‘You’d love it,’ Claire chips in. ‘It’s so quirky and characterful.’

‘Yes, well, it could be way nicer, but I don’t have the inclination or the money.’

‘Join the club.’ Maddy’s voice catches.

‘Are you all right, Maddy?’ Dominica asks. Maddy usually looks so vital and clear, but today she has the weight of the world on her shoulders. ‘You seem a bit low.’

‘I don’t want to bore you,’ she says.

‘We’re not bored,’ Helga says. ‘This is as good a place as any to chat it out.’

‘Aren’t we supposed to be swimming?’

‘We can, but we can take a breather for a little while.’

Helga lies back in the water, seeing the town laid out on the shore in the sunshine. She likes chatting to her friends. She likes it that they confide in each other, but she’s shocked as she listens to Maddy recounting the latest drama with Trent.

Maddy starts to cry as she describes losing her home and the terrible fight with Trent about it. Helga rarely cries herself and she can see that it’s the same for Maddy. She tells them about the unbearable tension of the last few days as she’s tried to make her house ready for the valuation. She says she had to leave yesterday, as she was scared that she might be physically violent to the estate agent.

‘I’m sorry,’ Maddy says. ‘I’m just so bloody angry.’

‘It’s OK,’ Dominica reassures her.

‘If it’s any consolation, the same thing happened to me,’ Helga tells Maddy.

‘Really?’

Helga sighs. She’s never admitted this shocking fact about herself to the Sea-Gals, but now is as good a time as any and she realises that her shame is dwarfed by her urge to make Maddy feel better. She wants to prove that anyone can be duped like she has been. Even so, it feels bigger than she realised to open up like this.

She tells them about her last long-term relationship, the one that put her off relationships forever. Generally, she likes to paint herself as having been single for her entire life, but that isn’t true. There was Linus, of course, but, long after him, she met Paul on an airplane between London and New York. He was an American gallery owner, suave, sophisticated and rich. They bonded over art.

He was perfect, except for the fact he was married, although he claimed he was estranged from his wife. That, like so many other facts she later found out about him, was untrue.

She’d thought he’d been joking when he’d offered to show her the sights of New York. Excited by his flattery and attention, she’d found herself naked on a hotel room bed with him two hours after landing.

She’d convinced herself that it was fate and that they had a special connection, but with hindsight, she can see that she was just living out a silly fantasy of having an international lover.

The scamming had started innocuously at first. They’d met in Paris and he’d been stressed. The bridging loan he’d needed for an art purchase had fallen through. Helga offered to help him out. He pretended to be surprised that she had money. She lived frugally enough, but told him how she’d invested her sailing prize winnings well, then she’d been left shares in her father’s business and that, along with the couple of art pieces she’d sold, had resulted in a considerable nest egg. Money didn’t bother her. It wasn’t something she either noticed or cared about. She didn’t mind paying for the hotel, or his flights, if it meant they could meet.