He jumped to his feet, startled by the sound of running footsteps. A man ran past him, flicked a smile in his direction and then pounded straight without pause into the sea, throwing himself forward and swimming out strongly, heading apparently for the horizon.

Pansy abandoned the seaweed and came trotting back to Lar. They both stood and watched the swimmer. After about two minutes he turned and swam back to the shore. He pelted up the beach, past Lar and the dog.

‘It’s great,’ he panted. ‘You should try it.’

The smell of frying bacon hit him when he came in the door. She was singing again – caterwauling, you might call it.

‘Der Frühling will Kommen …’

He was hungry, even after that pile of dinner he’d eaten last night.

‘Der Frühling meine Freud.’

Awful scrapy scratchy voice, he thought.

Pansy barged past him and into the kitchen.

The singing stopped.

‘Hi,’ she called out. ‘You’re just in time.’

She bent down and patted Pansy.

‘Good morning, dog. I had decided to take her for a run and then when I discovered that you’d already left, I thought I’d cook us a huge breakfast instead. Where did you go?’

‘Down to the sea. Pansy likes the sea.’

He paused for a moment and wondered whether to tell her about what had happened on the beach. Better not, he thought. Better not tell anyone that sort of thing. Anyway, maybe nothing had happened; just a man swam and ran and spoke to him.

‘The sea air cleared my head. Made me hungry.’

‘Good. Sit down.’

‘We seem to spend our lives eating.’

She laughed.

‘Punctuation marks. Commas, full stops, even semicolons. Think about it. This meal is a semicolon; your coffee with my mother yesterday a comma.’

He shook his head.

‘No,’ he said. ‘I think that was more like the end of a paragraph.’

‘Full stop, new line?’

‘Something like that.’

The food was good. He was ravenous. He ate greedily, heaping his plate with fried bread and bursting fat sausages, tomatoes and bacon. He slathered toast with butter and marmalade and drank umpteen cups of tea. He sat back at last with a huge sigh.

‘Wow,’ she said. Then they both began to laugh. He held his hands out to her across the table and they laughed and laughed, clutching at each other’s fingers as if to stop themselves falling on the floor. As suddenly as they had started, they stopped and stared at each other, bewildered.

‘I’m not allowed to laugh,’ she said when she got her breath back.

‘What was all that about?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Weird,’ she said.

Gently she disentangled her fingers from his.

‘I haven’t done that since I was a child, laughed myself almost sick for no reason.’

‘I hope it hasn’t opened up your wound.’

‘I shouldn’t think so. Joggled everything around inside me quite a bit. But that’s no harm.’

She leant forward and touched his face.

‘Are you all right?’