We were staying at his cousin’s beach house—the key had been hidden beneath a brick behind a magnolia—and Jim put me in a bedroom that looked out through a small high window to a stretch of sea. After dinner at a hamburger place near the beach we walked back to the house and collapsed on the deckchairs outside. We could hear the small waves breaking against the sand, and there were pinpricks of light—fireflies—flickering like messages, like tiny airborne lighthouses. We stayed up and talked for a long time before Jim yawned and kissed me goodnight. He wasn’t even going to try, I realised, with a thorn of disappointment. I brushed my teeth and my hair, ran a bath and lay in the lukewarm water, watching my fingers turn pale and pucker. The bedroom where I towelled off was hot from the sun shining in the windows all day. The air was still and I lay in bed awake. I kicked off the musty-smelling sheet and slapped at the mosquito buzzing around my ear.

I heard a noise downstairs and my heart thudded. There it was again. I tiptoed to the top of the stairwell. I imagined a burglar searching through my purse, stealing the keys to Jim’s car. Creeping to the landing, I leaned over the banister. There was Jim, standing in the yellowy light of the refrigerator, drinking milk from the bottle. A feeling of foolishness flooded me, mixed with relief. He hadn’t heard me and stood oblivious, swigging the milk, pausing, swigging some more.

‘I’ll pretend I didn’t see that.’

He grinned and turned towards my voice. He wiped his lips with the back of his hand. ‘Can’t sleep either?’

‘Not with someone thumping around like a burglar downstairs.’

‘Sorry. I tried to be quiet.’

I went down and opened the cupboard, handed him a glass. He set it down. With the fridge door shut the kitchen was dark other than the light from the hall bathroom, which gave it a faint glow. Enough to see outlines but not much more.

‘Can I ask you a childish question?’ Jim said.

‘Go ahead.’

‘Did you love Roy?’

‘Is that what’s bothering you?’

Jim cleared his throat. I hopped onto the counter, crossing my legs, leaning forwards on my hands.

‘Don’t answer if you don’t want to.’ He was looking at the fridge still, though he’d already put the milk back and shut the door.

‘No, I want to answer.’

‘Okay.’

The only sound was the high hum of the refrigerator’s motor, and beneath that what I imagined to be the susurration of distant small waves against the shore, though it might have just been the breeze, or the water running through the pipes in the ceiling above us.