Irene bent down and picked up a flat stone, tried to skim it over the choppy water, but it disappeared after one short jump. Adrian had always been good at skimming; it’s a man’s thing, he used to say, only half ironic. Clem and Sasha would stand beside him as he crouched down low and aimed his stone far out, away from the riffle of the waves to where it would bounce over the water while they cried out in admiration. Skimming stones, mysterious rock pools where anemones swayed and seaweed curled their miniature fronds, tepid fish and chips for supper, ice cream cones with a flake on top, rolling up trousers to paddle in the surf, tar on the rocks, sandcastles that crumbled with the tide, shells and stones that gleamed in the water but looked dull and ordinary when you got them home, French cricket, occasional transparent jellyfish just under the surface, swimsuits full of sand, the bleached skeletons of strange creatures … There are certain things, when you are married and have children, that you do not do alone: you don’t eat out by yourself in restaurants; you don’t go on your own to the theatre; you don’t go to the seaside without your family.

A large raindrop landed on her cheek, then another. She pulled her jacket closer around her and walked briskly along the water’s edge, back towards the car. The rain gathered strength, started pouring down, needling little holes into the wet sand. She climbed in, took off her wet jacket, turned on the ignition and the windscreen wipers. The blades cleared an intermittent semicircle of clear glass through which she caught glimpses of the grey and bucking sea. For a minute, Irene thought of turning round and heading back home again; of climbing into her bed, under the clean sheets, closing her eyes and waiting for her family to return.

She was in France before five, English time. She adjusted her watch forwards one hour. The rain had stopped and the sky was full of dark clouds over layers of lighter grey and streaks of watery blue. By a quarter to six, she was through customs and tensely negotiating the roundabouts and the queues of vast trucks, crouched over the wheel and remembering to drive on the right. At the first garage she pulled over, filled up with petrol and bought a spiral-bound road atlas. A few hundred metres further on, she stopped at an undistinguished supermarket and bought a small baguette, a circle of Camembert that felt soft in the middle, two tomatoes, a bottle of sparkling water and a packet of boiled sweets. She’d had nothing to eat since the raspberries that morning, and she felt tired and jittery with hunger.