Patsy pulled a face. ‘Would you credit it? We’d planned for her to be in the States with her father but he’s on his second honeymoon so he ratted on the arrangement. Luckily with so many staff about we don’t have to bother about her too much.’

Luciana and the child were both listening, but both were invisible; Luciana because of her closed eyes, and the child because she was hidden under a bush. Humming-birds darted to and fro, black for a moment and then brilliantly green as they caught the light. A donkey rivalled the braying round the pool. Chocky, chocky, sang the thrasher, and the trade wind set the palm trees clattering and rustling. It was very hot. Presently both Luciana and the child slipped away – but no one noticed either of them go.

They were in fact headed in the same direction, though the child, Marnie, followed her own mysterious route, slipping from bush to bush and avoiding the main paths. They both went down below the tennis courts, through the fruit plantation, where mango, papaya and soursup trees were carefully cultivated to give guests the illusion that the hotel provided all the delicious breakfast fruit, though in fact much of it was imported from markets in Florida. Wonderful ice-cream, made from the huge, prickly soursup fruits – sometimes weighing as much as six pounds each – was one of the specialities of the hotel. At the bottom of the plantation, glamour stopped abruptly. A ramshackle gate made of sticks and bits of old wire led to rubbish heaps and piggeries, both of which smelt terrible. Luciana was making for the rough path that led down to the sea, though it was a long walk and most people went to the beach by car or by the free minibus, which the hotel provided every half hour. Marnie had a meeting with Kenneth, the pig-man. He could carry a bucket of swill on his head and never spill a drop, and he had other talents too, which she was learning from him.

Cattle egrets tiptoed among the rotting rubbish, their freshly laundered surplices faintly sinister against the filth, like well-to-do priests in a slum area. The volcano was shrouded in cloud: it would probably rain later.