“Fine.”

“You’ve gone very red.”

Donald took a deep breath.

“So if Alicia’s free tomorrow,” said George, “she can come down if she likes. Rebuilding the hut shouldn’t take long. And then she can give me a hand with… ”

“No, I don’t think so,” said Donald. “I’ll see you later, George.”

“I’m busy later. Come and have a look at this, it’s really interesting.”

“George,” said Donald very loudly. “I’m leaving now. I’ll see you the next time you come in for a drink. Goodbye.”

“Bye, then,” said George, and picked up his steel tape measure.

It was just before six o’clock when the camper van rolled back into the car park. The windows were down. Irritating music thumped out. They tumbled out of the van, wrapped up and laughing. Alicia was wearing a beanie hat he hadn’t seen before and a pair of mismatched gloves. Did they know he was watching? Did they care?

Donald stood quietly in the shadow of the bus shelter and waited. Alicia took off her hat and shook her hair loose as she ran. It was clotted with seawater. Had she been swimming again? Which beach had they been to? She looked like a different person disguised in Alicia’s skin, and as he stared at her it occurred to him that this was because there was a kind of wild joy in her face and her body, in her bright eyes and reckless movements, that he’d never seen before.

Mike must have been watching too. A familiar figure waved from the door of the pub. When he looked back at Alicia, she was once again the girl he knew, his quiet and slightly withdrawn daughter, contained and wary, mysterious and beloved. Her pace slowed and she folded the hat carefully into her coat pocket.

What would he do if she ran away with them?

Ava was stretching in the twilight, fingers reaching for the sky. A bulky coat hid the shape of her and she shivered and pulled it close. No wonder, swimming on a day like today. Was she pale and smooth like she was in his dreams? Was her skin chilly beneath the coat, or warm? The thought provoked a kind of treacherous tenderness, a weakness that crept through his stomach and outwards, threatening to turn him soft and feeble. He gritted his teeth and forced himself to picture her goose-pimpled and drowned and ugly, to remember that she was flouting the law and had spent her morning skilfully evading justice. She lowered her arms again, stamped her feet a few times, then walked towards the toilet-block.

Finn stuck his hands in his pockets, wandering aimlessly about in the way men did while waiting for women. Donald forced himself to wait too, for the right moment. The moment when Finn would be behind the van, screened from Ava’s view. Waiting was hard, but it came with the territory. If you couldn’t be patient, you couldn’t do the job. The moment might come, or it might not. Sometimes you got lucky. Sometimes you didn’t. Finn whistled and muttered, scuffling at a stone with an ancient work-boot. Donald breathed in, then out, in, then out. Finn moved behind the van.