‘Yeah, it’s like when you used to go on a school trip. You’d have eaten your packed lunch before the bus even pulled out,’ said one of the other boys.

‘Then you’d be begging your mates to share theirs, when it actually came to lunch-time,’ said Dawn.

There was an elderly couple sitting just along from them, in fold-up aluminium chairs. The woman was glancing through a copy of Woman’s Day, while her husband looked at the sea. After a time he stood and advanced towards the water. When he came back a little while later, his wife started shouting. The young people looked across to see what was making her so agitated and saw that there was blood all over one of the old man’s feet. With no hesitation, Hazel went across and knelt beside him. Owen followed her, to see if he could help out.

It was a nasty gash. Probably he’d trodden on a piece of broken glass. Hazel asked the woman if she had anything with her that could be used as a bandage, but she nodded no. The wife looked more shaken up than the injured husband. Hazel darted back and grabbed her T-shirt. The man’s foot was like a root vegetable left too long in the ground, misshapen and with prominent veins in thick strands. It wasn’t a foot most people would have been in a hurry to take hold of, but Owen looked down and saw that Hazel had it in both her hands. He saw that she had freckles on the back of her hands and sprinkled along her arms. Mulling it over later, he thought that maybe that was the moment he’d started to like her. It seemed to him that there was something honest about freckles. She’d bound the wound tight, tucking the fabric under itself neatly, and then Owen helped the old guy back up the sand to his car. Likely he’d need a few stitches. Hazel followed, carrying the chairs, chatting calmly to the woman.

‘How come you knew what to do there?’ Owen asked her, after they’d driven off.

‘My mum’s a nurse,’ she said.

‘I hope that wasn’t your favourite T-shirt?’ he’d smiled.

‘It’s fine.’

They’d gone in the water a few times, over the course of the afternoon. He’d noticed that Hazel was a strong swimmer and he liked that about her, too.

When he’d turned up at her parents’ house the weekend after, to take her out for the first time, he’d brought her a new T-shirt.

‘What’s it got written on it?’ she’d asked.

‘The name of an American university, I reckon,’ he’d said.

‘Oh. Is Yale somewhere you’ve been?’

He’d laughed. ‘No, I just thought it looked, you know, quite cool.’

‘Oh. Right.’