“And she must smell horrible as well,” Nina remarked as she feigned a vomit. “Think of those fingers running through Josh’s hair!”

Dan shook his head. “All right, I’ve had enough of you two for now. I’m going. Have you brought your mobiles with you?”

“Of course we have,” said Millie. “We want some kind of contact with the outside world.”

“Well, in that case, give me a call if you want anything. You’ll have to walk up the hill at the back of the house if you want to get a signal, though. There’s a small tree up there where you’ll find that it works.”

Nina stared fixedly at her father for a moment, then turned to her elder sister and slowly shook her head. “You see,” she said miserably, “this is the arsehole of the world.”

The weather during the next three days did nothing to disprove Nina’s opinion of the place. They never ventured from the confines of their Highland prison and even suffered the self-imposed torture of being ex-text-communicado with their friends in London. On the first evening, while they had sat watching television, Millie had walked around the room, climbing up onto various bits of furniture, and while tottering precariously on her perch, had gazed fixedly at the screen of her mobile phone in the hope that even one blip of reception signal would appear. Eventually, the precious phone had been unlovingly discarded into her suitcase, its usefulness done, and she had flumped down onto the sofa between Nina and Josh to watch the film Ten Things I Hate About You for the fifth time.

There were, however, moments of diversion. On the Tuesday evening, Josh bravely took the girls with him into Fort William where they met up with Maria José for a drink in the Nevisview Inn. Neither Millie nor Nina contributed much to the flow of conversation, but instead sat picking their fingernails and staring at the dark-eyed Spanish girl, trying to find something about her that they could criticize. When Dan asked them on their return how they had got on, and whether they had liked Maria José, the girls, having been able to find a blemish neither in her character nor on her face, simply grunted and within five minutes had slipped themselves wordlessly into the comforting depths of their sleeping bags. All that Dan had done, thereafter, was to shoot a knowing wink at his son.