The Diver and The Lover

by Jeremy Vine

Genres: Contemporary Romance; Holiday Romance

Synopsis

Soaked in sunlight, love and the mysteries surrounding a famous artist The Diver and the Lover is a novel inspired by true events.

It is 1951 and sisters Ginny and Meredith have travelled from England to Spain in search of distraction and respite. The two wars have wreaked loss and deprivation upon the family and the spectre of Meredith's troubled childhood continues to haunt them. Their journey to the rugged peninsula of Catalonia promises hope and renewal.

While there they discover the artist Salvador Dali is staying in nearby Port Lligat. Meredith is fascinated by modern art and longs to meet the famous surrealist.

Dali is embarking on an ambitious new work, but his headstrong male model has refused to pose. A replacement is found, a young American waiter with whom Ginny has struck up a tentative acquaintance.

The lives of the characters become entangled as family secrets, ego and the dangerous politics of Franco's Spain threaten to undo the fragile bonds that have been forged.

A powerful story of love, sacrifice and the lengths we will go to for who - or what - we love.

(P)2020 Hodder & Stoughton Limited

Release date: September 3, 2020

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 368

Sample

She was, she knew for the first time, beautiful.

It came to her that day in 1951 like the opening line of a poem peered at for years but suddenly understood. It came to her without pride. It came without guesswork. It came as a fact.

There were other facts that day. The sun was a fact. Levelled at the two of them, a cannon firing light, the blank mouth roaring silence in a cloudless Spanish sky. The sun’s rays were broken only in moments when they passed the trees. The sea on the other side of the trees was a fact. She felt the mottled morning shadows cross her face. Those shadows were a fact …

And so, she knew in the instant she saw him, was the troubled heart of the boy.

She called him ‘the boy’. He might have been older than her, twenty even. Her sister had no idea he was there, of course. She was wound in, wrapped up like a reel of magnetic tape. Ginny would never blame her for that, not after all Meredith had been through. But Ginny … yes, it was Ginny who saw the boy. She saw her own beauty, and she saw the boy and his broken heart.

That first morning in Cadaqués had started with the routine Ginny and Meredith were falling into on their travels. They had asked for an early call. When the porter knocked rapidly on the door at six fifteen, the sisters rolled out of opposite sides of their double bed as if taking cover from gunfire. They began to dress in silence.

Ginny and Meredith had travelled from Hull, down through France to the north-eastern coast of Spain, with a map that gradually wore away through repeated poking and folding. Ginny had been happy to explore Spain, unbothered about precise locations. Yet Meredith seemed fascinated with this place from the moment they arrived in the country. She had pointed at Cadaqués on the map without speaking, focusing intently, scouring the roads that led to it as if this was a promised land, a place of secrets. She never told Ginny why she had chosen this small town near the coast.

On the room door, as was the way in 1950s Catalonia, small squares of card identifying the guests were slotted into narrow wooden frames –

MEREDITH CAIRNS

GINE MORANHUGH

– the younger girl’s name spelled entirely wrong, of course. Had she known more about this part of Spain, she might have seen the error as a token expression of individuality – a small rebellion against the ruling regime in Madrid. Dissent was Catalan. But General Francisco Franco was a man you did not argue with. In his Spain every name was correctly spelled, especially on the death warrants that had done for tens of thousands. He would not have been the chosen leader in this corner of his country, no matter how many victories he had won on other battlefields. Here in rural Catalonia, Franco’s Guardia Civil patrolled nervously if they appeared at all. To Ginny, who understood none of the politics, there was something bracing about searching for local sights amid an air of tension. She sensed it as soon as they arrived. Even the tapping of the porter’s knuckle was like a secret signal.

Their hotel room was a sight in itself, a bungled attempt at Art Deco. The furnishings seemed too heavy for the space. Lopsided candleholders sprang in threes from thick brass brackets on the walls. Between the two largest windows was a full-length mirror. The glass was gilt-edged with flame shapes bursting from the sides. The floor was bare timber, pockmarked by the shoes of all the guests who had stayed before. In the middle of the floorboards was a faded rug whose pattern was, on close inspection, Arabic script. Their bedside tables were as wide as wardrobes – hefty shellac-finished rosewood blocks, rounded at the corners, with enough space inside for a child to hide in.

