‘People have sex in your bed and leave their knickers behind?’ Cain says. ‘And pay you for the privilege.’ He glances across the table to me, a question on his face. He turns back to the others. ‘Do you change your pillowcases and everything?’ he asks.

Am I doing the right thing?

‘Oh yeah, we keep the spares locked in the cupboard beneath the stairs.’

‘Sounds foolproof.’

I try 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, which are covered in black hair.

‘A man was killed in a WeStay. Remember? The killer recorded it and shared the footage.’

‘Oh that?’ Axel blows air dismissively. ‘That wasn’t WeStay’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, ‘we’re much closer to the lake.’

I hold out my hand. ‘Let me see.’ It’s the big house, with the steep driveway, up on the hill. Walking distance from the Landing Cafe but not on the water like ours.

‘It’s nicer inside but we could easily tidy our place up to the same level,’ Cain says.

I see all the other listings dotted around the lakes area. Lots of people are doing it apparently.

Claire interrupts. ‘Lina, you’ve not seen the terrace!’

‘It’s finished?’

‘Come on,’ she says. ‘Let’s have a look.’ She leads me outside on to their deck, up a set of steps. The city emerges from beyond the rooftops, an entire landscape before us. All those lights, embers in the darkness. The terrace is on the roof of their house. It’s fake grass and deck chairs. Is this new addition in the tens or hundreds of thousands? It’s hard not to feel jealous of their lives.

‘God, look at that,’ I say.

‘It’s nice, right?’ she says. ‘Good night for it too.’

‘Stunning.’ I can barely keep the note of envy out of my voice. I can’t imagine where all the money comes from. There’s Claire’s yoga studio and Axel has one of those gyms that’s full of ropes, boxes and tractor tyres. It must be doing well because he wants to open a chain of them, an empire. Axel was the one that put the idea in Cain’s head to start his own personal training business. He even suggested the name, Commando Fitness. Cain cringed when he told me. ‘I like it,’ I’d lied.