‘On holiday? Oh, for God’s sake! It was nothing. He asked Tiffany to write the foreword for his book, because he says she’s more famous than me. The wanker! Whatever, I’m over it.’

‘I thought it was – I thought maybe you’d got together and then you found out he had a girlfriend already…’

‘What? Nick, you are so fucking ridiculous. Joe is gay.’

‘Gay?’

‘Yes! Now, will you—’

‘I think I saw him. At the festa.’

‘Probably. He stayed on,’ she says. ‘Wanted to see the rest of the island and check out the festival, but he pretended to leave, for Amy’s sake. Are we done?’

She doesn’t wait for a reply, but slams the door in my face. I stand there for a moment, feeling bewildered and stupid, and then go and buy a coffee from the cafe on the waterfront – the same one where I’d bought espressos for Bee and Joe, not all that long ago. It feels cool after the heat in Italy; the sky is the colour of sheet steel, as if it’s going to rain. I shiver. I’m convinced Bethany wasn’t drunk and that she was attacked, but I don’t know why she’s lying or what I’m missing. And who the fuck was having sex in the shed, if it wasn’t Joe and Bee?

I leave a message for Amy, telling her that Bethany won’t go for a brain scan and asking if she’ll meet me in Dad’s flat.

36

AMY

She lets herself into the flat – she still has a set of keys. The place smells stale: Nick’s only spent one night here in nearly ten days, but still, it doesn’t look like it did when she lived here all those years ago. She’d been studying and had started dating Matt. Her father had had to return to Somerset every night to look after Nick, once their mother walked out. No more womanizing during the week.

There’s almost nothing in the fridge; the milk looks as if it’s solidified and there’s something growing out of the draining hole at the back. She boils water, pours it all over a mug to sterilize it, makes herself a herbal tea. Blackcurrant and echinacea. Probably Maddison’s.

There’s a battered copy of The Divine Comedy on a coffee table. She flicks through it while she waits for Nick to turn up, and sees Luca’s name in tiny, flowing handwriting on the frontispiece. She wonders why Nick has got Luca’s copy. Maybe Luca lent it to him, but it doesn’t seem like the kind of thing her brother would read.