It was beautiful to watch him. It was a useless, beautiful pursuit, the act of riding waves. He figured Max should come away from this triumphant, and it looked like he did at first. He scudded in on the wash and clambered out after Damien. He grinned as he approached, flicked the water from his hair and laid his board flat on the grass.

‘Thought you’d go without me, did you?’

‘You snooze, you lose, my friend.’

‘You shouldn’t have left me. You shouldn’t have gone without me.’ He was still grinning when he said this but he was serious all the same, serious enough to make Damien look twice.

You shouldn’t have left me. Here at last was the accusation. It was what he’d wanted to say out loud since they swam back from that cave. The next thing Damien knew, his cousin moved to trip him, wrenching him by the shoulders and sticking his leg out behind his. Damien spun about on instinct and seized his shoulders in return.

‘You want to go?’ he asked. He turned the tables and unbalanced him. Max fell back on the grass, pulling Damien with him. They grunted and fake-wrestled, and then the fake wrestling became real. People watched from the promenade. Max gave a laugh for show.

‘Tap out if you want.’

‘Fuck off.’

Alright. So he pinned him, got him, held him. He put Max in a headlock. ‘Tap.’

‘I’m tapping.’

Damien let him go.

‘Jesus.’ Max rubbed his neck. It was over. He’d made his feelings known. He got up, dusted himself off, bowed like a clown to the onlookers.

‘Are we good?’ Damien asked. ‘Because I have somewhere to be.’ He turned to walk up the embankment. ‘I’ve got to go meet Laura.’

‘What?’ Max stopped. ‘Since when? You’re a sly one, Damien.’

Standing there, he started to laugh. He laughed so hard he doubled over, but then he suddenly reared back, jerking his head like he was injured. An alarming stream of liquid poured from his nostrils – from his sinuses, from somewhere, the deep recesses of his head. The liquid coursed from him. Gushed out. It spattered on the earth.

Blood, or so you’d think. Anyone would think so. Damien was with him in two strides. He put his hand on his shoulder.

‘It’s only water,’ he said. And meant it.

It was only water, after all.

The understudy

‘Worse things happen at sea,’ said Ben. It was one of his sayings. He came from a sea-going Southampton family, boats and the navy and all that. He said it to Holly the day Genevieve avoided her by the river.

The meeting (or non-meeting) happened near the Chiswick lifeboat station. Holly had come down after rehearsals to pace along, learning her lines, script in hand, while Ben finished his shift. He volunteered on the lifeboats; this was one of the things he made a part of his post-acting life. He was normally at the Tower station, but he was covering someone’s shift at Chiswick, on the higher section of river where the little wild-looking islands started, funny mounds of ill-kempt green that popped up from the water, at odds with the general sense of groomed propriety onshore.