She sat exhausted on the shingle, teeth chattering while the foam seethed its disappointment against her feet, as if the sea were laying its eggs and hoping she would fertilise them. The shoulder straps of her dress had broken, and the bodice was around her waist, exposing the icy skin of her torso covered with shreds of seaweed. Washed from her eyes, her makeup ran in blue stains down her cheeks. Her nose and chin were smaller, shrunk by fear and the cold, and she stared at the waves tugging at the train of her dress like a child remembering a drowning at sea.

Passersby were watching us from the promenade. I covered Sally with my jacket and helped her back to the car and the silent, astounded children. Sally sank gratefully into the front seat.

“Well,” she said to the children, brushing away the flecks of seaweed. “How many lengths did I swim?”

*   *   *

Later that evening, when the children were asleep, Sally sat on the sofa among the stuffed toys, her good humour returned. During our silent drive she had slumped against the door inside my jacket, eyes fixed on the sodden dress between her feet. At the time I wondered if this had been a halfhearted suicide attempt, prompted by the glimpse of Lykiard in the deck chair, or perhaps a bravura piece of exhibitionism by which she hoped to regain the centre of the stage. But when I mentioned Lykiard she scarcely recognised his name. Her near-drowning had been nothing more than an impulsive Channel dip.

Wearing my dressing gown, she breathed the fumes rising from a tumbler of hot whisky. When I sat beside her among the stuffed toys she laid her head on my shoulder.

“Are the pixies asleep? I didn’t mean to frighten them.”

“They’re fine. They think you went for a swim.”

“I did! Until right at the end. When you reached me I was thinking what it would be like.”

“Drowning?”

“Those last moments before the end … I had the strange feeling they would go on forever.” She pulled away from me and stared hard at a stuffed toy. “I want to live my whole life like that.”

“Sally, you do…”

She opened my palm and carefully read its lines, then slipped it under the lapel of the dressing gown and placed it on her breast. Despite the hot bath her skin still smelled strongly of brine. A depraved and innocent Miranda had been washed ashore on the island of Shepperton. When I caressed her breast she smiled at me in a conspiratorial way, as if we were two lubricious children in a treehouse.

“My nipples aren’t very sensitive—probably less than yours.”