Neither of them spoke for a long moment. Neither of them looked away. They stayed eye to eye, the sound of the shells falling far beyond like the subdued whimpers of a person trying not to cry. Then the anger relaxed from his face a little, but his eyes were still dark blue and unsmiling. “Your face is so dirty right now all I can see are the whites of your eyes.”

She laughed and wiped a futile hand across her cheek. “What a day to have a clean bed. Now I have to take a freezing shower and then spend the next two hours trying to get warm. What I wouldn’t do for hot water.”

Dan raised his eyebrows. “I have hot water.”

“What? Where?”

“I didn’t know you didn’t. Fuck,” he swore. “Sometimes I think being an officer just means being ignorant of the way things really are. I’m ordering you to go and use the shower on this floor. I will personally stand guard to make sure nobody else uses the bathroom while you’re in there.” He stood up. “Let’s go.”

She was marched to the bathroom where he pushed her in, along with a clean shirt of his that he’d grabbed on the way. She shut the door and could hear him, while she let the deliciously warm water run over her and the dirt wash away, redirecting anyone who wanted to use the bathroom, brooking no opposition.

Eventually, she heard a knock on the door and Dan’s voice call out. “Jess? Are you all right in there?”

She turned off the tap. “Sorry!” she called back. “I’ll be out in a minute. It’s just that I haven’t felt hot water since Paris.” She dried quickly, slipped on Dan’s shirt which was, she thought, perfectly decent, being longer than some of the playsuits she’d once modeled for Vogue, and stepped out of the bathroom.

“We’d better get you tucked safely away before anyone sees you in that,” he said.

She laughed. “I’m sure that, after today, they’ll all be staying well away or you’ll be getting them to wash my jeep next. Can I just have one last look?”

“At what?” he asked, following her down the hall.

She pushed open the door to his room and crossed to the balcony. “At this,” she said, pointing at the sky and sinking into the sofa.

He sat down too, stretching his arm along the back of the sofa. Jess leaned her head against his shoulder. And Dan didn’t shift uncomfortably away or take it as an invitation to do anything else; he just reached over for the blanket folded on the arm of the sofa, draped it around her, dropped his arm to her shoulder and let her curl into his side while they passed the cognac glass back and forth and watched the electric sky erupt magnificently around them.

Minutes passed. “Did you really mean what you said this morning?” Dan asked eventually.

Jess’s mind cast back through the day to her dawn conversation with Dan and she smiled ruefully. “About not having sex for more than twelve months? Yes.”