Lydia stays in shadow in the corridor. The door is ajar. Joe’s whispering. She can barely hear him. Underneath whatever he’s whispering, she can hear the tedious hum of the news. The missing man. She’s glad it isn’t a woman who’s gone missing, at least, not here, not on her holiday.

‘Tell me you didn’t send that text,’ Cathy says loudly. Lydia takes another step forwards, almost walking into the light. Cathy never shouts. Never raises her voice. Is never anything but calm, composed, put together. Before either of them can say anything more, Lydia takes a step forward. She hesitates, just once, at the door. Her fingers illuminated but the rest of her in darkness. Something in Lydia’s gut is telling her that she can’t ever return to this moment, her fingertips pushing into the light, against the point of no return.

‘Of course I didn’t,’ Joe says and, despite herself, Lydia feels herself sag with relief. ‘I said I wasn’t going to.’

‘What text?’ she says, and steps into the light. She is looking at her husband, but she is absorbing too the atmosphere between him and his sisters.

Cathy has her shoulders up. She catches Lydia looking and crosses her arms against her body. She glances at Joe, then seems to make a decision. Immediately, she strides towards the door, glancing at Lydia as she walks past her. Time seems to slow down as she does so, like they are two ballroom dancers, faces side by side, bodies heading in different directions. Something is communicated from Cathy – the queen of subtext – to Lydia. ‘Sorry,’ Cathy mutters. Somewhere between excuse me and an apology. Lydia stands aside and lets her go.

‘What text?’ she says again to Joe. He turns in a tiny, useless circle, his hands in his hair. He pauses, then speaks again. ‘Let’s …’ he says, but doesn’t finish the sentence, as he leads her down the corridor, back to their neat, small room full of the moonlight she only just left behind, when everything felt different.

‘I don’t know where to start,’ he says, standing by their bed.

‘What?’ Lydia’s eyes narrow as she watches him, mystified. He’s wearing a pink towel and a t-shirt, an absurd combination. What is he doing? He puts his hands in his hair and the motion pulls up his top.

‘Something’s happened,’ he says. He sits down and his bare feet dangle off the high bed. Then he stands again, whips off the towel and pulls on a pair of jogging bottoms. Lydia watches in the dispassionate, intimate way of the married couple.

She is eerily calm. She never thought she would be, if her worst nightmare came true – some betrayal by Joe, quite what she is not yet sure – but she is completely calm.

‘What’s happened?’ she says.

Joe knots his hands together in his lap. ‘I wanted to send this text,’ he says, biting his lip. Behind him is a kettle and set of cups, dusty with disuse, and three white crosses on the wall. His eyes go to the left and the right. Lydia tries to hold his gaze to her, but she can’t. It’s like trying to anchor a boat to the air.