‘Kate!’ he calls out again, but it’s too late. She’s already diving through the air like a swallow and coming up from the cold depths beside him.

‘Your turn,’ she says.

‘No way.’ He kisses her with relief, glancing at her head as if checking for damage. ‘You alright?’

‘I’m fine.’ She’s never been afraid of heights, not since her mum encouraged her to leap off the harbour wall in Mousehole, a village further down the Cornish coast. They were on holiday, just the two of them, and she can’t have been older than six. The local boys were impressed – she’d pencil-jumped from the highest point. No wetsuit either. She was terrified, but she’s loved it ever since. The thrill of the jump.

Back on the beach, they warm themselves in the strengthening sun, drink coffee from a new ‘smart’ flask that Rob is testing – he works in tech, loves his gadgets – and talk. Their clothes are back on as a man with binoculars has appeared on the skyline behind them. Apparently, the beach will be busy with nudists later, and Rob doesn’t think this man is a birdwatcher.

‘You really are getting well, aren’t you?’ Rob says, pushing a comma of wet hair off his forehead. ‘I mean properly well.’

‘We’ll see,’ she says. ‘After all this excitement, I might need a lie down.’

‘But you’re feeling stronger?’ he continues.

‘Sure.’ She smiles. ‘Thanks to you.’

‘I’m not here enough to take any credit.’

Rob only comes down from London at weekends, and not every weekend, but he’s the best thing that could have happened to Kate. In five short months, he has turned her life around. He’s let her stay in his extraordinary house in Cornwall, spoilt her beyond her wildest dreams, and nurtured her damaged body and soul back to health.

‘I just wish I was able to paint again.’ She sighs.

‘It’ll come back,’ he says. ‘I promise.’

In recent days, she’s been trying to capture Stretch on canvas, but painting portraits of people, her first love, is still beyond her.

‘The thought of never asking anyone to sit for me again…’ she says, her words tailing off. ‘It scares the pants off me.’

He glances up, perhaps wondering if that’s a cue for another race down to the sea, but she hasn’t got the energy. Maybe she’s not as well as she thinks.

‘Does anything else scare you?’ he asks.

‘Hospitals,’ she says, shuddering at the memory. She has tried so hard to forget the tubes, the breathing apparatus, the sense of helplessness after the accident, when she was lying in intensive care.

‘Hey, it’s where we met.’ He smiles.

‘That was different. I was on a ward by then.’ And he was on a tour of the hospital, encouraging patients to visit an exhibition he’d organised in the main reception area.