It was after I’d gone thirty yards or so and was circling back towards land that I saw the ‘monster’. Actually, it was only a smallish snake swimming along the top of the water, but coming literally face-to-face, eyeball-to-eyeball, with such a creature is quite as terrifying as meeting a monster. I let out a yelp and the snake slithered away so fast that afterwards I wondered whether I had simply imagined it.

Feeling shaken, I started to swim back towards the shore. Just a few seconds later I felt something brush against my leg. Not the snake – something bigger and rougher-textured. I yelped again and swam away from the area as fast as I could. My heart was beating so fiercely in my chest that it was hard to catch my breath. What on earth could it have been? A fish, or an otter, perhaps? No, it felt solid, larger than that. It couldn’t have been a log, because this was clear water, not close to any land. Anyway, a log would float, wouldn’t it?

Whatever it was, I didn’t fancy bumping into it again. By the time I’d dried off and changed, Kit and Jimmy were back.

‘Anyone else want to have a go in Robin?’ he asked. ‘What about you next, Molly? Come on, she’s a sweet little thing. You’ll love her.’

‘What about Jimmy?’

‘You’ll keep an eye on him, won’t you?’

I looked at Robert and his friends, now out of the lake and sitting around wrapped in towels. They murmured their agreement, although none of them met my eyes, and of course it didn’t occur to me until much later that Robert might have been jealous of Kit.

‘He mustn’t go in the water, though. It’s too deep. Promise me, Jimmy?’

He nodded. Even so, I dithered for a long moment: my conscience told me I should stay with my brother, but the temptation of going with Kit was too great.

‘C’mon, Molly. He’ll be all right for a little while,’ Kit said. I succumbed to selfishness. Why shouldn’t I have a bit of fun?

‘She’s so light to row,’ he said. ‘Why don’t you have a go?’

Rowing must be like riding a bicycle: once you’ve learned, you never forget. I was surprised to find it so easy – in fact, easier than before, because the lightweight boat seemed to skim across the surface of the water like those insects Kit called ‘water boatmen’. It was harder to keep it in a straight line than the big wooden boat, but I got the hang of it soon enough; you just had to keep an even, equal stroke on both sides.

‘Where do you want to go?’

‘The Retreat,’ Kit said. ‘Let’s check out the summer house.’

‘Will Jimmy be all right, do you think?’

‘We’ll only be gone twenty minutes.’