Ginny turned slowly, taking in her surroundings. Her gaze came to rest on her sister. Meredith’s puddled skin moved around her like a diving outfit full of water. Ginny minded the cruelty of the thought even before she had it – the other woman took up twice as much of the room as she did. Hair grown wild in the night, Meredith silently wrestled off her nightdress and dropped it on the floor. While Ginny’s skin was white as bathroom porcelain, her sister’s was olive, puckered with lines and folds like a military map; Meredith herself had been the warzone.

Beside the bed was the older sister’s white cane. The wooden floor complained every time she shifted her weight. If Meredith had been a painting, the artist would have apologised for rushing the detail. Her eyes were black dots below thick eyebrows, her mouth as thin as spite. But she was never unkind herself. She was cruelty’s victim, its prize. Meredith was twice Ginny’s age. Thirty-six! A crazy age gap for sisters, almost unnatural. She had been born in the middle of the Great War, Ginny much later.

There were other differences between them. Unless her mind was racing dangerously, Meredith kept her own counsel. She could be guarded to the point of silence. The younger sister was the opposite – open, confident, a happy chatterer. Just occasionally on this trip, Ginny had seen her older sister’s frown lines uncrease as Meredith reached out to her like a trusted confidante. And Ginny had to remind herself of the miracle: For years my sister, seeing nothing, never said a word. She realised how much she loved Meredith. How she could never bear to see her hurt. And those thoughts gave the younger girl a pang – when she finally told Meredith why she had sought her out, would the older woman ever trust her again?

They had decided that early waking was best. So it was early on that first morning in Cadaqués when Ginny caught herself in the full-length mirror and finally understood.

Could beauty – her beauty – be a fact?

It really was.

Somehow, seeing it as a fact, seeing it as information, made the thought less outrageous. It was not headstrong or boastful to know that she was beautiful. Anyway, there was only an instant – just this precise instant, just a second, or maybe two – when she admired herself. She had never done it before. She could be forgiven.

Her own naked body that morning was a revelation. It occurred to Ginny that she had only glanced in pocket mirrors at home and taken in a jigsaw of parts that barely fitted. Small feet, skinny ankles, breasts too large, shoulders sloped. Neck a long line that slid away to nothing. Lips too heavy. She had once tipped a hand mirror at an angle to see what lay between her legs and was immediately remorseful at the intrusion into her own privacy.

Finally she had a full-length image of herself. Hotel Maravillas del Mar was not expensive but the mirror was a luxury. For the first time Ginny saw harmony in her own height and skin and shape, as her sister’s struggle with pantyhose turned into a catastrophic ballet behind her.

Even at eighteen, she was taller than Meredith. In a single year Ginny must have shot up half a dozen inches. White legs that had been squat were silken pins now, calves narrow like you saw on the swimsuit ladies in Illustrated, the colour magazine her mother had every week for fourpence. The walking she did every morning with her sister had given her waist and thighs tone. She rolled her hips tentatively now, stepping on the spot to move her pelvis left and right. A line of muscle formed in her stomach and she wondered what it was there for, how she had earned it. Now she turned full-on to the mirror like an actress entering a scene, conscious of her every inch.

The triangle of black hair between her legs looked stray. She wondered what a man would do, or would become, were she ever naked in front of him like this. Would he become breathless, latch his mouth onto her breast? What would her skin, her freckled skin, taste like in his mouth?

When she had these thoughts, it was always an older man. She imagined a gentle swish across her belly, separate fingertips, a gossamer touch. A hum in her ears, her mouth becoming wetter.

She looked enquiringly into her own face and tried a knowing smile. Could she convince a man she had the confidence she saw in adults? The experience, the self-assurance? Her blond bob sat, in the modern style, high above her neck. When she shook her hair for effect, it disappointed her by moving only a little. That smile, though – her smile was not the smile of a child any more. Her green eyes glistened, and when she moved her chin up and parted her lips, even without the lipstick she had begun to apply on this trip, she looked incandescently feminine.

Ginny shifted to the right. The sun was now directly behind her, shining into the mirror, a great torrent of light across her shoulders like a waterfall. The body she saw was reduced to silhouette, framed like a shop window dummy. Enjoying the effect, she moved her hips and rolled her head. But there was suddenly a crash behind her and a theft of light as the blind snapped down …

‘I can’t see it!’

Meredith.

