I continue. ‘Or what if they go through your things and steal your passports? What if they cut your keys?’

‘And come back to murder us?’ His bark of laughter grates, it’s dismissive as if the idea of him, elite soldier, being vulnerable were outside the realms of possibility.

I want to remind them all about the news story from a few months ago. The murder, somewhere in the states. That was an Airbnb wasn’t it? Either way I want to mention it but by the time I’ve ordered my thoughts, the conversation is moving again and it would seem petty to try bring it up now.

‘Tell them about the knickers?’ Claire speaks with laugher in her voice.

‘Knickers?’ Cain says.

Axel laughs, covers his eyes with his palm. ‘It’s nothing.’

‘What’s this?’ I say. ‘I love a knickers story.’

‘Don’t scare them off, Claire, we can get a referral fee if they do it.’ Referral fee, is that the agenda here?

‘It’s not much of a story. Just something we found,’ Claire says, dismissing her husband with the flick of her wrist.

‘Knickers,’ Axel says. ‘Tiny, lacy knickers.’

‘No,’ I say, slowly, my hand coming to my mouth.

‘Yep. Scrunched up down the side of the bed when we were cleaning after someone left.’

‘What sort?’ Cain asks.

‘Gross,’ I say. ‘It doesn’t matter what sort.’

‘A lacy G-string,’ Claire deadpans, her green eyes fixing Cain.

‘We were tempted to contact the guests to return them for a laugh,’ Axel adds.

‘People have sex in your bed and leave their knickers behind?’ Cain says. ‘And pay you for the privilege.’

‘Airbnb is an alternative to hotels and what’s one of the main reason people hire hotel rooms? To have sex with someone they shouldn’t,’ Claire says.

Cain glances across the table at that moment to me, again a question on his face. ‘Do you change your pillowcases and everything?’ he asks.

‘Oh yeah, we change our pillows even.’

‘Sounds foolproof.’

I try now, once more to bring up the incident in the US. ‘What about those rumours, people stealing art and replacing it with replicas, or … you know. The other thing?’ I say.

‘What thing?’ Axel says, hunching over the table, resting on his forearms.

‘A man was killed in an Airbnb. He recorded it and shared the footage, remember?’

‘Oh that? Yeah that wasn’t Airbnb’s fault. Some psychopath just wanted to kill someone.’

Cain is looking down at his phone. ‘Lina,’ he says, pausing the conversation. ‘There’s a three-bedroom place on the lake for three hundred a night. We’ve got more bedrooms. And,’ he says scrolling with his thumb, ‘better views by the looks of it.’