By the time they polished off the bag of hot, greasy, salty and satisfying chips and made the walk home, a fine mist accompanied the now ash-grey sky.

"Anyone feel like a long lazy shower to wash off the salt and sand?"

Caroline thrust her hand high and her arm straight up in the air. "I'm up for it."

"Yes! I hoped you'd say that." Melanie raised a fist in triumph, beamed and dashed into the en-suite.

Caroline hummed to herself as she stripped off her trainers and hung her light jacket in the entryway of the flat that served double duty as a mud room. They'd been vigilant about not tracking the beach back inside with them, but it was a beach after all.

Tap tap tap.

Caroline yelped and whirled to face the front door. It was glass and immediately on the other side of it stood a hulk of a man holding a tiny pink sweater. She glanced over her shoulder toward the en-suite and closed the solid wood door that separated the flat from the entry room.

She did not open the door but spoke through the thick storm-glass. "Yes. Hullo. You've given me quite a start. Can I help you?"

She turned her head to catch his muffled voice as he spoke. "I think this is yours." The man with the thick red hair and ruddy skin stood at between 190 and 200 centimeters and had to weigh at least 117 kilos. Tall and bulky though he was, he still shrugged against the mist that had turned to drizzle and the biting sea breeze. His moose-brown overcoat shimmered with beaded rain that clumped and ran down the length of it to fall on the boardwalk.

Caroline turned and locked the main door, then opened the entryway to let him in. A giant man hoisting a pink sweater seemed the thinnest criminal ruse available, and she took a chance.

He ducked his head in gratitude. "Or what I mean to say is, I think this is your daughter's."

"Actually, it's not mine. Or my daughter's. What in the world gave you that impression, and how did you happen to find me in the first place, to give me something that isn't mine?" Not that she could physically intimidate this man, but she crossed her arms, drilled her eyes up at his, and sported the angry-mother look reserved for Lawrence and William when at their worst in an attempt to do just that.

"Well it was left on the carousel. I work there – I run it and help people on and off and do maintenance. You know, whatever."

Caroline made a 'go on – with haste' gesture and he got to the point.

"Thought you left it there, we found it a while back this afternoon. Jimmy, he works with me, he said he remembered your daughter having it. Because of the big red heart on it? She had it tied at her waist, I guess, and you could see the heart?"

Another impatient gesture.

He rubbed at the stubble on the back of his freckled neck. "Well Jimmy put in the lost and found. Then just not long ago we saw you walk by and so I followed you. Tried to hustle up and catch you before you got home, but – I didn't."

"You followed me?"

A scarlet flush matching his ginger hair crept up his neck, and he stepped out of the entry and back into the rain. He stared at the puddle he stood in.

"Well yes ma'am, I did. On account of how it's been so cold, and the girl was probably missing it. And I'm just off shift, or I was almost off shift, so I thought it'd be a nice thing to do."

Caroline narrowed her steel-blue eyes but they didn't stay that way, because to Caroline he was transparent. He had the look and the carriage of countless footballers who had trudged through Sulgrave Heath at their parent's insistence. Great slabs of athletic skill and not much more. Good boys who kept their heads down and worked hard for their mediocre grades.

She made way and waved him back inside. A crooked grin appeared and he stepped in. His boots squeaked on the tile. The water hitching a ride along with him mingled with the beach sand and made a mess that Caroline couldn't wait to clean up.

"It was a nice thing to do. Unfortunately, it's only a nice gesture, though, because my daughter is more than four hundred kilometers away and doesn't own that sweater. Your friend was wrong, and so were you, eh - "

She tilted her head down, cast her gaze up at him, and waited for a response.

"Ah – Brian. I'm called Brian. Sorry. That's too bad I messed up. Too bad for the little girl, I mean, the one missing the sweater." He squinted at her. "Huh. Jimmy said the gal looked just like you. I caught the tail end of her going and I was thinking that too."

Tale told and now convinced of his mistake, he cast his look to the floor.

"Well, in any case, thank you for trying to do the right thing, Brian. Have a good evening."

"Oh. Right. Yeah." He held the sweater out to Caroline.

