‘Just say it. You hate me.’ He was completely still and she had that feeling of the ominous calm in the seconds before a calamity – birds flapping from the trees before the earthquake; the sucking back of the ocean before the tsunami’s charge . . .

‘No.’ She could feel her heart clattering inside her chest, panic surging, confusing her.

‘You hide it from the others, but I can feel it. You hate me.’ He was so close now, their bodies swayed towards one another by the movement of the water. She could see the droplets on his eyelashes, the faint scar on his lip, the yellow bruises that matched hers. She could feel his heart pounding beneath his chest, as fast as hers.

‘No.’

‘You hate me.’

She couldn’t stop staring at him, staring at her. What was happening? He didn’t have a hand on her – not this time – but his gaze was on her mouth and she felt as caught as in a vice. She couldn’t step back, move away from him.

‘You hate me.’

He could see right inside her. Suddenly she knew it. She couldn’t lie to him.

She nodded slowly. ‘Yes. I hate you.’ The words fell from her lips and they were like the springs on a gate, letting the hares run, because in the next instant, she was kissing him, or he was kissing her; they had moved in complete synchronicity, with an anger, an urgency she had never known. His lips were rough, his stubble harsh against her skin. She didn’t care. She wrapped her arms around his neck to pull him closer, kiss him harder. It wasn’t enough.

She felt his hands lift her easily and she wrapped her legs around his waist, gripping him as tightly as she could. He took two, three steps to the side of the pool, pushing her back against the wall, pushing against her. She felt his mouth on her neck and shoulders as she gasped for breath. Her entire body was trembling. She wanted to scratch him, bite him, consume him.

‘I hate you,’ she whispered as she felt his fingers move her bikini bottoms to the side.

‘I know,’ he breathed, making her cry out as he began to move inside her. ‘I hate you too.’

‘Honey, we’re ho— Oh!’ Matty’s pseudo-American drawl died midstream. ‘What’s happened to you?’

Clover looked up from the end of her bed. How long had she been sitting there? She was still wrapped in her towel. Her bikini was almost dry but she couldn’t stop shivering.

‘Shit, Clo, what’s happened?’ she asked, dropping her bag as Johnny shut the door behind him.

Clover blinked back at them both. How on earth could she say it? She still couldn’t believe it herself. She couldn’t give what she’d done a sound, a shape, a body, a heft.