‘Yeah. He’s cagey as hell.’ Mia’s sigh whistled down the line. ‘Brace yourself, Clo – it probably won’t ever happen.’

Clover swallowed. ‘I’m doing my best. If I can get that answer for you, I will.’

There was a silence, only the sound of the crashing waves between them; Mia’s voice, when it came back down the line, subdued. ‘Well, that would be . . . that would be the final thing to give us peace. And knowing that man as I do, he’s probably made the fatal error of underestimating you . . .’ A commotion in the background made her voice fade out momentarily. She sighed again, back in mummy mode. ‘Clo, I’ve gotta go. Taylor’s been stung by a jelly.’

‘Ouch. Give him a kiss for me. Speak soon – and send me photos!’

‘Sending now!’

They hung up. Clover looked back at the drop-in queue, waiting for the next rider to set off, but he was twisted back and talking to someone. The person behind was showing him something on their phone.

Her own buzzed with an incoming text and she clicked on it, her face breaking into a grin as she looked at Mia’s newly restored, newly gifted home. A shiny glass cube it was not. In fact, it didn’t look so very different to what had been there before. Had there been planning restrictions in place? She supposed it was a landmark plot. It had the same cottage feel as before, with the wraparound porch and louvre contrast shutters; the only difference was there were dormer windows in the roof, suggesting upstairs bedrooms now. She looked closer, smiling as she saw the familiar Allbright mess: skateboards on the grass, surfboards on trestles mid-wax. Towels and wet swimmers everywhere . . .

A sudden shout made her look up in alarm. Someone had thrown his board down the pipe and she blankly watched it slide up and down the walls in a slowing pendulum.

Huh?

She looked around. Everyone was looking at their phones. Kit was standing in front of Tipper, who was talking on the phone to someone, a hand on his head as if to keep his hat from blowing away. But he wasn’t wearing a hat . . .

She looked up and down. Some people were getting upset. There was swearing. Everyone . . .

‘Hey, what’s going on?’ she called over to the teenagers nearest her. But they didn’t hear her. They were huddled over a phone, listening to something too. ‘Hey!’

A boarder, maybe sixteen, seventeen, with blonde dreads and a gold tooth, looked back at her in surprise.

‘Sorry,’ she smiled. ‘Don’t mean to be rude. But what’s going on?’

The boy leaned towards her, one hand in the snow. ‘There’s reports that Mikey Schultz has had an accident in training in Italy.’

She stared at him. ‘Mikey?’

‘Yeah. The American. Olympic team.’

‘. . . Is it bad?’