‘That’s nice,’ the woman smiled at her. ‘You’re free.’

‘I’m free.’

On the flight she had a gin and tonic with lime. She squashed the lime up and put it in her pocket as if she might need it for later. As they flew above her country, she watched it become a green dot and imagined squashing it up and putting it in her pocket. On the flight, it felt like the plane might separate – metal springing into the sky – and she would be scooped up into the air. She could take the plane apart with a plastic knife. Her feet landed on tarmac, a flat open plain, a prairie.

She found the worst hotel. She walked right in and asked the man at the reception desk, ‘Are there a lot of lost souls in this hotel?’ The receptionist said there definitely were. The place was made entirely of concrete, a tower of grey tracing the sky with a half glimpse of the sea available from every room. She threw down her remaining credit card. She was giving herself a week. It was a cement shithole and she felt at home.

In the corridor and in the lift to her room, she saw some of the other lost souls; their faces creased, their lives out of control. They all carried the same look of exhaustion. The women wore bikinis as uniform. She saluted them and their secrets, their hidden illnesses, their scars, the strings that disappeared into their flesh, every decision that led them here, paying for rooms by the hour, by the day, by the week, unable to plan any further. She would keep their secrets. She would shower in the same bathrooms, sleep in the same beds.

The hotel had its own invisible set of rules. No questions. No promises. No bullshit. She lay on her bed and watched the fan, its propellers slicing through the ceiling, cutting the love out of her with every single turn. On her balcony she heard screams of joy. She looked at the sea beyond. She considered the possibility, because of the hotel, that it could be full of sewage. She ran down onto the beach, threw off her coat and jumped in anyway. She took a mouthful of salt water. It was the clearest water she’d ever swam in.

She floated for a long time until the stars appeared, as if being blasted out by a hidden hand. It felt like they should have been accompanied by noise. She wanted noise. She put on her coat and went to a club, a dark purple place where she danced and sweated and spoke to no one. She drank vodka slushies, watermelon, strawberry. She let the ice numb her mouth, dribble onto her body. Hands found her in the dark. She awoke in the morning on her bathroom floor, the green coat stretched over her body like a heavy sheet of seaweed.

Over the next few days, on white deckchairs, sunglasses still fixed to her face, she read books that had been left behind by the other lost souls; books with bad language, with themes of adventure, sticky from the sun. She was sticky from the sun. She rubbed aloe vera into her sunburn. She turned over onto her side. She ate hotdogs, ketchup oozing out, cocktail umbrellas swept up in her wet hair. She threw her body over inflatable animals and let them carry her through the sea. One day she happened upon a funfair – deserted, unsafe. She went on a machine that spun her in convoluted circles on a leather seat. She felt sick with chaos. She thought her head might fall off. When she stepped off, she threw up.