“It’s lovely to meet you, Sadie. See you in the morning.” The woman went out a door opposite the door they’d come in. They could hear her tick away on the floorboards. Then the house was silent all around them.

“Why’d she call you Lenny?” asked Sadie.

“Because it’s my name.” He gave the air mattress a kick. “My actual name. Leonard. You know that. My family calls me Lenny. I hate it.”

“I knew it was your name, but I didn’t know it was your name,” she said.

“I hate it,” he repeated.

She felt wild with various discomforts. “I need to pee.”

They were in a room with three doors: the one they’d come in; the door through which the woman had left; and a door to the outside with windowpanes. The rain seemed to patter at all of them.

“It’s too confusing,” said Jack. “Go outside.”

“Go outside?” She opened the door they’d come through, only to be faced with half a dozen other doors, all closed. She might find a toilet behind any of them, or a sleeping stranger. Already Jack had opened the back door. “Well, I’m having a slash outdoors,” he said.

“Easy for you to say.”

“G’wan,” he said. “G’wan, g’wan, g’wan.”

Could be worse, she told herself. She was wearing tights and a dress, so she took off her coat and her tights and went out in the rain. It was cold, but she was cold—she could hardly get any colder.

“You done with your slash?” she asked.

“Done.”

“Here, give me your hand. Is your entire family here?”

“I imagine.”

“Are they watching me pee in the rain?”

“Without a doubt.”

“Who was that lady?”

“That lady was the bride. Fiona. Did I not say?”

“You did not. Okay. Done.”

Inside Jack found a little lamp to switch on, clamped to the edge of a stepladder. The walls were vivid green, and he looked like a Toulouse-Lautrec lady, lit from underneath, glamorous, sure to die or go blind or mad.

The idea of an air mattress and an electric blanket had sounded like a disaster sandwich to Sadie, but she put on her underpants and took off her wet dress and used it to dry her wet knees, and then, cold to the bones, she slid in. She’d never slept under an electric blanket. It was warm, lulling, and she felt like a little abandoned animal whose mother has died but who yet might be saved by technology. Incubated. That’s how she felt. Maybe she would be electrocuted, and maybe the air mattress would spring a leak and they would sail around the room as it emptied out. For the moment she had never felt anything more exquisite, this warm, buoyant raft heading out to sleep.