A red light glowed on the TV. The kettle switch was blue. An alarm of some kind in the ceiling winked very faintly: the room was alive, too. Maria was nearby – he wasn’t sure where. They’d had a few more minutes before she left the bar, and he’d asked her where she was from. The Philippines, she’d said – which were way off in the South China Sea, somewhere near Japan. What an accomplishment it would be, simply to get to whatever ridge it was called – wherever it was. It would be a day spent better than many, and with that thought in his mind, he realised he was about to go to sleep, and the bed felt softer.

He thought of his mother, and the gentle face he no doubt misremembered, before she got so ill. Elizabeth, Monica, Amy – the girl in the Gloucester station café. The boys on the platform at Crewe, and his silly brother. There were so many other memories too, pounding just like the wind, begging to be let in. The wonder was that soon he would be sleeping, with every likelihood of waking up again, for breakfast.

Maria was thinking, too.

Her husband had texted, just a thoughtful midnight text of love and good wishes: the same as usual, for he was on late shift. It was extra sweet after his disapproval, if that’s what it had been. Perhaps his misunderstanding had been borne of her failure to communicate, but he hadn’t wanted her to make this trip. Now, in bed, she was imagining sleeping with him. Jao’s hard back was turned away from her, covered only by a sheet. Miguel, their youngest boy, was climbing in between them, silent and hopeful. Just minutes before they’d been making love, so what did that say for the child’s timing? He was worming his way in, all six years of him, unnerved by the rattling of the roof, or perhaps the knowledge that his father was off again soon, as his mother made top-secret plans – was she leaving too?

‘Just for a little while – I’ll be back soon!’

But what was a little while in the life of someone six years old? It was so hard to know what any of them really comprehended, and harder sometimes to know what they cared about – but Miguel was super-sensitive, unsettled and needy, and he slid between their bodies, moulding himself into her arms. When she held him tight he seemed to melt into her as if he was only in her imagination – he could almost be there in the hotel bed, as she rolled onto her side and caught the fragrance of his hair.

Inconceivable how sweet a child could smell, and how he could pad across the room wide awake but be so instantly asleep, and reassured – how his skull was already a magical miniature of Jao’s.

She held his ghost. She held it tight.