‘You can use any of the dishwashers,’ said Alex airily.

She made a pile of the plates and took them back across the small sitting room and the hall and into the kitchen. The giant fridge hummed. In an annexe by the side door she found two full-sized dishwashers, with clean and dirty china distributed randomly between them. She put everything into one. There was a huge glass bowl of different kinds of dishwasher tablets, like pick ’n’ mix. She chose one and started up the machine. When she came back into the hall, Dan was waiting.

‘Bedtime,’ he said.

Alex waved them off up the stairs, like they were on a departing cruise ship, and went out into the garden, singing to himself.

The doors were closed to all the empty rooms along the corridor. They pulled things from their backpacks, and the giant suitcase, scattering clothes onto the floor. It was too late for order. Exhaustion hit them, and made them cold.

‘I can’t believe only this morning we were on that ferry,’ said Bea.

He didn’t answer. The unfamiliar bed smelled of washing powder that was not their own, strong and stale. The duvet was too hot and too cold by turns. The window was open, the curtains half closed. They lay next to one another in the strangeness. The mattress was very soft and deep. They listened to the creaks in the unknown, unseen rooms.

‘He’s a fucking mess,’ said Dan.

‘Yes, he is.’

‘I guess you’re used to messes.’

‘Yup.’

They faced each other.

‘What’s all that about your dad?’

‘Alex hates living off him.’

‘He could always stop.’

‘It’s complicated.’

‘Has he ever worked? It’s like benefit scrounging. It’s no different. This place must have cost a ton.’

‘Not that much,’ she said.

‘Not that much?’ repeated Dan, mystified. ‘It’s massive.’

There was silence.

‘Dan,’ she said. ‘Please. Please, try to be nice to him. I know he’s – not like anyone we know. I know how difficult he seems. But he’s so lovely. He is. And he’s my brother. Please try.’

‘I will,’ said Dan. ‘I’m sorry.’

He took her hands. They kissed, to make friends, and to find themselves again.

‘It’s awful, what they’ve done to him,’ she said.

He didn’t listen. Difficult childhoods were not unique, they weren’t even unusual. He lifted off her T-shirt, like the unveiling of a piece of art, and pulled her close. They heard a noise.

‘What’s that?’ he said.

Her breasts were pressed against his chest, her arms around his neck. They stopped and listened. Above, in the ceiling, they could hear a slipping sound, like the dragging of something very light. Then scratching. Then the slipping sound again, light as a brush on the boards above.

‘What could it be?’

The thing above them moved. Then silence. Uncomfortable. They waited, forgetting kissing, not making love.

They both lay still, listening, and after a few minutes, she heard Dan’s breaths fall deeper and deeper, as he went to sleep. Carefully, so as not to wake him she put her T-shirt back on as the rustling in the roof started again. She heard doors shutting below, and the screech and shuffle of the sash windows closing, and then, muffled, the creak of Alex’s tread on the stairs. It was as if he were a child, playing at adulthood in that made-up doll’s house of a hotel. But he was thirty-seven years old. She thought how old they both were; having jobs, and buying cars and travelling from place to place – owning hotels, however chaotic. She was a professional and a taxpayer. Married. Her mind drifted, lost in chronology, so far from her beginning, and long, unknown years from death. She wondered if when she had a baby she would feel settled and grown-up. She didn’t think being a mother would stop her questioning her validity. She couldn’t remember if she’d taken her pill that morning. Then she remembered she had. She put her hand across her tummy, sleepily, listening to the sounds around her, and then the silences between the sounds.