Now he was sitting he saw that there were tiny skeletons on the sand. He had not noticed them when he was walking. This, for example, the shell and claws of a crab, perfectly dry, perfectly white, the whole carapace smaller than his thumbnail. Was the sand made of such things? Were they walking on a million bones? A million million ground small by the sea?

He got the boots off and rolled up his trousers. Emily had already set off and was three, four yards ahead of him. He followed her, wading through shallow water that breathed and sucked between his toes. He was walking in her wake and sometimes felt the print of her feet beneath the soles of his own. She was talking; her words flew past her shoulders like scraps of paper in a paper chase. Something about hatboxes? Then her words came differently and he realised she had started to sing. He was not close enough to pick up the tune so he started his own song: “Blow the wind southerly, southerly southerly! Blow the wind southerly . . . ”

He wished the beach was miles long, wished he could sing and walk behind her until the moon rose like a petal and he was cured by something as simple as beauty, but when she came again to the spot where they had first arrived at the edge of the sea she stopped and waited for him.

“We shall have to dry our feet,” she said, stepping out of the water on to the sand. “Do you suppose the sand itself might dry them?”

“If we ran about?” he asked. But it was too hot for running. He considered offering her the use of his stockings but she sat on the sand and began to dab away with her own. He sat nearby, took off his hat and wiped his brow.

“You are very free,” he said.

“Free?” She stopped wiping the sand from her toes. She stared at him through the green glass that now, through some trick of the light, had become entirely opaque.

“I mean . . . this . . . your manner . . . ”