‘Chemistry,’ she said with surprising tenderness when she resurfaced. ‘You know it’ll be great even before you’ve done the doings. Then you look at the package and decide if you’re prepared to buy into it. ‘Course when you’re younger you go for the package first and hope for the chemistry. Wait a minute, I think I’ve just swallowed one of your baked beans. It definitely wasn’t mine. Anyroad, chemistry. When you get to my age, there’s no does he or doesn’t he. You just know.’

‘Maybe you can teach me something.’ I patted my lap, felt the warm squoodge of her buttocks strain my legs.

‘Plural, actually,’ she whispered in my ear, sending a shiver down my spine. ‘If I didn’t have a trick or two up my sleeve, I should be shot.’

‘So long as I’m doing the shooting, that’s all right.’

‘I’m sure you’ve had lots of target practice, Action Man.’

‘Yes, no, I mean, I have to tell you. I’m not very, well, like Don Juan or anything, well, I mean, like, thingy Travolta, or that, I’m not …’

I wanted to kick myself under the table. What an imbecile!

‘What a sweetheart!’ She pinched my cheeks, stroked my prickly overnight stubble. ‘If you’ve not been up to the job so far, it’s because your little girlfriends haven’t been up to you. I’m here now.’

She wriggled like a coquette on my lap, making me rise. Jesus Christ, she was clenching me between her powerful cheeks.

I closed my eyes. When did I last sleep with a woman? My father was alive, so it was well over a year ago. Question: What happened after periods of abstinence? Answer: Premature ejac … I’d stain my trouse … Damn!

I quickly threw a bucket of cold water on the conversation.

‘Tell me, Jessie, why not fly to Spain or Australia or wherever? It’s quicker, safer, more … sensible.’ I sounded ridiculously interrogative.

‘Am I hearing this?’

She sprang up, causing the crockery to shudder and almost sending me into a back flip.

‘Come on, young man, let’s deal with the elements. That’s what we’re here for – the air!’

She ran along the esplanade, laughing like a mad woman, and down the vertiginous concrete steps to the wide, empty beach in front of us. I hurried after her, trying to find sure footing on the slippery pebbles as she made for the promenade in the distance. She was behaving as I had always wanted to: charging along a beach like a child and whooping with joy, instead of shuffling along and worrying what people would think if I did.