The sea of his new home beach had innumerable moods. Rusty anger. Muscular calm. Pungent clarity. Weedy broth. Blue fog. Stubborn debris trickster. When did one sea clock off from its shift and the other sea come in and take its place? You never witnessed that moment because that was not permitted because if you did that would unlock everything: the big secret to it all. He knew the sea was irascible, not to be trusted but, as its resident, he inevitably began to get his feet further under the table, as residents do. One day, doing front crawl seventy yards out, he realised that his intended movement, back towards shore, was going the opposite of to plan and, worse, that he was on an inexorable downward trajectory. It was all very befuddling, because nothing around him looked particularly vigorous or wretched, and, in his disorientation, he only got the chance to cry out twice before he was completely submerged, garbled protests in a futile language spoken by only one man. His next close-to-conscious realisation was that he was in Heaven and God was looking down on him. Because Heaven would always customise itself aptly to the manner in which you’d died, Heaven in this instance was made of shingle and raucous white birds, but God had a beard, as God always had, no matter what the cause of your death was.

‘I thought you were a goner there, kiddo,’ said God, who he now realised was not God at all, but the old man from the hut.

*

‘You were in a riptide. The thing to do in a riptide is to swim parallel to the shore. You swam towards the shore, which is the worst thing you can do.’

They sat on old canvas chairs on the old man’s creaking, salty veranda and ate mackerel and potatoes, which the man salted liberally, in accordance with their environment. ‘How’s your head now?’ the old man asked.

‘Sore,’ he replied. He had hit the back of it on some rocks close to where he’d gone under, but in the end the impact had also saved his life since it was the sight of him bumping against the rocks that had alerted the old man to his plight, and allowed the old man to swim out quickly, and drag him clear, around the corner of the current, and back to shore.

‘I used to do it for the county. Swim. I was pretty good, could have been better, if I’d put the effort in. I had the chance to go to the Olympics. Belgium. I was too busy falling in love. I rarely have cause to swim like that any more, but I’ve watched six people die in my life and I didn’t much relish adding to that total.’