At work I passed the time by wiping a cloth over the tins and bottles without enthusiasm and flicking through The Cornishman. I idly turned the page, past news of a proposed leisure centre to be built above St Ives and an article on why the tourist industry was suffering because of sunshine on the Costa Brava, which I didn’t understand because it hadn’t rained – not enough to put off the tourists – for what felt like weeks. I turned the page and was confronted with the picture of a man I recognised.

It was the lifeguard. The one who’d dragged the young boy out of the sea at Sennen. He was standing on the beach, in black and white, and smiling broadly. There was a child beside him. It was a boy. They held hands, raised above their heads like boxers at the end of a fight. Of course. The boy was the child who’d nearly drowned. I had a flash of his face, lifeless, sand stuck to his blueish skin. Body like a rag doll. If it wasn’t for the man standing beside him who battled fatigue and fear and the pressure of a gathered crowd to literally breathe life back into him, he’d be shut in a drawer in the morgue. I touched my fingers to the lifeguard’s face. A hero. Just like my dad. Yet, unlike my dad, alive to pose for a newspaper photograph.

I closed the paper and looked up at the clock. Midday. Or near enough. I whipped off my navy-and-white striped apron and hung it on a peg in the storeroom.

‘Bye, Ted.’

‘See you Saturday!’ he called as I ran from the shop, the little bell tinkling as the door opened and closed. ‘Say hello to—’

I didn’t wait to hear the end of his sentence.

The wind was up. It was blustery but sunny, and the smell of the sea was strong. I half-ran along the path, my heart pounding with adrenalin. If I could have sprinted the whole way I would have done. I was desperate to get there, to see Edie, to make sure everything between us was all right. I was feeling brighter though. Perhaps it was seeing the little boy smiling happily in the paper, alive and well, and proud as punch to have a story to tell. I was certain that things were going to be fine. The nearer I got to the house, the stronger I felt, until – and it is no exaggeration to say – I was feeling quite buoyant.