Nick sits on the sofa, and Matt hands him a glass of Merlot and tops up hers. Nick shifts uncomfortably. He must have been in touch with Bethany.

‘You know what Bethany’s like. She probably changed her mind about working on it. Or fell out with someone.’

‘That’s more like it,’ says Matt, going into the kitchen. ‘She never got on with that new girl, did she?’ He hesitates and she knows he wants to say The brown one, but Sara knocked that kind of thing out of him. ‘The one with the Scottish accent,’ he says after a beat. ‘Tiffany MacGregor or something.’

He reappears a couple of minutes later with a tray; plates of gloopy slices of lasagne and peas; another bottle of red.

‘Thanks, Matt,’ says Nick, passing a plate to Amy.

‘How’s work?’ Matt asks.

‘Same. Tamsyn breaks my balls on the days she wants me in the studio, but then I can go for a week without any work.’

‘You should set up on your own. Take control of your life.’ Matt shovels in a sloppy forkful of pasta. ‘Do an MBA or a course on entrepreneurship. Can even do them online now.’

Her brother doesn’t even bother responding to this. Once he’d have given Matt a playful punch and told him he’d got into photography because he wanted to be an artist – not a suit, like him.

She eats listlessly, hardly tasting the food, and after she’s had a couple of bites, her stomach starts to convulse, as it always does at this point. Bethany is talking about holidays: apparently Croatia is the new destination; she raises her carefully groomed eyebrows archly. When was this filmed? May? It’ll be the summer holidays in a week and Amy hasn’t thought about where they’ll go or what they’ll do with the children, once they’re off school. She sets her plate aside. Nick glances at her and frowns, but doesn’t say anything.

Bethany’s voice – low, husky, as if she’s secretly smiling – tells them of Croatia’s exotic azure waters and rocky coastline, but how you can still buy English classics – beer and chips – on the seafront. The camera (they must have hired a drone) zooms over the cliffs and across vineyards and lines of dark, conical trees.

‘It’s almost the… the – it’s nearly a year since…’ says Nick. ‘I was thinking we should do something.’

It’s as if her younger brother has said exactly what she was thinking.

‘We could go away,’ Amy says. ‘Hire a holiday house and be away for… be away for—’

‘A holiday?’ Matt says. ‘Really?’

‘I can’t be here,’ she says. ‘You know that.’ Her voice rises.