'Do you want to stop walking now?' Ross asked. They had been walking for some time along the beach. The day hadn't been warm enough for bikinis, much to Ross's disappointment, but they had been walking barefoot along the edge of the water. Emily seemed to have boundless energy, but Ross didn't.

'Oh, sorry, are you tired?' Emily asked, taking his hand.

'I wouldn't mind stopping for a drink, maybe something to eat,' he said truthfully.

'Well, let's do that then,' Emily said, turning away from the sea and leading the way up from the beach. She couldn't resist a backward glance at the ocean, and Ross realised that she didn't really want to leave it yet. She had enthused about the beach, the sand and everything and he had been shocked to learn that the only beach she'd been on before had only had pebbles.

'You've never had a sandcastle?' he had asked, in amazement.

'No,' she'd replied. She'd missed so much. So they had spent an hour making a sandcastle by way of interruption to their journey on the beach. They had asked some children very nicely for a loan of their model shapes, so that the castle walls could have starfish and shell motifs. Pleased with their production, they had taken photographs of it for later. Emily was having a wonderful time.

Not wanting her to lose any more time than she had to, Ross said,

'Why don't you sit on the beach here, I'll bring us both back something to eat and drink.'

'I can't let you go on your own,' Emily said, but there was a tone in her voice that suggested that she really wanted to stay where she was.

'Yes you can. It won't take me long,' Ross instructed.

Leaving Emily on the beach, he went to a café to order some take away coffees.

'Strong, really strong,' instructed a familiar voice in front of him.

'Chandler!' yelped Ross.

'Ross!' Chandler spun round to see him.

'What are you doing here?' they asked simultaneously, and then looked over each other's shoulder for the missing woman, not seeing her. 'Chandler, how did you get here?' Ross demanded.

'Well I've often been puzzled myself over that question, but amazingly one day mom and dad got together – ' he broke off at Ross's irritated looked. 'There was a good deal on flights in the paper and I wanted to get away from everything with Monica, so I booked one.'

'So did I,' wailed Ross. 'I saw an ad in the paper – it was the paper you left behind in fact. I just wanted to do something special, to get away.' The two men looked at each other aghast. Ross had to be prompted by the server several times before he remembered to give his order. 'N-not that I'm not happy to see you, but, this is supposed to be Valentine's Day and – '

'Yeah, well that was my idea too. It was supposed to be just for us, just this one day. Now I suppose we'll have to get together.' Chandler didn't sound very happy about it.

'It'll be good, yeah,' Ross said, sounding doleful.

'I mean we're friends, after all,' Chandler said. There were something friends definitely didn't do together. He looked at Ross speculatively. 'Well, why can't we pretend nothing's happened?'

'Huh?'

'We can go back – you go back to Emily, I'll go back to Monica, and we'll pretend we never saw each other. Problem solved.'

'It doesn't work like that, not with us,' Ross moaned. 'You wait and see, something will happen. Probably right now, Monica is out there on the beach and she'll have met Emily and they'll be talking when I get back.'

'Well Monica's not on the beach. We were planning to go though,' Chandler said. 'If we can just avoid each other for the next day and half it will work. For example, if you've been on the beach all morning, you'll probably want to go half an hour. So you go, and then I bring Monica here, and we spend the afternoon here while you go – somewhere else.'

'You think that will work?' Ross asked doubtfully.

'Well, I've got an itinerary, and I can tell you that we'll be sticking to it,' Chandler said, pulling a list out of his pocket and showing Ross. It was a list made in Monica's precises handwriting. Ross pulled out his own list. 'See if you change around that – '

'Hey, why should I be the one to change?' Ross asked indignantly. 'You should change. I'm a married man, plus I'm older than Monica.'

'You want to ask Monica to change?' Chandler said, in the tone of one who knows full well he holds the trump card.

'Yeah – er good point. Not that I wouldn't be afraid of arguing with Monica, if I wanted to her to know I was here.' Ross felt it was important to make this point clear, and Chandler decided not to irritate Ross by smirking at him.

'Oh there you are,' Emily said when he arrived back, 'I was getting worried about you. I nearly came to look for you.' Ross handed her a coffee.'

'The service was terrible,' he lied. 'The further south you go, the slower they are.'

'Ugh,' Emily said, 'It's a bit cold.' Ross sipped his coffee too and agreed.

'Stupid people,' he said, 'they don't even know how to boil water. Say, you know what? Why don't we go somewhere else and have a proper sit down lunch. There's more than just the beach you know.'

'All right,' Emily said.