Jake got to his feet, his hands tightening into fists. ‘You never know when to shut the fuck up, do you?’ He threw the half-eaten bunch of grapes he was holding into the undergrowth. ‘You never know when to stop.’

‘That’s funny, bro, that’s a good one.’ Watch him go. ‘Especially coming from you.’

Ethan braced himself for the first blow.

They used to fight a lot when they were younger. Ethan had figured out how to light the fuse at a young age: niggle – provocation – anger – confrontation – scrap. Dead arms, Chinese burns, barked shins, stinging ears, pulled hair, bent fingers and bruised balls on a daily basis. Then they had both started getting bigger, almost at the same time, and a few months ago things had got a whole lot more serious without either of them realising before it was too late. They found themselves having a next-level scrap, a full-on, proper, adult-sized fist fight over – Christ, Ethan had no memory of what even caused it, over something, anyway – and it had ended with split lips and black eyes, bloodied noses and bruised knuckles, Mum screaming at them to stop and Dad running downstairs and physically pulling Jake away from him, pinning him to a wall, Jake’s eyes crazy-wide, the way they always looked when he really kicked off. Ethan had grinned at him with blood on his teeth, dizzy from punches but jubilant, ready for round two. Blood on both of them, on their clothes, on their knuckles, big fat drops of it on the cream carpet. Mum had an absolute shitfit. It was kind of hilarious.

That was the day Ethan discovered he liked the taste of blood in his mouth.

But since then there had been an unspoken truce. Each knew the kind of damage he could do to the other. Jake was taller and had a longer reach, but Ethan had strength and power on his side. Both knew that whenever they had a proper fight now, both would end up bloodied – whoever won.

‘Stand up,’ Jake said.

‘Why?’

‘Just fucking stand up and you’ll find—’

He stopped mid-sentence, staring back up the hill.

‘What?’ Ethan said, following his brother’s stare.

Lucy was walking towards them between the parallel rows of vines. Ethan sat up to get a proper look at her. She was wearing a white vest top and short cotton skirt, sunglasses on top of her head, blonde hair still damp from the beach. The white top was very white, almost dazzling in the bright sunlight, so that it was hard to look at her. She was all-right-looking, he supposed. Better than all right – she was hot. Tall, nice face, slim but with big tits, not much to fault her on, really. Way out of Jake’s league, although he didn’t seem to realise, which was pretty funny.

She walked slowly, unselfconsciously, taking her straw hat off when she reached them.

‘What’s going on?’ she said.