They wake and squint at the glaring light overhead. Mouths dry. Heads pounding. Safa grunts and rolls over to bury her head in the pillow. Harry closes his eyes and starts squinting to let his vision adjust while going through his now habitual check to see if anything is broken. Ben groans, lifts his head and squints round at the awful room before dropping his head back down.

Safa rolls and twists to sit on the edge of her bed and waits for the dizziness to pass. Her mouth is so dry. Her throat too. She’s sweating and feels dirty, grimy. Her hair is greasy too. She looks to her clothes on the floor where she left them last night. Was it last night? Does time even exist here? She blinks at her own stupid question and deliberates the possibility that she is still drunk. She tuts at the memory of Roland panicking and trying to make them leave Rio but being blatantly ignored as they drank beer with their new mates and got roaringly drunk.

She smiles and chuckles in that way people do the morning after the night before. Harry was dancing with the carnival girls. She snorts at that image. The huge bearded man stamping his feet while holding a bottle of beer over his head and linking arms with scantily clad women to twirl and dance. Roland was going apeshit by then, but their new friends shoved more beer into his hands.