Mattie and Hazel loved Marnie, but they also loved drama, and they swept her off with them, moving as gracefully as a pair of gazelles. The people of St Matt’s were mostly tall and elegant; even Kenneth, balancing his pig pails, became beautiful when he walked – provided of course that you couldn’t see his face.

Luciana returned to her bungalow. This was the hour for most of the hotel’s female guests to settle down to serious efforts at beautifying themselves before the evening’s socialising began, so there were few people about. Soon a terrible screaming could be heard. Sir Colin and Lady Fowler, the ‘sweet couple’ so prized by Stella, occupied the nearest bungalow to Luciana’s and it was not the first time she had heard the piercing wails of the child, though whether they were due to rage or misery, fear or simply temper, as her mother claimed, she had no way of knowing. Her own pain seemed more interesting. Other guests had complained of the screaming, but Stella, who was not going to risk upsetting a baronet, had only enquired with false solicitude if Marnie was unwell and needed medical attention.

‘She’s just playing up,’ pretty Patsy had shrugged. ‘I don’t intend to have my vacation wrecked because we’ve had to bring her along with us. She’s a spoilt brat who’s been indulged by her father. I’ll go sort her out right now.’

Luciana lay on her bed. She opened a book but decided to enjoy a session of self-pity instead.

When it was time to go over to the main building for dinner she walked slowly along the path that wound through the garden towards the big house. The paths, which were all made of raised flat stepping-stones to keep the elegantly shod feet of guests dry when heavy rain came down, were lit at intervals by low-standing fluorescent lamps, which attracted toads by the score. Every evening, as soon as dusk fell and the lights were switched on, the toads appeared as if by magic, shambling purposefully towards the lamp of their choice – like elderly gentlemen crossing St James’s Street for dinner at their club, Luciana thought. Later they could be seen squatting motionless, waiting to be served with a succulent fly – no doubt as enjoyable to them as a glass of vintage port.

The wailing had ceased, but as Luciana passed the neighbouring bungalow she could hear muffled sobbing, as though the child was weeping under the bedclothes, and this stifled sound was infinitely more distressing than the louder screams had been.