She lifted the latch and the door flew out of her hand, sideways, slamming back on its runners, and the two of them were in the room, the curtain was billowing, she was falling back on to her narrow single bed and they were falling with her, all three of them on the bed now, fingers in her hair. She laughed. She was waiting, it seemed to her later, for the thing to start – whatever they had come to do.

*

The last time she saw Jane was five years ago. At least, she thinks it was Jane. Claire was home for Christmas, home to her mother’s house, and she walked a long way down the coast on Boxing Day, the hours having expanded to an intolerable size, almost the size of Sundays as a child, when noise and playing were forbidden. She was high on the path, hugging the cliffs, watching the grey English sea wet the shingle, when she saw a woman below her, at sea level, a woman alone, struggling to make real progress through the stones, walking slowly, half-sinking to the side. Ropes of kelp caught around her feet. It was madness to walk on the beach instead of the path. She looked mad. She also looked like Jane. Claire had thought for a moment about scrambling down to meet her, or at least to make sure, but the thought was gone almost as soon as it occurred, and she found that she had turned back all of a sudden, turned as sharply as the wind could turn, from front to back, from help to hindrance.

*

Hotel Maria is a stone-built two-storey house covered in flowerless waxy networks of bougainvillea. The kyria who books her in is undoubtedly Maria: she has the same faded red hair as her sister. Perhaps the colour was genuine after all; or perhaps they are so close that they share their henna. She imagines them painting their curls on a Sunday night. ‘Your luggage?’ Maria asks, pointing at Claire’s small rucksack. ‘Yes,’ says Claire. ‘I’m not staying long.’ Her voice sounds strange. She can still feel the buzzing, the memory of it. She pays for one night in advance.

Her room has bumpy walls that are smoothly plastered white, a gold saint’s portrait above the bed, and blue shutters that let her look down into the square. She drops her bag on the bed and props her postcard against the mirror. Saint Sofia: is she, then, a saint because she had to watch it happen?