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dropping his trousers until, naked, he rushes whooping into the dark water. Ned and Cissy follow close behind, Cissy shrieking as she dives in. I am slower, but suddenly beside me, Claire is undressed as well. I can’t help but notice her body in the moon glow, her young breasts, the roundness of her hips. I catch a glimpse of a triangle of dark pubic hair. It happens in an instant, of course. One second she is standing beside me, the next she is in the water. A surge of desire seizes me as I watch her run. It is just Clive and I now. I pull off my trousers. “Bloody hell,” he mutters and strips too. We dive in together.
    At night the ocean always seems so much calmer. It is like a big lake, the waves barely more than ripples. The water is waist-high. Most women would be crouching in the water, concealing themselves. But not Claire. It is becoming apparent to me that she is not most women. Harry and Ned are having a splash fight, like a couple of boys. She joins in, laughing, splashing hard. It is impossible not to watch her. Clive stands off to the side, as though he were an interloper and not Claire’s lover. Then Cissy climbs on Ned’s shoulders and gracefully dives off. “I want to try that,” says Claire. But instead of climbing on Ned, or even Clive, she glides behind Harry and grabs his hands. He squats obediently under the water while she places her feet on each shoulder. He lifts her easily, and she balances for a moment, drops his hands, and throws her arms out and her head back before smoothly diving off. When she comes up, she wipes the wet hair from her face and yells, “I want to do that again!”
    Once again Harry squats, his back to her, and she confidently mounts. And again, she drops his hands and balances, but this time she wavers and falls with a splash into the water. Harry helps her up. “Careful,” he says with a laugh.
    “My favorite lifeguard,” she pronounces with a laugh and gives him a wet kiss on the cheek and a quick hug, her nipples grazing his chest. “Once again you’ve saved me from drowning.” She stands back in front of him, as if to say, Look at me. This could be yours. I can’t remember if anyone else noticed the moment. I tried to catch Ned’s or Cissy’s eye, but they were in the middle of doing another dive.
    Harry says nothing and looks away as Clive comes up.
    “Let me show you how it’s done, mate,” he says.
    Claire pulls away from him, but he squats down, saying, “Come on.”
    She climbs up without looking at him and just dives off, straight and clean. When she comes up, she says, “Can we go? I’m getting cold.”
    The moment has passed. Claire wades back out of the water, shoulders hunched forward, an arm covering her breasts, a hand in front of her loins. She looks at nobody. No one looks at anyone as we hurriedly pull our clothes over our wet bodies. Our mood is postlapsarian.
    We drive back to the house in silence. Even Cissy is quiet. When we get out, Claire and Clive hang back. It is obvious they are going to have a fight. The rest of us go inside.
    That’s not entirely true. I linger just out of sight and overhear snatches of what they say. “Don’t touch me” and “Stupid cunt” and “Why don’t you just fuck him then?”
    She comes in, crying, running past me to the kitchen. To Maddy.
    “Is everything all right?” asks Harry. I say nothing, and Clive is standing in the hallway, looking angry. He wants to follow her but knows he can’t, an unbeliever in the temple.
    Madeleine comes out. “Clive, Claire seems very upset. I know it’s late, and we’ve all had a lot to drink. But she asked if she could stay here tonight, and I told her she could.”
    Clive stares at her, unsure of what to say, of how to react. The words he wants to say fail in his throat. His will is not as strong as Maddy’s.
    She senses his frustration and puts a hand on his arm. “She’ll call you in the morning.”
    When he gets outside the house, he will find