‘Yes,’ says Rose, after a moment. Her voice is quiet and firm.

In the morning, they have breakfast on the picnic table outside. The sun is out, but thin. Rose has a dense bruise spreading down her upper arm.

‘Is that from yesterday?’ asks Graeme.

She smiles. She rests her fingers against it. He can see her press in, the hint of a flinch in the line of her mouth.

She is thin, he thinks, but she is growing. When Caz first brought her round, her pockets were full of food – lint-flecked apple slices, brown and soft, raisins, nuggets of chocolate. They walked in like spiders, her and Aaron, swaying on stick-legs. Wherever she got the food from, it wasn’t home.

They play minigolf. Jack wins. They sit on the dunes, then they run down them. Jack chases Aaron. Jack punches Aaron until Graeme tells him to stop. Aaron goads Jack into punching him again and looks at him with hysterical, hopeless adoration.

Rose walks along the line of the surf. Her feet splash through the thin foam. She digs in the shingle for bright stones, vivid and wet, that dry to dull flatness. She watches Aaron and Jack.

They walk together back to the caravan in the mid-afternoon. Rose walks beside Graeme. She’s taller than him. As they climb up the path between the dunes she takes his hand.

Graeme lets her. She holds his hand for a minute, then drops it again.

Later, he can still feel her touch. Raw, clumsy. Like affection is a foreign language, badly learnt. He sees it in her face too. Eyes that hold your gaze for a fraction too long, a smile that doesn’t quite mean what you think a smile should mean. An unselfconsciousness that has the taint of neglect.

He remembers her mother. Ash. He hasn’t seen her for over twenty years, but he still remembers her.

Two hours later, Graeme is woken by Rose screaming.

He fell asleep on the pull-out bed. He stumbles outside. Still light. Rose is screaming at Jack. He’s holding both her wrists and laughing.

‘Stop!’ says Graeme. He pulls Jack away from Rose. Jack releases Rose’s hands and she slaps at him, a swinging lunge that just misses.

‘Hey!’

Graeme is between them now. He holds his hands up. ‘What’s going on?’

He feels a dig of pain in his lower back and lurches forward. Rose has pinched him, her nails digging deep.

‘Jesus,’ he says, twisting and staggering. He sees her, eyes wide and fixed as she lunges past him at Jack.

‘Rose!’ he shouts, his voice a loud flat bark.

She freezes, swaying. Her arms sink to her sides.

‘What on earth is going on?’ says Graeme.

Jack laughs.

‘Aaron’s gone.’

Graeme frowns.

‘Where?’

‘You lost him!’ shouts Rose. Her face is desolate.