‘You OK?’ Stephen asked. He felt frightened, suddenly. He didn’t know what he would do if she started panicking, who he’d turn to. Celia and Nick might blame him if she had a bad time, might think he’d supplied the drugs. He lay on the bed on his front and shut his eyes. Shapes danced across his closed eyelids, as they did in the moments when you closed your eyes after looking up at the sun; only now they didn’t stop.

‘Can you hold my hand?’ asked Georgie.

‘Of course, here,’ he said.

He reached out his hand to her. It felt nice to be touching another person. He appreciated the warmth of it. This sense of the body-heat of another person seemed very intense. He almost fancied he could feel her pulse, hear the warm blood thrumming through her.

‘It must be pretty horrible, being a snake or a lizard,’ he said. ‘Having cold blood, you know? So that you have to go and find a hot rock or something to warm yourself up.’

‘I don’t think they mind,’ said Georgie.

‘I guess not. I guess you’re right,’ he said, but he didn’t feel certain of it.

When Stephen woke the next morning he was alone, still dressed in his clothes, although he’d somehow crawled under the covers. The rancid sensation had not gone away and he felt sadness pressing down on his skull like a physical weight. He ran himself a deep bath and lingered in the soft water until he began to feel better. He went out on to the landing, his bath towel around his waist, yesterday’s clothes over one arm. On his way back to his room, he stopped next to the trefoil table. He knew there was no one else on this floor and from the silence he judged that none of the Clarkes were on the floor below, either. He’d hear if anyone was making their way upstairs, because of the lack of carpets. Not that anyone could object, anyway; he only wanted to feel the medal, to hold it in his hand. Just for a minute. There was nothing to say he shouldn’t, the glass lids of the table didn’t seem to be locked or anything, although he saw that there were little brass-edged keyholes cut into the wood of each of the two lids. The man who’d won them was his ancestor too, after all. Celia and Nick had never said he wasn’t to touch the medals, or indeed anything in the house.