‘Nothing between here and the Urals. That’s where the wind comes from. Nothing to stop it. Straight across all those countries.’ Cold enough to freeze your knob off, he might have added in other circumstances.

‘Oorals,’ she repeated. As he caught the accent, he looked up at her. A broad face, streaked hair, chunky body, and not doing any waitressy number in hope of a bigger tip. Must be one of those Eastern Europeans who were all over the country nowadays. Building trade, pubs and restaurants, fruit picking. Came over here in vans and coaches, lived in rabbit warrens, made themselves a bit of money. Some stayed, some went home. Vernon didn’t mind one way or the other. That’s what he found more often than not these days: he didn’t mind one way or the other.

‘Are you from one of them?’

‘One of what?’

‘One of those countries. Between here and the Urals.’

‘Oorals. Yes, perhaps.’

That was an odd answer, he thought. Or maybe her sense of geography wasn’t so strong.

‘Fancy a swim?’

‘A swim?’

‘Yes, you know. Swim. Splash splash, front crawl, breast stroke.’

‘No swim.’

‘Fine,’ he said. He hadn’t meant it anyway. ‘Bill, please.’

As he waited, he looked back across the concrete to the damp shingle. A beach hut had recently sold for twenty grand. Or was it thirty? Somewhere down on the south coast. Spiralling house prices, the market going mad: that’s what the papers said. Not that it touched this part of the country, or the property he dealt in. The market had bottomed out here long ago, the graph as horizontal as the sea. Old people died, you sold their flats and houses to people who in their turn would get old in them and then die. That was a lot of his trade. The town wasn’t fashionable, never had been: Londoners carried on up the A12 to somewhere pricier. Fine by him. He’d lived in London all his life until the divorce. Now he had a quiet job, a rented flat, and saw the kids every other weekend. When they got older, they’d probably be bored with this place and start acting the little snobs. But for the moment they liked the sea, throwing pebbles into it, eating chips.