Embarrassment gave way to irritation. What was wrong with him? What had I ever done to the man? I made my way to the other lit doorway and found our bags dumped on the floor by the bed. I wrinkled my nose at the damp and musty smell of the room. It was big and well-proportioned, with some good oak furniture in it, and would have been a fine room, if it were not for the smell, the damp discolouring a corner of the ceiling, the cobwebs, the threadbare carpet and the general air of neglect and decay.

John came into the room. ‘Alright? Sorry about baby brother. He just bit my head off on the stairs. He’s a moody bastard. We’ll catch up with him in the morgen.’

‘We can’t stay here,’ I said faintly. ‘Look at this place. It’s damp. It smells.’

He pooh-poohed all my objections. ‘Don’t be such a girl. What’s wrong with it?’

Nothing I could say would convince him that people didn’t live like this. Eventually, I gave up and went downstairs grumpily to look for clean sheets. The place was so big it actually had a laundry room. In an airing cupboard by the boiler I found some dry blankets, but the only clean sheets I could find were draped over a drying frame pulled up to the ceiling. I couldn’t get the rope undone to bring it down, so I had to climb up on a rickety chair to pull it down. Feeling very sorry for myself, I clumped upstairs with armfuls of blankets and sheets and started to make up the bed. In spite of the cold, I also opened the window to try to air the room a bit.

The bathroom made me want to weep. Again, it would have been a fine room if it had not given the impression that nothing in it had been used for about ten years. There was a worn toothbrush lying on the edge of the sink and a rolled-up tube of toothpaste. A very old towel hung from a hook on the back of the door. The bathtub looked as though someone had come home from a muddy football match some time in 1995, had a bath and decided not to pull out the plug, but just to seal the door of the bathroom and leave time and evaporation to empty the bath. Under the sink, there was a squeezy bottle of Jif and a sponge, neither one of which looked as though they had ever been used. In fact, the sponge was still in its plastic pack of three. The hot water came courtesy of one of those frightening geysers that you had to light with a spill, only there were no spills, just a box of kitchen matches, which bore on them the label of a supermarket chain that had gone out of business two years ago. Somehow I managed to light the gas with only a minor explosion and was rewarded with copious amounts of steaming hot water. Only after about half-an-hour of determined scrubbing, by which time I was rosy and glowing with the exertion, did I deem the bath to be clean enough for me to consign my naked body to it.

I found John downstairs in a kind of small sittingroom, where he had lit a fire and set up his laptop. He was sitting at a desk, a tumbler of whiskey at his elbow, and some dire-looking spreadsheet open on the laptop. ‘You were a long time. Were you lounging around in the bath the whole time I’ve been slaving away down here?’

I sat down on the lumpy sofa and leaned forward to see the titles of the books that were piled higgledy-piggledy on the low bookshelf. There were a lot of them and ranged from a 20-year old physics textbook to Cicero. Eclectic was the word for it. But there was nothing more recent than about ten years ago.

‘What does your brother do?’ I said.

‘Chas? Not a lot.’ He laughed.

‘For a living, I mean.’

‘No idea. He must be living off his savings. He used to be an engineer. Worked for ABB. Spent years in the Far East working on some dam project in the jungle.’

‘Why, what was wrong with it?’

He looked puzzled and then laughed and said, ‘No, an actual dam project, you know, hydro-electrics.’

I felt stupid even though I don’t know how I was supposed to have known that.

‘Although it has been one damn project after another, especially after Katie died. His wife.’

‘He was married?’

‘Yes, tragic business. Ectopic pregnancy, do you know what that is?’ (Yes. I’m not a complete moron.) ‘After the funeral, Charlie lit out for the Far East. We all thought he’d gone away to forget. We half-expected him to come back hitched up to some Filipino babe, because he’s a bit of a geek, my brother, I’m sorry to say, but no. Two years ago he comes back – by then the aged p’s had died and we were on the verge of selling this house – but he turns up, chucks in his job, moves back into the place and buries himself alive in the country.’

I thought that it was unsurprising that Charlie had not managed to find someone to marry him in the Philippines. I mean I expect even your average impoverished desperate Filipina has her standards. I was more surprised that he had managed to find someone to marry him the first time round.

‘I’m going to bed,’ I said. ‘I’m shattered. You coming up?’

‘I’m just going to finish this. I won’t be long.’

I climbed the stairs wearily and let myself gingerly into the bed. At least with the bed made up with the fresh sheets and blankets I could relax a bit and the open window had freshened up the room, even if it was so cold I could see my breath.

I must have fallen asleep because the next thing I knew I was opening my eyes to a dark room. John was still not there. I lay staring at the square of pale night sky in the curtainless window. I could see the light from the room next door lighting up the treebranches opposite. I heard floorboards creak in the next room and the sound of Charlie clearing his throat. It sounded as if he were just on the other side of the bedroom wall. I drifted off again and the next time I woke it was because John was crawling into bed beside me. He was naked and his body was cold. ‘You’re lovely and warm,’ he mumbled, pressing himself up against me. I could smell whiskey on his breath.

‘I’m asleep,’ I protested feebly, but he was not to be deterred.

‘You just lie there,’ he said. ‘I’ll do all the work. God, you’re so hot.’

‘What about Charlie?’

‘What about him?’ he said, his voice muffled by my breasts.

‘He’s right in the next room!’

‘Who gives a fuck? That’s even hotter, knowing my poor little brother’s in the next room, listening to us fucking.’

I suspected that that was half the appeal for John. He was unusually enthusiastic that night. I’m quite noisy generally, but the thought of Charlie just feet away made me determined not to let a squeak escape me and I was doing pretty well until right towards the end, when John was heaving away on top of me and I was lost in one of my own private fantasies, suddenly unbidden I got a flash of Charlie when I’d barged in on him earlier in the evening, his naked muscled torso, close enough for me to catch his scent, a combination of clean sweat, earth and woodsmoke – I got a flash and simultaneously I came out loud, I couldn’t help myself. My coming set John off too (a much quieter affair, more like a grunt of release) and then he rolled off me and we both lay there panting. My heart was beating like a drum. John was smirking smugly. He was asleep in seconds, one hand lying proprietorily on his breast.

I lay awake longer, feeling my heartbeat slow. What was that all about? I fell asleep, wondering.