‘Mine is bigger than yours!’

‘Longer, maybe.’

Tom, taller and stronger, soon wrests the nozzle from him; the spray is turned back into his own face, point-blank. The coldness of the water – a deep earth-cold – gives only temporary reprieve from the sticky heat. They lie in soaked clothes, on wet grass, sweating. The night is dead calm; no air movement cools their skins.

‘Sure you don’t want a drink?’

Tom’s words remind Kenny there is work to be done, evidence to be disposed of. He pushes himself to his feet, walks back beneath the house and gropes inside the car between lightning flashes. The brandy bottle is still half full, to be watered down and replaced in the liquor cabinet. The moulded glass bottle of sparkling wine – Pineapple Pearl – is empty; its absence from his parents’ fridge still seems a gamble worth taking. He checks the ashtray. Of course it has not been emptied; he empties it himself. The picnic rug on the back seat is briefly illuminated. He bundles it up, steps back onto the lawn, and shakes out the gritty beach sand over his wet friend.

‘Do you mind?’ Tom says.

‘What are you complaining about? You’ve been rolling around in the sand with Debbie all night.’

‘Jealousy’s a curse, Kenny.’

Is he jealous, Kenny wonders? If so, jealous of whom? Of Tom for beating him to the pleasures of Debbie, or of Debbie for intruding on a boys’ night out?

Tom rambles drunkenly on, beyond nuances. ‘I thought you were never going to leave us. I thought you were going to hang around and watch.’

‘Who needed to watch? I could hear everything half a mile up the beach.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘The noise she was making. What were you doing to her?’

‘How could she make any noise? Her mouth was full.’

Kenny almost chokes himself with laughter; Tom can always make him laugh. He flings the rug into the air above his friend; it seems to hang there, a parachute canopy, momentarily suspended, floating on the viscid air, before settling.

‘Fold that up. Please.’ He strips off his wet shirt, slings it over the clothesline, then climbs the steps up into the house. The slatted metal louvres that form the outside walls of each room have been cranked wide open, but no breeze yet enters. He switches the big overhead fan to maximum notch, the heavy air begins to stir. He is searching the fridge when Tom appears in the door with a roughly bundled picnic rug under his arm.

‘Anything cold?’

‘Butter,’ Kenny tells him. ‘Eggs.’

‘Very funny. Anything to drink?’

‘Milk.’

Tom topples theatrically backwards onto the sofa, as if shot. ‘What I need is a swim,’ he announces.

The lightning flicker, on cue, might have been a warning sent from Kenny’s parents. ‘Swim in the bathtub,’ he tells his friend. ‘The car stays where it is.’

‘We could break into the pool.’

‘How do we get there? Transporter beam?’