‘There’s the whisky we’ve hardly touched,’ said Irene. ‘And I think Neil brought brandy as well. That somehow seems good for things like this. You two fetch it and I’ll go and get dressed.’

She hardly had any clean clothes left, so she put on her grey skirt and ruffled top. They sat round the table on the upper deck, Katherine asleep now but still tight in her mother’s arms. Every few minutes, Lorrie would bend forward and kiss her forehead.

‘I’m exhausted,’ she said. ‘I feel as if I’ve been up for days.’ She tipped a shot of whisky down her throat, then, immediately afterwards, one of brandy, and blinked several times in surprise.

‘Here’s to Irene,’ said Neil. ‘Our hero.’

‘No, really!’ But she felt light-headed with relief. She drank her brandy, feeling its heat burn through her like a lit fuse. Everything around her seemed suffused with a new radiance. The sky to the west was a glorious deep-swirled pink now; below it, the water glowed and above, there were rosy banks of clouds. She smiled giddily at Luke. ‘Look at the clouds,’ she said.

He smiled at her but didn’t look round. ‘Yes.’

‘What shall we eat this evening?’

‘I feel a bit sick actually,’ said Mickey. He had beads of sweat on his forehead and had turned a curious green colour.

‘Shock,’ said Irene, drinking another hot bolt of brandy and thinking suddenly of Juliet crouched by a lavatory bowl, heaving up her guts.

‘Oysters,’ said Neil. ‘In August. I warned you.’

‘Don’t say that! I’ll be fine. It’ll pass.’

But a few minutes later he went downstairs and they heard him retching violently.

Irene knocked at the lavatory door.

‘Can I do anything?’

‘No,’ he gasped.

‘He’ll be out of it for the night,’ said Neil when she came back up to the deck. ‘Food poisoning.’

‘Horrible. Poor thing.’

‘Shall we leave him to it and find somewhere to eat?’

‘I’m staying here with Katherine,’ said Lorrie. ‘You go, Neil.’

‘No way.’

‘I don’t mind.’

‘We’ll have bread and cheese and red wine. It’ll be romantic, the two of us.’

‘And Katherine.’

‘And Katherine, of course.’

‘And Mickey chucking up next door.’

‘Better and better.’

Lorrie laid her hand across Neil’s. ‘You two go,’ she said.

Irene looked across at Luke. ‘Shall we?’

‘Why not?’

Twenty-nine

They left the quayside and went up the hill, to the older part of the town, where they found a restaurant with a few tables on the terrace, overlooking the lake. Luke ordered a risotto and Irene a cassoulet.

‘Because I’m starving,’ she said. ‘I can’t remember when I was last this hungry. Years and years ago. I could eat two meals.’ And it was true; she felt a cavernous hollow inside her; her hands shook with hunger. Hunger or some other mysterious emotion that gnawed at her insides.