I sat down on the bed and started taking off my clothes.

‘I think he’s done with weapons,’ I said. ‘Don’t you?’

I decided to leave my boxers on – a man should maintain a certain amount of mystery after all.

‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘And Mellissa would only give them to her harem.’

Beverley closed the trunk and looked at me.

‘What are you doing?’ she asked.

‘I’m waiting languorously,’ I said. ‘For you to get into the bed.’

‘What make you think I’m still in the mood?’

‘Unlike some people,’ I said, ‘I’m committed to this state of languor. I’ve been putting in the hours. If necessary I can maintain it for an extended period.’

‘I could go back to my room at the Swan,’ she said.

I slowly put my hand behind my head and cocked my left leg provocatively.

‘But then,’ I said, ‘you’d be all alone and I’d still be here being irresistibly languid.’

She made me wait at least a minute, and then she climbed onto the bed with me. There followed some kissing and some grabbing of parts – the details I will not bother to bore you with, except to say that just as we were getting down to business I paused long enough to ask – ‘We’re not going to be, like, fertilising this garden or something are we?’

‘Peter!’ snarled Beverley. ‘Focus!’

Afterwards we lay sweating on top of the duvet, spread-eagled to catch the faint breeze coming in through the door, not touching except where her hand rested on my thigh and my hand covered hers.

‘When you were eleven,’ I said, ‘did you ever sneak out of your house?’

‘All the time,’ said Beverley.

‘Where did you go?’

‘Into the river of course,’ she said. ‘Where else?’

‘You didn’t dance about?’

‘On dry land?’

‘Yeah?’

‘Might have done – don’t know.’

‘Naked?’

‘When I was eleven?’

‘I just wondered if it was a fae thing,’ I said. ‘I’ve seen you swimming around without your kit on.’

‘I know,’ she said and rolled over to face me, propping her head up with her hand. ‘I’ve seen you watching me.’

‘Couldn’t take my eyes off you,’ I said.

She reached out and twirled her finger tips around my belly, making me laugh and gasp at the same time.

‘Children do strange things,’ she said. ‘They don’t have to be different to want to dance around as free as a chimpanzee.’

She swept her hand up to my chest, pushing ahead a little wave of water, my sweat I realised, coalescing in a way that could not be explained by momentum and surface tension.

‘I was naked the first time I saw you – do you remember?’ she asked. Her palm swept across my shoulders like a child gathering material for a sand castle.

‘That was you in the river at Richmond,’ I said. ‘What happened to your wetsuit?’