Beverley slipped her arms around my waist and buried her face in my shoulder, the whole exquisite length of her pressed against me.

‘It’s going to be freezing,’ I said.

‘Not while you’re with me,’ she said.

I thought of the three sisters of the Teme.

‘Aren’t we sort of trespassing?’ I asked.

‘Nah. There’s nobody home,’ she said. ‘At least nobody who’s got an opinion about it.’

It was about then that I probably should have become really suspicious. But, looking back, had you told me then what I found out later I would have carried on regardless.

Letting go of me, Beverley stepped down into the water without hesitation or even worrying about her footing. The river foamed around her ankles, visibly rising as I watched, to cover her calves and then her knees. When she reached the middle of the river she turned back to face me. She was black and silver in the moonlight, a woman made of shadows and curves. Her eyes were hidden but her smile was a pale crescent.

‘Aren’t you going to join me?’ she asked.

‘What are you planning to do?’

She put her hands on her hips.

‘What do you think we’re going to do?’

Still I hesitated.

‘You know you can pose on the beach all you like, Peter,’ she said. ‘But sooner or later you’re going to have to get wet.’

So, because one of us had to be practical, I scooped up our clothes and dumped them in the back of the Asbo. Then hid the keys under the leg of one of the picnic tables. By the time I was ready, the water was roiling around her thighs.

‘Get a move on,’ she called. ‘Or we’ll miss the surge.’

Oh, the surge, I thought, the rainstorm over the Brecon Beacons that was nothing to do with her.

Sometimes it’s you . . . Sometimes it’s exceptionally heavy rainfall in your catchment area, she’d said. It can be tricky telling the two apart.

I cautiously stepped into the water – it was freezing and the footing was uncertain. I carefully felt my way towards the middle where Beverley waited, one hand outstretched towards me. She was still wearing her bracelets.

By the time I reached her, my legs were so numb with the cold that when she touched me her hands felt hot and feverish against my skin. She kissed me again and this time I kissed her back.

Then she leaned back, drawing me down onto the water that was supporting us in such an unnatural way that Archimedes would have given up natural philosophy and retired to the country to become an olive farmer.