Sometimes there would be live entertainment before or after dinner: a calypso singer, a steel band, or the brilliantly energetic carnival dancers, parading in their grotesque masks as animals and birds, jesters or demons; giving displays of stilt-walking in the traditional clown-like role of ‘Moko Jumbie’, or limbo-dancing to the accompaniment of drums. The strange-looking Kenneth – who belonged to the troupe once he had finished his daytime job – would be suitably smeared with dirt and sticky molasses and become completely unrecognisable in the role of the mischievous demon Jab-Jab, with horned mask and twisted, coiled wire tail. He was a brilliantly acrobatic dancer, but Stella had recently banned him from performing at the hotel because some guests found his explicit, sexual interpretation of the ‘Jab Molassi’ extremely disturbing and the malicious twirling of his metal tail was genuinely dangerous. This ruling of Stella’s supplied an added grudge – along with many others – for Kenneth to nurture against the hotel proprietors, who gave him such vital employment by day.

Luciana had seen the dancers running through the hotel grounds after a performance, peering in at the windows of some of the bungalows. Coming across them unexpectedly in the dark had been like meeting the nightmare cast out of one of the cruel fantasies of Hieronymus Bosch – a painting come to life.

There were already several people at the bar when Luciana arrived. Stella was talking to a couple from Purley; ‘Not quite our sort – a bit suburban, but kind and genuine if you take a little trouble with them,’ Stella had explained to the new arrivals a few hours before, lest it be thought that the couple from Purley really were personal friends of hers, though Mike found the Purley husband, ‘Call-me-Reg’, very congenial and extremely free with his cash when it came to standing his host drinks. His wife had just returned from an excursion to another island where she had found a shop full of genuine batik hangings and was generous with information – to anyone rash enough to listen – about the process of printing batik. Tonight she had decided to waylay Luciana.

‘Poor old thing, she must be lonely,’ she had said to Reg, as she dressed in the cotton-jersey caftan she had bought from a mail order catalogue. ‘Let’s try to jolly her up a bit and ask her to sit with us tonight.’

Luciana, who had no taste for being jollied up, walked straight past when the invitation was issued, and had the satisfaction of hearing the Purley woman say: ‘Perhaps she’s deaf? Now that would explain a lot about her! I had meant to show her my purchases, but I think I’ll leave it. We don’t want to have to shout at her all through dinner, do we?’