The string tugged at her fingers, skin pulling. Her eyes stung as she tried to see the kite against the sun, sand hot against the soles of her feet, head filled with the thunder of surfable waves.

He looked different, she thought, as he walked up the beach. Another twenty degrees, no woolly jumper, a tan. But what do you say to someone when you meet in the wrong place?

After he’d left, she couldn’t remember her words, nor his.