Sometimes, if the sun was too strong and the tides were favourable, we stayed in the village and went swimming in the harbour – that’s to say Camilla went swimming in the harbour while I paced the walls and jetties with a book and watched her disappear. What ever else she had been able to lure me into learning Camilla had not yet got me into the water. I had to dig my heels in over something, If I was to remain recognizable to myself, so I dug my heels in – I wouldn’t know if the metaphor is mixed – over that. She was a strong swimmer herself, capable of diving from any height and holding her own against the most wayward currents, but she had never yet made it out to the Mazzard, the black rock that loured in all weathers at a tantalizing distance from the harbour mouth and was named after its uncanny resemblance to a skull. ‘I could do it if I had flippers and goggles,’ she assured me. ‘When you next feel like buying me a present, buy me those.’ But I never did. When she finally got them they were from someone else. ‘I’ll get there yet,’ she promised herself meanwhile, breathing heavily from her last effort, dripping water on my book, while I seethed with jealousy of the black rock that was more challenging and less attainable than me.