“Yes,” she said frankly, gazing at the sea. It had seemed so blue and benign and inviting a few moments ago. Now it looked much colder and somehow wetter.

“We could just go and have lunch in a hotel instead.”

“Certainly not. Last in the water buys the beer,” Margaret declared, darting inside her hut.

It was small and very basic, with a few pegs on the wall and a chamber pot, but no other furnishings. With every passing moment as she struggled out of her clothes, bumping against the walls as she wriggled and hopped, her courage seeped away. The hut smelled of sand and sea and wet wool. The boards beneath her feet were gritty. The maroon bathing suit was so large, with cumbersome buttons, that she had to roll up the sleeves and the legs. It was clean enough, but she was acutely conscious of the fact that it had been worn against someone else’s skin, and wondered if she should have kept her own undergarments on beneath it. But then they’d be wet, and she’d have to either abandon them in the hut or roll them into a bundle and carry them, and either prospect was embarrassing.

Cautiously peering out of the door of the hut, Margaret saw that Randolph, in his blue suit, had preceded her, and was already standing waist-deep in the water. So the beer would be on her! Feeling decidedly indecent, her instinct was the close the door and get dressed again; but as if he read her mind, he turned his back on her, dove into the water, and began to swim parallel to the shore. It was obvious that he was no novice.

“At least if I get into difficulty, Randolph will save me,” Margaret muttered to herself, “which would be marginally less embarrassing than drowning.” Stepping onto the damp sand she began tentatively to make her way towards the water’s edge. It was so very strange, being outside with her ankles and shins exposed, wearing only this huge, flapping woollen garment. It was this thought which spurred her on, gasping as her bare skin met water which wasn’t as cold as she had expected. It was nothing like the icy shock of a loch, for example, which instantly turned one’s feet into blocks of ice. The salty water made her skin tingle, and the contrast of the hot sun blazing down on her head and the sea lapping at her bare skin was rather delicious.