They were at the top of the outcrop, a few feet from the path that led from the grounds at the back of the hotel, the route having wound and climbed for nearly a mile. The path had started at the place where the hotel lawn stopped and nature took over. The sisters had little knowledge of what they were passing, and now stopped to stare at a copse of freshly harvested cork trees.

‘Look, Meredith, the trunks are narrow where the men cut the bark away, I guess,’ said Ginny. ‘They use the cork for – wine, and …’ She tailed off, feeling silly. She would not have passed for an expert in anything. The pair walked up to the trees, put their hands on the cork innards and breathed in.

‘It smells like warm bread,’ said Meredith. They gazed around them in silence. There were yucca plants here too – a cactus in all but name, hostile-looking. The leaves were narrow, pointed, sawlike. Most flowered at ground level. A few rose from the soil like dwarf palm trees that never moved in the wind. Their trunks were gnarled, armoured. The spike from a yucca had already ripped a hole in Ginny’s socks, and now she knew to stay clear.

As patiently as she could, the younger girl was saying: ‘Your book is in the hotel safe, yes?’

Meredith paused. She looked as if she was thinking hard.

‘Yes?’ Ginny prompted. ‘Remember I took it there? So it couldn’t be lost?’

‘I’m sorry. I must have just forgot.’

‘I know how precious it is to you –’

‘Yes, it is.’

‘– but Merry, when you suddenly say, “I can’t see!”—’

‘I didn’t. I said, I can’t see it.’

‘It worried me, that’s all.’

‘I know.’

‘When you panic,’ Ginny went on, ‘when you feel the world closing in, just stay calm if you can, okay? Until you’ve thought it through.’

‘I count to five.’

‘Whatever works for you.’

‘Perhaps a million. I could count to a million.’

Ginny saw her sister’s faint smile and relaxed. ‘I care for you, Merry, that’s all.’

‘I’m getting better. It’s just that a lot happened.’

‘I know it did, sweetheart, I know.’

Ginny also knew Meredith would panic again over the whereabouts of her only valued possession, a battered green scrapbook full of mysterious cut-outs and sketches. Slashes of crayon and pencil alongside pictures pasted from magazines. Meredith kept the scrapbook close and Ginny could never ask about its history. The best tonic for Meredith was sisterly love, patience and calm. Not questions. Certainly not challenges. Calm was the medicine. Time was the measure.

‘Why don’t we have these plants in England?’ Meredith suddenly asked.

‘Why would we want them? They’re vicious,’ said Ginny.

‘Yes. My leg is bleeding.’

Ginny looked down. The cut across Meredith’s calf was precise enough to have been made by a shaving razor. Small droplets of blood bulged from the wound. ‘Oh, Meredith, come here.’ Ginny took her handkerchief and knelt, wrapping the material around her sister’s leg. Around her own it might have gone twice; with Meredith’s she only just managed to get the ends to meet. ‘There.’ She tied a knot. The blood was stopped.

She had believed this landscape would help her sister. In the dining room the night before, Ginny had heard a podgy Englishman with a loud voice and a shrunken wife speaking like a college lecturer: ‘The crops here are olives, almonds, rice and potatoes. Fruit farms have sprung up to cater for the demands of cities growing quickly since the war. Wherever we look,’ he announced pompously, ‘we will observe vineyards stretching into the distance.’ But here by the sea Ginny did not see a landscape that matched the self-regarding man’s description. The coastline was not fertile. The ground was parched, almost lunar. Bright greens had given way to dirty browns and rocks as black as charcoal. Now, on their first morning walk behind the hotel, they found strange combinations of dark crags and vivid blooms. Wind and wave had created spectacular geological outcrops that froze hulks of rock in the shape of spray. It was an otherworldly place.

