J When he goes to the pump to fetch water, I worry he’s never coming back

S I should have been a marine biologist. So near the sea, its pull becomes irresistible

J He sits for hours staring into the horizon. Let me in, for a change

S Did you know that only 1 per cent of the ocean floor has been explored? I’m longing to disappear in a deep-sea submersible

J Lovely, I reply, a nice little cabin for us with a king-sized bed, a bottle of Moet et Chandon and an audience of perverted, voyeuristic fish

S What’s for bloody dinner!

The Crying Mountain

It was the end of summer, the campsite all but deserted. That evening the sea had been like bark, and the air glutinous with the humidity that precedes a storm. The sky was portentous with thundercloud and the guttural squalls of seagulls. Inside the caravan, Jessie and Stanley had made a frantic, sticky love, more impelled by the desire to relieve the pressure drumming inside their heads than by a carnal, craven passion.

It had been raining for days, the worst rainfall in twenty-five years along the coast; the roads were waterlogged and hazardous. When the mother of all storms finally exploded, the River Fuengirola burst its banks, erupting out of the mountainside in a thunderous explosion, sending vehicles head over heels, flattening houses, uprooting trees, claiming several lives and (as the final obstacle in its flight path) sweeping up the campsite and carrying it forth to sea in its terrible, unstoppable arms.

The thundercrack awoke Jessie and Stanley, and immediately afterwards the caravan was lifted up in the full blast of breakneck rapids and hurled over the road, where it ended up smashed into a tree. Where the sink had been, the gnarled tentacles of branches reached in to grab the occupants. They held on tightly to each other, barely conscious and barely breathing, as the river and rain washed over them, pounding the windows on each side of the bed. But, thankfully, the caravan did not collapse on them.

They prayed to a god both had abandoned long ago that they would not be carried away.

The Civil Protection Service arrived shortly thereafter and they were driven to hospital to be treated for bruises and shock, before being taken to emergency accommodation at Hotel Enriqueta in Marbella.

The next day they were able to survey the damage. Matilda, they were told, had been drifting out to sea until the tide decided to bring her back. Although the car was now looking decidedly forlorn and muddy on the beach, it was remarkably undamaged. But the garage mechanic told them it would suffer from salt erosion in the future.

The caravan, he confirmed, was a write-off.

Seeing Red in Orange Square, Marbella