The sploosh of the stone is followed by a larger splash as the spaniel vanishes over the edge of the field. Logan keeps walking. The dog will catch up, he thinks, just as his wife will. And then Achilles comes trotting past, tail furiously wagging, the whole of her snout entirely black with mud.

Logan can feel his wife’s disapproval from twenty feet away. He can hear her criticisms in his head. She doesn’t need to say anything. Now the dog will need to be coaxed into the sea.

On the beach Logan and Jules wander some distance from each other. No words are exchanged, but each of them searches for something that might tempt Achilles into the swell. And it is a swell. Achilles is a fair-weather swimmer, not keen on the kind of waves that break over an animal as it enters. The pebble beach might seem like a godsend for a dog that loves flints, but no matter what manner of stone Logan throws, the dog stands planted at the water’s edge, only her paws in the brine. Separately, but at least united in their mission, he and Jules start to wander about, looking for something more tempting. Jules finds a spray of seaweed, not unlike the rag-rope toys one buys at pet shops. Achilles is there in an instant: bark, bark. Jules whips some half-enthused dog-love into her voice, Achilles! Achilles! Look! What’s this? waving it above the dog’s head, and flicking it out of reach when she stands on her back legs to snatch at it. Bark, bark. When Jules is sure she has wound the animal’s enthusiasm up to a pitch, she swings the seaweed in a wide arc, like a fisherman’s net, into the sea. The dog starts to run after it, reaches the waves, and stops, looking at her with puzzlement. Go on! she says. Go get it! But Achilles doesn’t want it more than she wants to stay dry.

Logan finds a stick that isn’t really a stick but a dried stalk of something like cow parsley. So light that when he throws it the onshore wind whisks it out of his hand and blows it further up the beach. Then Jules has the big find – a piece of wood from some DIY project, perhaps leftover decking, easily four feet of it. As soon as Logan lifts it into the air, the dog is all wag and bark and jump. Big wood, big wood. As Jules had done before, but without the commentary, Logan wobbles it over the dog’s head, pretends to throw it twice, before lobbing it into the waves. Achilles follows without a thought, leaping through the surf like a launching battle craft until she reaches the smoother water beyond the breakers. She snatches it and turns around slowly, her tail an ineffective rudder. Her face is still black all the way to her eyes.