‘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.

It was a novelty to be able to walk down from Hammersmith to meet him. It was right on dusk, and the light, already soft, was turning fuzzy. Even so, Holly was sure it was Genevieve she spotted. She was walking towards her, a solitary figure in boots and a khaki jacket. Then the figure turned back and left the Thames path pretty smartly, disappearing into a side street.

‘I think she was avoiding me,’ Holly told Ben when he showed up. ‘Why would she do that?’

‘Because you smell.’

She barged him with her shoulder. ‘She saw me. Then she split.’

‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘Worse things happen at sea.’