‘What’s your problem?’ says their leader. Bald, pointy-faced, fifty-fiveish, he – the people on the shore realise – is the father of the other two jet skiers. He has brought them with him on his jet ski replacement-penis journey, taught them from an early age how to use a jet ski as a replacement for their own penises, passed on all the jet ski penis-replacement wisdom he has learned to them, as they will in time to their own male children.

‘Our problem is that what you’re doing is DANGEROUS,’ shouts Jennifer Tomasovich the occupational therapist. ‘There are people swimming here. You are being massively antisocial.’

‘Oh, get a life, woman,’ shouts the self-appointed jet ski replacement-penis chieftain, whose name is Andrew Bannister and – even though it seems almost too depressingly predictable to be true – took early retirement last year from his job as a big city banker and still regularly snorts cocaine.

‘You mean like your life?’ shouts Jennifer Tomasovich the occupational therapist. ‘Why would anyone with any sense want that? You’re demonstrating right now that it’s obviously totally fucking soulless and self-centred.’ At this, chuckles and cheers ring out from the shore, and an energy that has been building around the strangers standing there solidifies into a powerful, vibrating bar: a warm, formidable thing. Even though the strangers have not locked hands or begun singing a song of purity and strength out to the ocean, it feels like they are doing both. It is too much for Andrew Bannister, who opens his mouth to tell them why his life is actually the best, searches down in his dry throat for the words, then further, right inside his drier heart, but cannot find those words anywhere. ‘Come on! What even are the words?’ his throat asks his heart but his heart says nothing. And while he falters, as if in response to this – almost as if the machine is part of his body after all, just as he believes – his jet ski falters too. It stalls, to the great entertainment of everyone on the beach watching.

Fin and Reuben, Andrew’s sons, look nervously now to him for the strong guidance he has always given them, in terms of what to do when you are sitting on a replacement penis. But none comes. A pebble pings off Reuben’s replacement penis.

‘What a trio of prize tools!’ shouts Sam Ludgate.