The squealing and banging of the band was fading into the distance.

‘Be careful, don’t drop ash on the sheet,’ Evelyn said.

Quirke was looking past her to the window.

‘I see the sun is shining again,’ he said. ‘We were promised rain.’

‘Yes, the warm sun is shining, people are swimming and lying on the sand, children are playing, and there is a man selling ice cream. And, yes, we are on holiday.’

He smoked moodily for a while, then said:

‘It was hot last night. I couldn’t sleep.’

‘If you were not asleep, then you are the only person I have ever heard of who snores when he is awake.’

He gave her a crooked smile.

‘I do love you, Liebchen.’

‘Even when I nag you?’

‘Even when you nag me.’

He could never say the word ‘love’ without flinching, a little, inwardly. Yet he made himself say it, and go on saying it, as if to shore up something that was in constant danger of collapse. It was a bit of mortar he applied to the edifice they had fabricated together, he and Evelyn. Both were well aware of the jerry-built nature of the thing, the little thin-walled structure that was the two of them together, huddled under the weight of the world.

Should he tell her about the young woman in the bar under the arcades, and how he had woken up in the night thinking about her? Should he say how he was convinced he knew her from somewhere in his past? Should he tell her how the notion had frightened him, and how it made him uneasy even yet to think of it? How was he to put into words feelings so nebulous they could hardly be called feelings at all?

He got out of bed, kissed his wife lightly on the fringe of hair where it lay on her broad brow, and went into the bathroom. He looked at himself in the mirror above the handbasin and groaned.

‘Does my breath smell?’ he called back to her over his shoulder.

‘Yes.’

He began to brush his teeth vigorously. He had balanced his cigarette on the edge of the porcelain, between the taps. ‘Don’t put your cigarette on the sink,’ Evelyn said sharply. How could she know he was doing something without seeing him do it? There was an uncanny side to his wife that Quirke felt it was best to leave uninvestigated.

‘No ashtray in here.’

‘It took me many minutes to get rid of the yellow stain you left there yesterday. If you keep doing filthy things like that, they will ask us to leave this lovely hotel.’

He rinsed his mouth, realising too late what he was doing. He imagined a billion microbes invading the crevices between his teeth and lodging there. Death in the afternoon.

‘But the place cleans itself,’ he said.

‘What do you say?’