It has to be confessed that as a child, Maljie was often short of money. Still she did what she could to remedy this, but was wise enough to realise that blackmailing older siblings was not a sustainable business model.

Thus one particularly hot summer she got the idea of having a pool. Given that it hadn’t rained for a month and the sun had beat down, day after day, this was an entirely reasonable plan. Indeed, rather than the regimented straight lines and harsh stonework of a formal bathing establishment, one suspects that Maljie had in mind a more sylvan scene. Thus she picked a time when her mother was out and enlisted her co-conspirators to start digging in a flower bed.

Now there is logic in this. Most of Port Naain is built on clay (or at least dried mud). So any hole dug should automatically hold water…