Matty, her face half-covered by a silk eye mask and wearing a headband with Bluetooth that piped her dream apps straight into her ears, didn’t stir. They had stayed up as late as they could, but the early start and long journey – not to mention the emotional trepidation of what awaited them here – had forced them to eventually file downstairs for bed just after one. It was clear their hosts had no intention of ‘hosting’.

‘Mats, they’re back!’ Clover whispered, half-heartedly kicking her leg out across the space between their beds. But it was too wide to reach. Matty, somehow sensing a disturbance, groaned and turned over onto her other side.

‘Ugh.’ Still half-asleep, Clover lay perfectly still, trying to make out what was happening downstairs. She could hear the rattle of equipment scratching along the floor, knocking against walls, sliding along racks. Someone dropped something. Someone swore. Someone laughed.

It was hardly a stealth mission. They were clearly hammered, the timbre of their voices carrying up the stairs and carelessly interrupting the night, not giving a damn who was disturbed. Or perhaps that was the point – another passive-aggressive act of defiance. It was almost four in the morning. They had stayed out all day and all night, making absolutely certain that there was no chance of meeting her and the others tonight. They had wanted the snub to be absolute, making their point in the most hostile way. And now this? She wondered if Johnny had been woken up too. Whether he was lying there, listening and waiting for Ari ‘Eyeball’ Jones to come and stand at the end of his bed.

She listened to the commotion with a slowly simmering anger. She turned on her side, her back to the door and staring at the wall; she could feel the reverberations of her pounding heart on the mattress. So this was it – Foley’s first move. It was the kind of mind game Cory had described to her as they sat on his porch and stared out at a sea he could no longer surf. ‘Anger makes people weak because then they lose control,’ he had said. ‘Foley’s always looking for which buttons to press to make you lose control.’

Her anger was his aim. Was she angry right now? Yes. But she’d also been angry long before tonight. She was angry for Cory, for Mia, for those three little boys who no longer lived beside the sea; and if she was going to get what she had come for, then she had to be cleverer and calmer than that. She couldn’t afford to lose control.

She closed her eyes, determined to sleep. She breathed deliberately deeply and slowly, concentrating on softening her muscles . . . This was how she would win.