The beachcombing machine nudged the hydrofoil forward into the water. “Look, I have something to confess here-”

“That’s enough.” She smiled briefly at the beachcomber. “Thank you.” She switched the boat’s main lights on, creating a glittering pathway which swung across the waves.

“Wait! Will you just wait?”

Something in the machine’s voice made her turn to look at it.

A section of the beachcomber’s battered front casing swung up and back to reveal a red-glowing interior bright with screens and read-outs. Sharrow frowned; her hand went to her jacket pocket as a man’s head and shoulders appeared from the compartment.

He was young, muscular-looking in a dark T-shirt, and quite bald; the red light threw dark shadows across his face and over eyes which looked gold in the half-light. The skin on his smoothly reflecting head looked coppery.

“We have to-” he began, and she heard both the mechanised voice of the beachcomber and the man’s own voice.

He plucked a tiny bead from his top lip.

“We have to talk,” he said. There was a slick bassiness about his voice Sharrow knew she’d have found immensely attractive when she’d been younger.

“Who the hell are you?” she said, flicking a couple of switches in the hydrofoil’s cockpit without taking her eyes off him, or her other hand from the gun in her pocket.

“Somebody who needs to talk to you,” the young man said, baring his teeth in a winning smile. He gestured down at the casing of the beachcombing machine. “Sorry about the disguise,” he said with a slightly embarrassed, deprecating gesture. “But it was felt-”

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “No; I don’t want to talk to you. Goodbye.”

She tugged the controls, sending the hydrofoil nudging round on a pulse of foam, swamping the front of the beachcomber; water splashed over the hatch’s lip into the machine’s interior.

“Careful!” the young man shouted, leaping back and glancing down. “But, Lady Sharrow!” he called desperately. “I have something to put to you-”