The plaintive note in his voice makes her pause.

‘Come and swim,’ he says.

She is paralysed by indecision. The pool looks beautiful, the water so cool and clear, but she wanted to be alone.

‘We don’t have to talk if you don’t want to,’ he says, reading her thoughts.

Before she can change her mind, she throws off her dressing gown and dives into the water. She doesn’t arch towards the surface. Instead, she continues to swim, pulling her arms through the water, eyes open, vision blurred, until her lungs ache for air and she lifts her chin out of the water and takes a deep breath. She dives back down again and swims lap after lap along the bottom of the pool, popping up for air then diving back down again, until her mind stops buzzing and her legs start to ache. Then she rests in the shallow end, her legs extended, her arms stretched across the tiles.

Tom, swimming a lazy breast stroke, stops a metre or so away. ‘Feeling better? Sorry.’ He pulls a face. ‘I said we didn’t have to talk.’

‘It’s fine.’ She smiles. ‘I just … I needed to do that.’

‘I get it. I love this time of night. Everything’s so still.’

‘It never happens in London. So much light and noise, even at four or five a.m.’

He touches his forehead, in the same place Jenna was hit by the rock. ‘How’s the head?’

‘It’s okay, aches a bit. But at least I know nothing else can go wrong now.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, bad things come in threes, don’t they? First, someone else’s nail varnish came open in my suitcase, then I found a dead bird outside my room and now this.’ She touches a hand to her forehead. The plasters are wet. Swimming was a stupid move, she’ll almost definitely scar.

‘Are you superstitious?’ Tom asks.

She laughs. ‘Is this an official session? Are you going to make a note in your pad?’ She drops her feet to the bottom of the pool and mimes writing in a notepad. ‘Jenna Fitzgerald tells lies when she gets nervous. She is also obsessively superstitious.’

Tom laughs. ‘I didn’t say that.’

‘But you read people. It’s your job.’

‘I don’t judge them though.’

‘No one said anything about that but it’s human nature, isn’t it? To watch, to make assumptions? It happens within seconds of meeting someone.’

‘Of course. But there’s a difference between my … human … side and my professional side.’

She mimes writing in her imaginary notebook again. ‘Tom Wade has a split personality.’

He laughs again.