‘I suppose,’ said James, after reflection, ‘I’ve always sort of felt that it’s quite difficult to measure up to you – you’ve always been ahead of me. I suppose that inhibits me a bit from getting in touch.’ He was surprised to hear himself say it, and she was surprised, too, and secretly pleased by her place on the family’s scoreboard, in the way anyone would be. In the hotel corridor, outside her door, she embraced James for a long time, feeling the warmth, the reassuring if reduced plumpness of her little brother.

The hotel room seemed full of noises that night: the radio alarm clock ringing in each new hour with a double bleep which she couldn’t work out how to turn off; church bells, from somewhere nearby, marking the same milestone two minutes later each time. The coffee machine making some sort of automated clank at occasional intervals, like an old man coughing in his sleep. Sal’s body clock was out of sync; jet-lag had hit her harder on this trip than it usually did. She’d messaged Dec back home a couple of times, but he was working on a big contract and it was lunchtime in Australia, and he wouldn’t really understand, anyway. She drew back the curtains and looked over the orange-blue of the sky, thinking about how it was never really dark in a city, and then she remembered it was Dad who’d told her that, told her so much else that was in her head, and she felt a cold hand on her spine and almost fell over.

She went back to the bed and sat down: they were happening again, those thoughts. She couldn’t let her brain look at them directly: they would torch straight through her like the sun. Something, somebody had to distract her. She wanted to go along the hall and knock on James’s door, wanted it more than anything for a moment. But no, she couldn’t wake him up. She didn’t want to look stupid. She sent him a text: Are you awake? Not feeling too good. With Dad and everything. The momentary deadness after the message landed, and then – she caught her breath, relieved – the moving dots as James began to type back. He was typing for a long time.

You are doing one of your speeches about business in a packed concert hall in Australia (forgive me, I don’t know the names of any venues). A gunman rushes in and threatens to take the whole room hostage unless you give him a million dollars. Do you: immediately start to phone the police? Or: call his bluff and tell him to leave?

She grinned. It wasn’t even a very good one; a bit laboured as a set-up. Very James. Perfect.