Becky collapses down onto one of the two double beds, suddenly exhausted, wishing Adam would hurry up and stop obsessing about the games console in his room and help her with all this: even just to intervene with a stupid joke to distract them both from this maddening, twisting journey down a rabbit hole.

Maisie glares back at her.

‘Fine then,’ snaps Becky. ‘Go and live your life. Just don’t expect me to pick up the pieces when you’re gang-raped on the beach.’

Maisie looks utterly shocked. Becky feels like the words came out of her mouth without her brain’s say so, all overheated and fearful and vicious.

‘You’ve got massive problems,’ says Maisie. She grabs her handbag, opens the door, steps through it, and is gone.

Becky turns her face into her pillow and sobs and sobs. She is radioactive with pain and shame and fury and guilt. And loneliness.

She pictures herself beating Scott to a bloody pulp with her bare hands, until the individual features of his face are gone, smashed into a uniform pink mush, but it does nothing for her. Nothing will ever be enough for her.

She blows her nose in the bathroom. Washes her face with cold water from the basin.

Surveys the over-sized bath with Maisie’s bikini discarded by the plughole and her vast collection of open tubes and pots of metallic-pink powder, creams, pastes and perfume arranged around the sides.

In the room, Becky perches on the peacock-blue bedspread still flat and made, the iron-smooth pillow dented once from a quick moment checking the hotel’s TV channel. The dark gold curtains are open and quivering with the contrived cold of air-conditioning. She doesn’t know what to do with any of this: the embossed complimentary stationery, the view …

Why won’t Maisie just shout that she hates her? Instead she pities me, thinks Becky.

She flies to a knock at the door, but finds only Adam there, brandishing a packet of popcorn. ‘I’ve got a really well-stocked minibar, if dinner’s off the cards? Chez Adam or stay here? Décor is exactly the same though I prefer my paintings.’

‘Maisie’s not here. She went off in a strop.’

‘Classic fifteen-year-old. It’ll all be different when she’s sixteen.’

‘Adam.’

‘She’ll be fine. She’s not stupid. She’s not reckless. She’s a really smart kid.’

‘She went off without her room key card.’

‘Well, you’re here.’

‘Shouldn’t I go after her?’

‘Maybe not?’

‘I’m messing everything up.’

‘No, you’re not. You’re a good mum. You’re totally good, Becky.’

She folds herself into his arms. Hears him drop the packet of popcorn as his arms wrap around her.

After standing in the doorway together for a long moment, he disentangles himself to close the door, then turns back and holds her at a distance, gripping her arms lightly.