It didn’t help that the weather was perfect today. Bright September sunshine warmed his back. The sea was like a box of spilled diamonds, almost too bright to look at. A spaniel leapt past him, its ears streaming in the wind like the hair of a beautiful girl. The surf wasn’t up to much, but there were people going in anyway. No lifeguards now until next Easter. Please God they wouldn’t wash up drowned and dead on the next tide. His feet were too hot, but it was hard to look authoritative while dangling a pair of Caterpillar boots by their laces. He strode on.

The sound of their laughter reached out to him from within the dunes – two deep throaty chuckles, one tenor, one alto. They were painting the outside of the hut a powdery blue and it was already drying in the warm lick of the wind. The paint was freckled with sand, and fat drops fell onto the billowy dunes below.

“I’m having paint remorse,” said the woman, studying the half-painted outer wall.

“You always get paint remorse,” said the man. He lay on his back, painting the underside of the tiny veranda.

“The wood looked so nice and clean,” she said. “Now I’ve ruined it. Look, it’s like a motorway road sign. What if it stays this colour when it dries?”

“Let’s see.” The man rolled out from the veranda and rose to his feet in one smooth, fluid movement that Donald envied. “It’ll be fine. See? Those dry bits? All pale and pretty.”

“But it’s all in streaks!”

“That’s how paint always dries. If it looks funny we can put another coat on.”

“Remember our flat?” said the woman. “In Barley Court? And that massive blue stripe right around the middle of the living room wall? It took us about… ”

“… fifteen coats to cover it,” he interrupted, “and we kept going back and back and back for more and more paint, and… ”

“… in the end it was like it was haunting us, nobody else could even see it, but we could still see it, and… ”

“Do you remember the flat-warming? And you drank a massive pint glass of that punch I made because we only had pint glasses, and you kept dragging people over to look at the wall and going, Can you see the blue stripe? Can you see the blue stripe? It’s still there, isn’t it? The blue stripe’s still there, and no-one could understand what you were on about.”

“I shouldn’t have left you in charge of the punch. What did you put in it?”

“All the alcohol we had, and some fruit juice. Why did we even have some of that stuff? We can’t ever have gone out and bought sherry, can we?”

“When I get to Thailand,” said the woman, “I’m going to sit in a bar on the beach for about three days, and make the barman recreate that punch for me. And I’ll tell him, ‘One day I’m coming back here with my little brother and he’s going to order one too. So you’d better get it right.’”