She did not move to grab it and it hung there between them, abandoned. "You see it's not mine, though, is it?"

"No."

"So I shouldn't take it then, should I?"

"No. Right. Yes ma'am. I'll take it back with me tomorrow to the lost and found." Brian pulled it close to him again and tucked it into his coat.

"Yes. That's exactly what you should do." Caroline's brow knit, but it wasn't in anger. Seven, seventeen, or twenty-seven, the lead the horse to water strategy seemed to work equally well with the thicker boys. She smiled up at him.

"OK then. Sorry to bother you ma'am. Have a nice night." He ducked at her again and left.

She eased the door shut and shivered at the damp cold that filled the entry. Her feet were freezing.

"It was just some nice boy who thought he'd found my sweater. Or rather Flora's sweater. Not Flora's – a young girl's sweater, whose mum apparently is my doppelganger." Caroline stared, hypnotized by the shimmering white soap bubbles as her finger tracked them across the brown skin of Melanie's chest.

"You're not really making sense, Lizzy."

"That's not my fault. It's a confusing situation to explain, and you're intentionally distracting me. And don't call me Lizzy."

"I'm sorry. Not intentionally distracting." Melanie ran her hands up Caroline's bare lower back and rested them on her speckled shoulders. "Tell me more, Caroline."

Caroline grabbed her hands and returned them where they ought to be at this point in the lazy, hot-shower process.

"I'll multi-task. It's a strength."

Melanie pecked her on the nose with a good-natured snicker. "Yes it is."

"Mistaken identity, that's all. Now can you return to doing what you were just doing? I was really getting somewhere." Caroline bent her neck to kiss Melanie's collarbone.

"Does this have anything to do with that woman from earlier and that man who was watching her?"

"Not that I can make out, no."

"Who was that man anyway – and why were you staring at him?"

"Seriously. Nothing gets by you." Caroline clapped her hands at Melanie's bare waist. "Fine. We're not moving on from this, are we? He was the man from the car wash." She blew up past her damp bangs and prepared herself for a long conversation full of questions. Until Caroline satisfied Melanie's curiosity, Melanie wouldn't be satisfying her – in any way.

"The man whose car you wrecked?"

"The man whose car I backed into."

"Weasel-man Dave?"

"Yes. Weasel-man Dave and the man who was standing under the lamp post this afternoon are one in the same."

Melanie pursed her lips and stared past Caroline, who downgraded her prospects another notch. Her girlfriend was no longer here in the shower with her, but a mile away on a sandy beach rerunning the film in her head.

"I mean, it has to have something to do with her Caroline, because clearly she's where the mix-up started. She's what everything has in common."

Caroline put her hands on her own hips and stepped backward. She bumped the cold tile of the shower wall behind her and gasped.

She laughed at the shock, and then a stern tone as she responded. "Now that's not true at all. She wasn't anywhere near the car wash."

"As far as you know." Melanie laid a finger on Caroline's nose and grinned.

"Mmmmm. As far as I know."

Melanie put three fingers to her lips and narrowed her olive-green eyes at the floor of the shower. Caroline watched her drift away again to the beach and the carousel.

"Rinse." She grabbed Melanie by the waist and reversed their positions under the full, pounding flow of the shower head, washing away the remainder of the soap and shampoo from Melanie. A ghost of a grin passed her lips in gratitude but she was still a world away.

Caroline leaned into her and turned off the shower. She wrapped an arm around Melanie and hauled her even closer. "Solve the riddles on your own time, Sherlock. You're on my dime right now."

Melanie looked up and by her surprised expression appeared to snap back to the here and now. "You're right. Not very nice to tease you like that and change the subject, was it? Sorry, I know I get distracted. I'm back and I'm a woman on a mission." She laid a finger on Caroline's chest, clarifying the mission.

"Yes you do live in your own world. It's adorable but it's damned frustrating sometimes." The heat and the steam of the shower dissipated as they stood making puddles and Caroline shivered.

Melanie reached over and grabbed a plush white towel from the warmer on the wall. She gave Caroline a brisk head-to-toe rub down and wrapped her in it. "Better?"

"Much. Now let's do you."