As they came through the gates, they heard the thick thud of a rock bassline. The sun was behind the trees. They parked in the smoky shadows. Dirty guitar and drums soaked the air. Nirvana’s ‘Love Buzz’. Alex came running out of the hotel. He was barefoot, and he flung his arms wide.

‘Just in time!’ he shouted.

Bea and Dan exchanged a look.

‘What for?’ said Dan warily.

‘Tea? Booze? Booze? Tea?’ His voice was shrill. ‘Booze?’

He rushed inside ahead of them and disappeared through the fire door.

‘Is he high?’ said Dan.

‘I don’t know.’

The garden was strewn with traces of activity, the mower stood abandoned in a stretch of tattered stalks. There were two empty bottles of wine, half a baguette, a T-shirt, and a five-litre pot of white paint, on its side on the grass, with a skin forming over the puddle.

‘Getting some things together!’ they heard Alex shout from inside. ‘Hold on!’

‘Look at all this,’ said Dan, setting the paint pot upright, and shaking his head.

Alex came running out, clutching the hotel visitors’ book to his chest and a fistful of pens, which he threw down on a table.

‘I thought if I paint the tables they won’t look so nasty,’ he said. ‘I should sand them but I don’t have a sander. I should sand them. I should’ve done it before. I haven’t done it.’

They tried not to stare. He sat down and rubbed his hands together and opened the visitors’ book.

‘Robert Robertson!’ he said. ‘Too obvious? Tom Thomas. Tom. Tim. Andrew. Thomason Anderson. Shit. Can’t think.’

Bea walked slowly towards her brother. Her skirt was pale in the dusk. The white paint on the grass glowed and the sky shone like opal.

‘Has something happened?’ she asked.

Alex looked up at her. ‘Kind of.’

‘What is it?’

‘They’re coming out.’

‘Who?’

He didn’t answer. She was surprised she’d had to ask, she knew who.

‘Our parents,’ she said.

He nodded, looking up at her as if there was something she could do. There was nothing. She sat down next to him. They didn’t speak.

‘Your parents are coming here?’ said Dan.

Bea and Alex were looking at one another like people clinging to wreckage.

‘When?’ she asked.

‘Tomorrow.’

‘It’s OK.’

‘It isn’t.’

‘When were they here last?’ she asked.

‘He comes –’ he shook his head, ‘they come – every couple of months.’

‘How long for?’

Alex looked down. ‘A few days, a couple of days.’ He shrugged, blinking. ‘She came alone, once.’

Dan was embarrassed. He started to pick up the bottles from the grass.

‘What’s really sick’, said Alex, ‘is that it’s sort of nice they bother.’

She tried to take his hand but he pulled it away to bite his thumbnail. Dan approached the table.

‘We’ll help you clear up,’ he said.

Alex looked at him as if they’d never met.

‘What do they come for?’ asked Dan.

‘Just normal shit,’ said Alex. ‘Whatever.’