They stopped at a service station for coffee and petrol. While Tamsin waited for Callum to pay, the sun came out, electroplating the puddles on the station forecourt. Callum emerged, squinting at the sunlight, and Tamsin was surprised by a sudden surge of affection for him.

‘I missed you,’ she told him as he got back into the car. It was an odd thing to say, but Callum seemed to understand. He set their coffees down on the dashboard and kissed her, tenderly, carefully, on the mouth.

As they sped along the A303, the novelty of the venture began to excite them both. This was only their second holiday together; their first – a week’s skiing in Austria last year – had lacked this thrilling element of escape. Tamsin leaned her head against the window frame, watching, faintly mesmerised, as the countryside unspooled itself. The further they drove from London, the more impossible it seemed that Chris Kimura could pose any kind of threat to her happiness with Callum. Last night had been a temporary derangement, a few hours of doubt brought on by tiredness and alcohol (a conclusion which neatly omitted the fact that her problems with Chris had begun before she started drinking). They passed Stonehenge, dark and dumbly significant. After Taunton, the road began to narrow and the place names became pleasingly alien: Sampford Peverell, Uffculme, Trull. They were still in England, only four hours’ drive from the Edgware Road; yet it felt as if they had travelled out of place and time.

By the time they reached Ilfracombe, Tamsin was buzzing. She hammed up her enthusiasm, wriggling in her seat and demanding Callum drive the car straight down to the sea.

‘Let’s dump our bags. Then we’ll have all afternoon to play. And if you’re a very good girl, I might even buy you an ice cream.’

The Armeria Guesthouse was the cheapest B&B in town, because that was all that Tamsin, who had insisted on splitting the bill, could afford. ‘Anyway, all these little places are just the same – greasy breakfasts, chintzy furniture. Naff, but also sort of charming.’

But the Armeria was too downmarket even to bother with chintz. The look was more Holiday-Inn-on-a-budget, with beige-grey walls and ‘natural effect’ imitation-linen curtains, attached to their rails by loops of fabric rather than curtain rings. The bed slanted sideways into a rhomboid if you so much as sat on it, and there was a pervasive stench of gas on the stairs. In the bathroom, the complimentary soap was small enough to be an after-dinner mint.

Tamsin shrugged her backpack to the ground, irritated to find herself close to tears.

Callum put his arms round her. ‘Hey, who needs seaside kitsch when you could have, erm, what is this exactly, shall we say, a post-modern subversion of utilitarian design? Just as ugly, yet totally useless.’