Behind the couple, the plastic palm swayed in the wind and the girl, laughing and screaming, jumped into the water again and again. I watched her and indulged in a secret protest against my neighbours’ lethargy.

The sun rose and set. Nothing changed, only my agitation grew. I decided to observe them even more closely to calm my unease, as if I no longer had a life of my own but lived only through them. At night, every now and then, there was a sound of crying, like the whimpering of a child. It was carried by the wind from the direction of their house, then faded away, only to be heard again when I had stopped thinking about it. The sound was soft and unobtrusive, but loud enough to interrupt any conversation I might be having with a guest, who, from that moment, would listen intently for that strange noise.

I didn’t want to talk about it and I couldn’t explain it, so I would leave the room under some pretext or other every time the sound started. Either that or I would noisily rearrange the glasses to cover this whimpering.

Every once in a while, my neighbours also had a visitor. A young man lay with them on the jetty. There was a hustle and bustle the night before as they set up a third deckchair. Then the man swept the jetty with a broom while the woman settled herself and lay still just as she always did. The man spent hours scything the reeds that had grown up between the boards. After that, he stepped down into the water and swept the bed below the surface, then climbed back out and disappeared. After a time he returned with a rake and went into the water again and gently raked the reeds, carefully rearranging anything the wind might have tangled.