‘Then … threeeee … twooooo … one …’

‘GO!’ she burst out, unable to bear the anticipation. And they began to race for the cliff edge. Clancy thought about closing her eyes but then they were airborne and she was screaming with delight as the wind rushed past them, a cacophony of gulls flapping and shrieking from hitherto unseen perches. Flailing, flying, falling … then the water rushed up and …

Bam!

Clancy hit the surface like a slap. It would have taken her breath away if she hadn’t already been holding it, the sting of impact, the freezing cold that made her recoil as they plunged, down, down, much further down than she’d anticipated, her vision a blur of bubbly turquoise blue. Aaron’s fingers had been wrenched from hers as they’d hit and she struck out for the surface, her lungs beginning to burn.

Then she popped up with a rush, dragging in her first breath with a ‘WHOO!’ The whole experience could only have taken seconds but time had seemed to slow to allow her to savour every sensation, every instant, every inch. Her nose and eyes smarted from the salt water but she’d never felt so alive, gasping and laughing as Aaron bobbed beside her, his skin gleaming wet.

He reminded her of some beautiful selkie-like creature with his hair sleek against his head but not wanting to look an idiot by telling him so, she exclaimed, ‘What a rush!’

‘Want to climb up and do it again?’ His arms sculled beneath the choppy surface to negate the sea’s inclination to push him onto the rocks. ‘Or go straight to Secret Beach?’

‘Beach!’ she decided promptly, the climb not appealing to limbs growing quickly weary of sculling to keep clear of the base of the cliff after a day’s work and a night’s fun.

He led the way around the rocks, putting himself between her and them. It seemed for a minute as if they were making no headway and the waves were much livelier when you were in them than they looked from above, but then a current swung them around a rock and they were delivered into the calmer water of a cove.

‘Whoa. This is gorgeous!’ Clancy trod water while she took it in. The cliffs overhung, dark red-brown at the bottom and rising in stripes of white and lighter red, protecting a tiny triangular beach of silver-beige sand and a scattering of rocks as if someone had rolled them there like dice. There were only twenty metres to swim before Clancy’s feet found the sandy sea bottom and she could wade to dry land with water streaming off her, Aaron once more taking her hand as they waded onto the beach.

Awestruck by the natural, cathedral-like beauty around her, Clancy breathed, ‘It’s like being cut off from the world.’

‘It used to be,’ a voice remarked drily.

Clancy whipped around to find Harry and Rory sprawled on the sand in the lee of a couple of rocks, gazing up at them with exasperation.