Ginny remembered a strange moment in the journey. The sisters had boarded a bus, only to discover it had broken down and been sitting in the same spot for an hour, the passengers cooking behind the dirty glass. An old Spaniard, stripped to his vest and glistening with sweat, got up in the seat in front of them and passed Ginny a guidebook in English. He gave them a shrug and a toothy smile, his gestures indicating it had been abandoned on the seat beside him and he had no use for it. So, as they waited and Meredith dozed, Ginny read about Catalonian history and tried to be interested – the Goths, the Moors, Charlemagne. A passage about the marriage of Barcelona’s Count Ramon Berenguer IV to Queen Petronila of Aragon in 1137 sent her straight to sleep as the dates and names all blurred, defeating her attempts to take them in. Then a single line jumped into her dream and she woke: ‘From the seventeenth century, Catalonia was the centre of a separatist movement.’ Separatist? She opened the book to find the reference, flipping the pages back a century to try to work out where it had started, this desire to be a nation apart from the rest of Spain. Why would any group of people want to mark out a new border through fields and roads, and frisk their compatriots when they came to visit? It was unfathomable to her. But she got lost in the guidebook looking for answers, and turned to a sleeping Meredith to talk about it. As Ginny poked her older sister, the bus started with a roar and she woke. The windows rattled and the passengers cheered. ‘Separatist,’ said Ginny above the noise. ‘What is that exactly?’

Before Meredith could reply, the man in the vest suddenly stood and turned again, his eyes alight. He snatched back the book and tossed it onto the seat beside him. For a second he froze, as if worrying he had overreacted, and then pointed to his ears and clapped his hands over them. He moved a single finger to his lips, vibrating the finger to shush the sisters, his eyes bulging in alarm. The bus took a corner and he was thrown back into his seat. Ginny giggled, but when she looked at Meredith she saw her sister was not laughing.

Even now, as they walked in the sun, the older woman’s face was set into an expression of grim determination. ‘I remember the name of those plants now. They’re yuccas,’ said Meredith as they walked. ‘They’re incredibly tough.’

‘A kind of cactus?’

‘I suppose so. They grow in cemeteries for some reason. They’re hardy. They smell – sour. Like bad fruit.’

The pair moved on. The breeze circling them was like the air from a fire. They must have gone a mile, the hotel a long way behind them now. But Ginny was sure the climate, and the walking, were good for Meredith. The path took them right, and it was then she saw him, through a line of eucalyptus trees.

It was the merest movement at first. She thought it was perhaps the bright blue plumage of a bird. Meredith walked on as Ginny stopped.

‘I’ll catch you up in a minute.’

‘What is it?’

She lowered her voice to a murmur and made a shooing gesture with her hand. ‘Walk slowly, Merry. I’ll catch you up.’

Meredith looked at her quizzically with those button-black eyes, but could not find the words to object. Ginny took ten steps and peered through the eucalyptus.

She saw his sadness before she saw his face. She could do that, she thought – see a mood. Ginny knew he was broken-hearted from the way his shoulders sloped. In a single movement he tore off a large blue shirt. His skin was bronzed, his arms and neck muscular. He reached down and she realised he was taking off his underpants.

Now he was naked.

Ginny shot a furtive glance at Meredith. She was fifty yards away, peering at insects on a pond.

Ginny looked back at the boy, squinting through the sun at him and blinking away a bead of sweat. He turned towards her, unclothed, contoured, the body of an athlete. Breathing quicker, she drew closer to see what was going on. Her way was blocked by thick shrubs, full-bloomed corema and santolina. Carefully she edged around the grey-green leaves and yellow buds into the shade, not wanting him to hear or see her moving closer. Ferns clawed at the fabric around her waist. She felt her skin glide against its own sweat.

The boy’s body was broken into squares that opened and closed in the shifting gaps of light between leaves and branches, each an imperfect snatch of a whole she could not see. He was local, Spanish or Portuguese for sure. His thick waves of brown hair shone in the sun. Different sections of his frame were displayed as she shifted against the greenery.

There was a moment when he seemed to bow his head, breathing deeply, shoulders moving. Suddenly he shouted – the voice more like a yelp.

She could no longer see him.

Where had he gone?

Oh, God! Over the edge!

Ginny sprang forward, kicking at the bushes in her path and eventually bursting from the tangle, tripping and almost falling upon the spot where the boy had stood only seconds before.

His clothes were in a pile at her feet. Chest heaving, on her hands and knees, she gulped as if drowning in light. Ginny got back to her feet. She stepped towards the cliff edge.

Where is he?

No … this could not be … the boy had gone over the precipice. The rocks must have been a hundred feet down. He had been dashed to pieces. Ginny felt sick as she tiptoed further towards the cliff edge. The dry grass scraped her ankles. She was gorged with the brutality of what the boy had done. He took his own life. Surely no one would survive that plunge. And what a cry! Could she have saved him if only she had shouted, if only she had not got tangled in those bushes?

Ginny tiptoed forward, inch by inch, looking for his body on the rocks or in the sea.

