‘Didn’t I tell you?’ he says. ‘They’re dogs with a bone. Nothing puts these guys off. Bother them with the truth, and they still don’t believe you.’

McFaul leaves shortly afterwards, limping away across the pebbles. The letter I read in the boat appears to have drained some of the anger he’s had since his release on bail, and he even half-nods at my suggestion that I might buy him a drink or two before I go back to London. Now, I’m sitting on the pebbles, minding Sylvester’s clothes while he swims along the line of buoys. Earlier, I’d found it difficult to believe that I was looking at an extreme athlete, but watching him churning up and down, eating up kilometre after kilometre, there’s no doubting his fitness.

He joins me more than an hour later. He’s wearing those little Speedo trunks that certain kinds of Frenchmen adore and his physique, to say the least, is impressive. He dries his hair and then spreads the towel on the warm stones.

‘I used to come here as a kid,’ he says. ‘Even then I was sitting on the bones of my arse. When God invented sand, he forgot about Budleigh.’

He’s right about the stones. They’re unforgiving. When I ask him about coming here as a kid, he says his dad used to rent a place for a month in the summer. Only in the past ten years has Bill lived in the town permanently.

‘You like it down here?’

‘I love it.’

‘So why do you do all this triathlon stuff?’

‘Because it keeps me sane. I get bored easily. Just ask my pa. I need a challenge. Dreaming up ways of earning a living’s good for starters, but once you’re on a roll, like recently, you realize there has to be something else. Success is great but it’s easy to repeat yourself. Ask the hardest questions. Always.’

‘Of whom?’

‘Yourself.’ He’s been lying full length, trying to get comfortable, letting the sun dry his chest and legs. Now his eyes open. ‘You know who I last said that to?’

‘Tell me.’

‘Your son.’

‘And?’

‘I think he understood. At least he said he did. It was Friday, just a couple of days ago. He’d come back from a meet on the south coast and we got together at that apartment of yours. I’m living at a hotel at the moment, and Holland Park’s perfect for a quick ten miler so I brought my kit along. He’s a quick study, your boy. Tell him once …’ He taps his head. ‘And it’s there.’