As they walk toward the bar to check if she’s there, Becky wonders: what am I doing? There had been a few flings in the past, but she’d wiped them from her memory as quickly as they had happened. She can’t wipe anything away now: Adam is by her side and she can feel his cum trickle out of her, an unfamiliar wetness. And then she is back there, remembering all those years ago as she looked down into the crotch of her knickers and found semen there. Suddenly she is dizzy. She holds Adam’s arm. I’m going to pass out, she thinks.

He looks at her. ‘You need to eat something.’

‘Let’s find Maisie first.’

Maisie is not in the bar, or in the games room either, and they are running out of rooms in which to find her.

‘She might have gone back to the bedroom,’ says Adam. ‘We could go back and leave her a note.’

‘Let’s keep looking.’ Their conversation has dried up. What more is there to say, other than: Where is she? Is she OK? Is she safe?

They head into the hotel grounds. Uplighters pick out the shapes of topiary hedges arranged around a wide lawn. Adam and Becky walk in silence over its sprawling softness. It is a warm night, a light breeze pushing clouds out of the way of the stars. Night-singing birds call to each other.

Becky decides, then and there. If Maisie is found – if she is not drowned, stabbed, strangled or otherwise destroyed – then she must be done with her questions. She has to know.

She had hoped that time would close the gap in her.

Well, that hasn’t worked, she thinks with a hard, unsparing voice. All it’s done is chew her up and spit her out again.

But she is definitely ready now. She will face it and fight it. Let it be agony. Let there be violence. Let the stitching show afterwards, but things cannot stay the same. She cannot go on damaging herself and those around her.

Give me back my girl, and I will seek out Scott in real life.

No more digital toxicity, no more distraction, no more procrastination, no more weakness. She will take the risk, risk it hurting, and so start to heal. That is the deal she cuts with the universe.

Then, things will be different.

‘I told Kate that I’m in love with you,’ says Adam, taking her hand. ‘She said she already knew that. She said she thought we’d all been kidding ourselves for a long time.’

Becky puts her hand to his chest to quieten him. There – close by – voices.

‘What will you say to her?’ says Adam.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Try not to kill her.’

They move in a wide arc and Adam speeds up toward the sounds.