Far out she saw a vessel large enough to be a battleship. It sat low and long in the shimmering water. She wondered if the boat might be American. The thought distracted her for a second. Then vertigo – a spinning of the mind she had never felt before – made her lean back and reach for something to hold. But there was nothing, and a gust of wind ten times more powerful than any she had felt that morning took her forwards. The earth under her feet at the edge of the cliff gave way.

Ginny fell. She opened her mouth to scream.

Before any sound emerged, the girl’s drop was harshly broken as she landed on a lower ledge below the outcrop. The small patch of level ground now supporting her was no more than five feet below the clifftop. Fear engulfed her. If the ground crumbled beneath her, she would fall like the boy, fall to her death on the rocks below.

She found her voice and, without thinking, screamed.

‘Merry! Meredith! Meredith!’

Nothing. The sun was fierce, the hot wind whipped around her. Nature would snatch and claim her. Rip her on the rocks, toss her body into the gaping sea. But she wanted to live.

‘It’s Ginny!’ she screamed at the sky. And although the sun and wind were burning, she felt a shiver pass from her shoulders to her legs.

A head appeared above her, framed by the bright blue above them, silhouetted by the sun.

‘Ginny? Ginny!’

‘Meredith! I saw something, I went to the edge, the edge gave way. Help!’ She was trying desperately to sound calm.

‘Ginn—’

The word disappeared down Meredith’s throat. Dazzled, Ginny could only see the outline of her body. She heard her sister speak again.

‘Ginny,’ said Meredith, standing on the clifftop, ‘I can’t see.’

‘Do you mean it?’

The moment seemed to stretch. There was no answer from Meredith, just a sob.

‘Don’t move another inch, Meredith,’ Ginny said as reassuringly as she could. ‘Don’t come towards me. Please. There’s a big drop.’

Ginny’s heart banged. Above her Meredith froze. She counted, ‘One, two, three …’

‘Sit down where you are,’ Ginny called. ‘I’m fine. Just don’t move forwards, whatever you do. Do your count and sit down.’

She saw Meredith move back a little then crouch down onto the grass, disappearing from Ginny’s view.

A minute passed. Ginny did her best to stay calm. ‘Can you still not see?’ she called.

She heard Meredith’s voice. ‘I heard you screaming. I looked for you. And then … no, I can’t.’

‘Oh, it’s my fault, I know it is! I panicked you! Meredith, I am so sorry, I didn’t think. I cried for help …’ Ginny turned to the sea, weeping silently like a child, wondering for how long this small ledge of cracked mud would hold her weight. ‘Just relax for as long as you need. Let’s both of us … please, Meredith, just relax.’

Ginny knew she must not burden her sister by shouting any more. But then she saw Meredith leaning over the cliff edge, stretching blindly for her.

‘Pull on my arm, it doesn’t matter if it breaks.’ The older woman’s voice was muffled. Her face was in the soil, her entire body flat against the ground.

‘Merry, I don’t want to pull you over the edge.’

‘Just take my arm, it doesn’t matter.’

Vertigo hit her again. She gripped Meredith’s arm.

‘This’ll hurt, Meredith.’

She yanked the arm, praying her sister would not slide forwards. She kicked a foot up to find a knot of branch in the face of the rocks.

Her foot slipped. Meredith screamed. ‘Don’t let go, Ginny! It doesn’t matter about me!’

Ginny kicked up again, this time with her left foot. It found a protruding knuckle of rock that felt no bigger than a tennis ball.

‘Pull, Meredith!’

Face down in the grass, trying not to be pulled forwards, Meredith screamed again. Her arm seemed to crack as Ginny lunged for the grass on the clifftop with her free hand, still gripping her sister, using her left foot to push herself up by inches. She grabbed at Meredith’s shirt and felt it rip in her hands. Meredith screamed even louder.

‘Nearly there,’ Ginny panted as her right knee cleared the top edge of the cliff. She scrambled forwards, feeling one hand shred Meredith’s shirt, ripping the material all the way up her back.

Meredith stayed lying down, breathing hard, legs spread, star-shaped in the grass. Ginny was on her haunches, feet tucked underneath her bottom, chest heaving. ‘Oh, Merry.’ She started to cry with shock and relief. ‘Oh my goodness me.’

‘Are you safe?’ Meredith asked, her face still buried in the grass.

