I used to be good, she thinks to herself, walking down the corridor away from the restaurant. She takes the inhaler from her pocket and administers a breath. Everything is tiled to repel heat. The walls are painted hospital white. I used to be good. But goodness only belongs to the young. You might not lose it, exactly, but after a point it becomes something else much duller, much less commendable. The asthma, for example. Not smoking because you don’t want to is one thing, but then they diagnose the asthma and it’s nothing heroic after all. Jane would have laughed. All those years not smoking, you’ve got asthma anyway.

At the end of the corridor is the lobby, the massive check-in desk bolted to the floor, the rep’s clipboard and paperwork gone. Beyond the lobby are the rooms.

She thinks she will know which room was hers, but she doesn’t. All the internal doors have been removed: each space opens to her view as she passes, like the pigeonholes at work, and she cannot tell one from another. She loses count.

Her room was number fifteen. She was fifteen at the time. They both were. They noticed the coincidence. Jane found an obscure satisfaction in taking the older room. Fifteen, sixteen. The markers were important. Now Claire forgets.

*

Martyrs must also be young. But how do the young know what they have to lose? What does that kind of martyrdom mean, when your eyes are half-closed? Even Sofia – she was a full-grown woman, yes, but it was her daughters she saw destroyed. Who can judge the sacrifice?

*

They sat on the terracotta-tiled patio outside their rooms and spoilt their dinner with Cheetos. They talked about Kostas. ‘Do you really think he likes me?’ Jane would ask, her neediest hour, and Claire had no choice but to say, yes, I think he does. Underneath the beach towel slung over her shoulders, Jane wore a red bikini with a frill round the edge. Claire could not imagine anything more daring than a red bikini. She had a navy one-piece that squashed her breasts against her ribs, and she changed back into cut-off jeans immediately after swimming.

She liked Kostas too, there’s no denying that, but when she asked him to make her a tequila sunrise he narrowed his eyes and said, ‘Sure’, and forgot to put a cherry in it.

A virgin tequila sunrise is orange juice with grenadine. The syrup soaked upwards through the glass as they watched, like blood unravelling in toilet water. ‘Weird,’ Kostas said. ‘It’s called grenadine, but it’s red.’

*