No one moves, each of us glad in our own selfish way that the sacrificial lamb is not us, and also petrified that we might be next. Everyone seems fixated – us too – and incapable of moving. There are no words to describe the expression on the girl’s face. I try not to look, but can’t stop staring, and especially can’t stop climbing inside her sister’s head, who looks as if she’s gone, so far removed from this place, this world, that I’m not sure she can ever claw her way back, or whether she’d even want to. I can’t let myself imagine the smaller sister’s state of mind and can only hope she took enough of Mr Floaty to make her totally blank out, although her face suggests otherwise. I resolve to glug as much anesthesia as I can get my hands on. Is this why Mother drinks as much as she does? Is she trying to drown some awful memory that lives on and on?

The spectacle finishes, and one by one we are chosen by a man each and led to a room with a mini bar (which I’m kindly invited to raid) and a giant bed lit by a massive light, hanging centre-stage. Apparently I look gorgeous in this light. I’m so out of focus now I hardly feel any of it; I don’t register what the man looks like, his face, his body, his age, any of it. It could be happening to someone else. It is happening to someone else.

After, we are brought back to the room, and we wait. I sit curled up in one of the fake pleather chairs, snoozing. I’m so far removed at this stage, none of it is landing – except for what happened to the sister. I never want to see her again, never want to be reminded, and as I’m thinking this, here she comes, the last to be returned, holding on to a man’s arm, as if he’s a gentleman helping her cross the road. She doesn’t look capable of standing on her own. I stare at my nails, biting them and the skin beneath them til they’re pink and glistening. The man deposits the broken girl on a chair with something like tenderness, and the other sister goes to her and holds her under one arm, Ling taking the other. The receptionist gestures, without looking directly at us, to follow him down the hall to the door.

We’re bundled in the car, and off we trundle: home sweet home. We walk through the door into the comfortable, cream, centrally heated home, we shower, we eat, the sky is pink-tinged, and then we get into bed and go under.