‘Yes. Yes. But you …’ Ginny crawled to Meredith, brushed the hair away from the side of her face. ‘Lift your head, Meredith.’

She did.

‘Anything?’

‘Some light,’ said Meredith.

Ginny softly moved more hair away from her sister’s face. ‘It’s coming back? Please God that—’

‘No. Yes. The light, a bit, and – slowly the shapes are coming.’ She turned over onto her back, blinking rapidly. ‘What happened?’

‘The ground gave way. I walked too close to the edge.’

‘Why?’

Ginny stared at where it had happened, the edge of the cliff now missing a scoop of soil, the sea beyond sparkling like foil. The scene looked so undramatic now, just a divot in the cliff edge.

Then she remembered the heaving shoulders of the boy and his agonised cry. ‘Oh, but Merry, I saw something terrible.’ Ginny had not meant to tell her sister for fear of upsetting her. But now she blurted out the story.

As Meredith stood, Ginny saw what a mess she was. Mud on her face, blouse shredded. Rubbing her eyes as if she could massage her sight back, the older woman was tearful too. ‘Jumped?’

‘A huge way down. So far I can’t see where he landed.’

Meredith repeated, ‘The young man jumped?’ She shivered.

They walked to the edge, stood there, held each other, backed off. The women were both crying freely now, hugging each other. Meredith’s upper body was exposed and pulling the fragments of ripped blouse together did not cover her. Ginny pointed at the garments on the ground.

‘Look there. Wear the boy’s shirt.’

‘I can’t.’ She was almost hysterical.

‘It’s big. Put it on.’

‘I don’t feel I should, Ginny. Not if he’s gone.’

‘They’re just clothes, darling sis. They’re not him.’

Meredith reluctantly picked up the blue shirt. ‘We must tell someone.’ She removed her ripped blouse to try the shirt on. Ginny felt dizzy with the strangeness of it all. Her sister, naked from the waist up in the sun; the clifftop both open to the ocean and blocked off from the land by the thicket behind them; and the blue shirt, voluminous on the boy but now clothing Meredith as tightly as a glove.

Ginny knelt and arranged the remaining clothes in respectful silence. ‘Shoes, socks.’ Meredith tucked the socks into each other and her sister knew, from that small moment attending to detail, that her sight had returned. Ginny slid the white underpants into the middle of the pile without naming them. There was a blue piece of cord he must have used as a belt. She wrapped it around her hand and placed it on the socks. The boy’s red sports shoes sat neatly on top, toes pointing at the sun, a memorial. She reached a decision. ‘You and I will bury them, Meredith.’

‘Oh.’

‘As he’s dead—’

‘Yes, we must.’

‘Are you okay now?’

‘I think so. It just scares me, when I can’t see,’ said Meredith flatly. ‘What happens?’

Ginny stared at her.

‘When I go blind,’ Meredith elaborated. ‘What happens?’

‘I can only tell you what the doctors said. You remember. A link between the brain and the body, some sort of physical shutdown, “expressed in the nervous connection to the retina”, wasn’t that the phrase? Because of what happened to you.’

‘It scares me,’ she repeated.

‘A prisoner went blind when the verdict came back in his trial. He was accused of a murder he didn’t commit. He knew he would get the death penalty if he was convicted. When the jury foreman said the word “guilty”, he went blind.’

Ginny wondered if she should have told such a morbid story, so she added: ‘I’m just saying it so you know you’re not alone.’

‘Will it always happen?’

‘Not if we get you better, lovely sister. That’s what we came away for.’ Again, that pang, deep in Ginny’s stomach, at the untruth that came so easily to her lips.

Carefully, the sisters picked up the boy’s clothes from the ground. Their faces grim and heads bowed, they walked slowly back towards the hotel, a funeral procession.

Two hours later, the sisters were sitting on a banquette in one of the two front bay windows of the hotel as guests came and went in ones and twos through the main doors. At the reception desk on the far side of the room, a radio crackled with news in Spanish. Bloated flies travelled with the new arrivals, almost big enough to demand rooms of their own. Above their heads a fan whirred uselessly.

Ginny looked around her. The walls and floors of the hotel were dark wood, almost black. The lack of colour meant the daylight behind them was stolen as soon as it passed into the room. Long rugs lay ruckled as if abandoned. Ginny glanced down. Beneath her feet were red roses stitched into a washe. . .