crisps and suddenly they are in the water with me and the boys call out that they are cold but yet they laugh and I stay close to them. We throw the Frisbee about and time after time they miss a catch and they have to dive into the water and their happiness is music to my ears. Maeve does handstands and I give her marks out of ten for each one like I used to do on holiday in Spain. The naked man is like an actor in a play and I take stock of the latest graffiti offering on the shelter wall – Fuck Israel, in huge black letters. Mikey asks me what it means and I tell him that I don’t know and that he shouldn’t worry about it and then I go and suggest a game of Tip the Can.