Immediately the security guard on the roof had his gun trained on the pool area, and another one I hadn’t seen before sprang through a nearby gate, his drawn pistol aimed right at me. For a nanosecond I feared he might pull the trigger. As luck would have it, Dad, who’d only been gone fifteen minutes, strolled back through reception just in time to hear the crash. He had his hands on his hips and a thunderous look on his face. Here we go, I thought, and sank beneath the surface of the water again.

7.

In the aftermath of Mark’s death Dad didn’t blame me. He didn’t need to. As soon as I realised my brother was dead, I knew it was my fault. Mum spent whole nights trying to convince me otherwise. When I didn’t believe her, she even got a counsellor involved. Like the driver of the Mini, the counsellor had a beard, but his was more straggly. He kept a bowl of tangerines on his coffee table and offered me one when he saw me staring at them. That was kind of him; he was all kindness in fact, but none of it helped.

Dad did his best too. The week after the funeral, he bought me a BMX, took me to the bike park and sat in the car while I practised. Everything about him said, ‘I am trying to forgive you.’ That was the problem. There’s no need to forgive someone who’s done nothing wrong.

It turned out he hadn’t seen what caused the drinks explosion; he was just irritated because he’d left his wallet in his other clothes and had had to come back to retrieve it. But I didn’t know that from underwater. I looked up at the scissoring blue shapes above me, knowing I’d have to break through them eventually, and when I did I’d resigned myself to having to climb out of the pool and help the hotel maid clear up the mess.

Ironically, seeing me do that, Dad put two and two together. He squared up to say something, but Amelia beat him to it.

‘That, by contrast, was a very unlucky shot,’ she said.

‘By contrast with what?’ asked Xander.

‘Earlier Jack stopped a thief on a motorbike with a golf ball. It was a lucky ricochet.’

Reminded of this, Dad dropped his hands to his sides and explained that he’d left his wallet upstairs.

‘You’re not being very vigilant today, Mr Courtney,’ said Amelia. ‘It’s unlike you. Maybe you’re getting old. Early-onset dementia is a thing.’

Xander tilted his face into the water to laugh. Even Dad couldn’t help smiling.

‘I’ll catch you later,’ he said, pausing before delivering the truly bad news with a glint in his eye. ‘Your uncle Langdon called. As well as meeting him tonight you can expect to see your cousin again. Caleb’s out here for the summer on work experience at his father’s mining company apparently. Try to be nice, eh.’