‘Camilla, I’d like to stay here tonight. In this room.’

She shrugged again. ‘Do what you like,’ she said. ‘I’m going for a swim.’

‘A swim? At this time?’

‘Why not? The water’s still warm.’

She gathered her things together, towels, cosmetics, assorted items of clothing, much more, it seemed to me than she could possibly need – but then I didn’t know much about swimming. The goggles and flippers seemed fair enough, but the real question I wanted to ask about those was who’d bought them for her. I threw myself on the bed and watched her. ‘Don’t go,’ I desperately wanted to say. ‘Be careful,’ I would have liked to warn her. But I was in an enfeebled state. I couldn’t trust myself to say anything. So it fell to her to deliver our last words for us. ‘See you,’ she said, just before she left. And this was such an advance, in tenderness, over any other thing she’d said to me since we’d returned from London and Stonehenge, that I broke up completely.

[3]

I knew something was wrong the minute I opened my eyes. It was light outside; I was in a bed, not a sleeping bag; and Camilla was not back.

I called out several times on the off-chance that she had decided to sleep downstairs since I was sleeping up, but there was no answer. I looked through the window and saw that the Cortina was not in the path. I threw on my clothes and ran into the street. I thumbed a lift from the milkman. ‘True September,’ he said. ‘Mild and muggy.’ My advice to anyone in a hurry is not to accept a lift from a milkman. I arrived at the harbour approaches at last and ran to where the fishermen and a few other privileged souls were allowed to keep their cars. Camilla’s car was there. There was no way that I could have known that it stood as she had parked it the night before, prior to diving from the highest rock and striking out for the Mazzard, but I knew it all the same.

The tide was in and most of the fishermen were out. Much as I hated giving them the satisfaction of witnessing my distress, I asked the few who were back whether they’d seen Camilla. They welcomed the opportunity to tell me which boats Camilla was most likely at any time to be found fishing from, but they also told me that she wasn’t to be found fishing from any of them this morning. It had been too early a start for her. ‘Camilla’s not what you’d call an early riser, boy,’ one of them dared to inform me. And they were all absolutely certain – since there were no secrets between fishermen, especially where Camilla was concerned – that no boat from Castle Boterel had taken her out this day.